The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
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With the holidays in the rear view mirror and the convention season half-way over, mining operators in Alaska, big and small, are processing their paperwork for the upcoming field season. The major properties work around the calendar, but when it comes to placer operations and exploration projects, the time for 2018 field season planning is at hand. All the signs are that 2018 will be the best season in five years. Although the stock market is rising steeply, the incremental...
In the current environment, it is difficult to avoid discussing the elephant in the room. Essentially, we need to understand how the COVID-19 pandemic will affect mining activities in Alaska in the near and long term. While misinformation and speculation about the disease is rampant, some basic facts seem indisputable – the disease is highly contagious, infected people are often asymptomatic, and there does not appear to be any approved anti-viral available yet. The control m...
It is the very nature of the legislative process for the participants to endure conflict and controversy. Generally, the confrontations endemic to law-making begin when a citizen files for public office and starts a campaign. Unless unopposed, this brave soul must raise funds and interface with voters incessantly until election day. The candidate’s calendar is full, from registration on, and then only one of the contenders for a given seat prevails. For all of the u...
A priority of the Trump administration in 2016 was the reduction of the regulatory burden on America's businesses. Three years ago, the President signed Executive Order 13771, "Reducing Regulation and Controlling Regulatory Costs." The regulatory reform efforts of the federal government have continued into fiscal year 2019. This past year various federal agencies have taken 150 deregulatory actions, including 18 deregulatory actions each by the Department of the Interior and...
This author, in this column and elsewhere, has often taken the position that Alaska, especially in remote locations, is the safest, most environmentally-sound and worker-friendly mining location in the world. Alaska is endowed with world-class resources from one end of the state to the other. The associated jobs are well paid, and the industry is stable. Notwithstanding the view that some have of heavy industry as an eyesore, the remoteness of most operations puts them beyond...
If you pay any attention to the popular press, it is difficult to avoid critical references to President Trump. He has become the effigy for everything from political division to global iconoclasm. However, as is the case with so many national issues; the impact of the intense debates inside the Beltway have only an attenuated resonance on the Last Frontier. The on-going controversy between elitist progressive governance and populistic resistance surfaced with the 2016 electio...
Alaska, like Canada to the east and Russia to the west, is well known for its elephantine mineral deposits. Recognition of those deposits surfaces regularly. Sometimes they are characterized by incredible production results, as in the case of Red Dog, Pogo and Fort Knox. Sometimes they are abandoned due to social factors to lie in wait for another day, as is the case with Brady Glacier, Misty Fiords and Chuitna. All too often, those who identify a valuable mineral deposit are...
It is no secret that much of the western United States was built on the back of natural resources found on federal land or within adjacent federal waters. Likewise, it is no secret that prior to 1964, resource development companies, and many other productive industries, externalized the cost of doing business by discharging often toxic waste into the adjacent environment without regard to the persistent effect of doing so. No one denies that over the past 50 years the...
One of the highlights of my July each year is attending the Rocky Mountain Mineral Law Institute because mining lawyers and landmen from across the continent gather to hear presentations of interest to those of us who closely follow changes in resource development law. Each topical session of the presentations typically begins with a survey of new statutes, regulations and cases that affect mining law, oil and gas law, water law, public land law and environmental law....
One does not have to be a septuagenarian to recall how things were before Richard Nixon signed the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act into law. Whole industries used the commons for the disposal of pollutants, rivers caught on fire, fish died, and the air was not fit to breathe in many places. The bureaucracy, both federal and state, changed in response to those laws, and a regulatory aegis was thrown over everyone, especially those in the resource development industries....
It is difficult not to be optimistic about the future of the mining industry in Alaska these days. Although the industry is still No. 2 – as compared to oil and gas – it remains lucrative, safe and healthy. Predictably, that will remain the case for eons to come as new projects are brought online. Economically, from Kotzebue to Juneau, mining's direct impact is significant. Nearly 14 thousand direct and indirect jobs can be attributable to the industry and those jobs can pay...
I know that it is a perennial hazard for those of us who follow the mining industry to be optimistic in the Spring every year; but, somehow, I don't seem to be able to contain myself this year. My ebullience is precipitated by the obvious as well as the subtle. Obviously, the decision in the Sturgeon case is huge, all the more so because the decision was unanimous, and that was for the second time SCOTUS had to hear the matter. Liberal and conservative Justices agree: ANILCA...
I don't really know how much it has cost John Sturgeon to go to the United States Supreme Court (SCOTUS) twice in order to vindicate his right to use a hovercraft to go hunting on the Nation River, nor do I really care; but it must have been scratching on the underside of a million dollars, if not a great deal more. Lots of people made individual contributions, and there has been tremendous moral support for him in his decade-long interface with the American system of...
Despite over four decades of working with the mining industry in Alaska, my travels rarely brought me to the northwest part of the state and my opportunities to interface with residents have been embarrassingly few and far between. Recently, however, I have had occasion to pay a lot more attention to that part of the world. As a part of my remedial experience, I have had occasion to immerse myself in Willie Hensley's beautiful memoir about his life and the Iñupiaq of Kotzebue....
As you have heard by now, a large segment of the federal government has been furloughed over some sort of a squabble between the Leader of the Free World and the newly-elected Speaker of the House of Representatives. If one were to read the Amazon (aka Washington) Post, one would infer that the sky was falling on top of the rising seas, and that in about a thousand years it will make a big splash. On the other hand, since we always send our brightest and best to the District...
There can be no doubt that April 27, 1973, was an auspicious day in Nebraska, not just because Jason Brune, Governor-Elect Dunleavy's pick to become the Commissioner of the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation, was borne then and there; but because it was also the dawning of the Age of Aquarius. One does not need to cast horoscopes to recognize that this astrological era is said to be one of harmony and understanding. Nor does one have to know Brune well to...
I have always been bemused by an apparently historic inconsistency between the Declaration of Independence and the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. The first speaks of "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," but 14 years later, the Fifth Amendment concerned itself with "life, liberty and property." This was an apparent paradigm shift. The change has historical explanations. (Give an historian enough time and he (or she) can explain anything.) For instance, the Foundi...
I always get a giggle when I hear the stark warnings about the death and destruction that are going to occur as the result of the huge contribution that anthropomorphic activities, especially the burning of fossil fuels, makes to global warming. Before you ask, I am not a denier. I think that global warming is real and furthermore, I think that mankind is a contributor. My attitude is not that global warming doesn't exist, but more like "So what?" What brings this to mind is a...
The Donlin Project took one step closer to becoming the next major mine in Alaska when on Aug. 13, the Army Corps of Engineers and the Department of the Interior signed off on a record of decision regarding the discharge of dredged material and a pipeline right of way as part of the development of the project. In today's political environment, the development of any resource project requires a bevy of permits from diverse agencies and entities, and that entails a mountain of...
Undoubtedly, one of the most fun parts of my vocation is introducing Cheechakos to mining in Alaska. Obviously, even the most experienced miners in the state can, and often do, get cross-wise with the impenetrable rules and regulations of which Alaska seems to boast. For these newcomers to Alaska, the risk of failure for political reasons far exceeds the risks of failing to find gold and other valuable minerals. The very first layer of complexity is the land status. As most...
In my younger years, I was hornswoggled into believing in “truth, justice and the American way.” I had no idea how evil that “way” actually was. Later, as I progressed through high school, I was taught that “winning isn’t everything, it is the only thing.” In college I learned that “America is a nation of laws, not men (or even women).” By the time I got to law school, I had figured out that there are (at least) two sides to every story and that a competent lawyer was expect...
Arguably, the process of adopting laws and regulations is well-intentioned; but like the blind men trying to describe an elephant, those who embrace the tail perceive a creature much unlike those who embrace a leg and their respective perceptions vary dramatically from those who grasp an ear. The question of how to deal with the affidavits of annual labor required by the Alaska Land Act and the regulations promulgated thereunder, where the affidavit contains some error, has...
In an earlier column (Dec. 24, 2017), the question of proposed regulations affecting mining on State land was flagged for readers’ attention because the initial scope of the contemplated changes did not bode well for the industry. Unfortunately, space constraints precluded in-depth analysis of the half-dozen ideas that had been laid on the table. Since that column, however, the problems identified in the suggested regulations have evolved into broad disarray, due in part to th...
Although the Bureau of Land Management has been developing land management plans for decades, in the past those plans have had two qualities that made them tolerable. First, they were relatively easy to live with and second, they were reasonably understandable. There can be no doubt, however, that the earlier plans violated unequivocal prohibitions of the Alaska National Interest Lands Act against restrictive land management practices on the public domain. During the past deca...
For the past 20 months or so, the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) has been wrestling with some proposed changes to the regulations concerning the location and maintenance of State of Alaska mining claims. This effort has been driven by some substantial issues that have arisen with the interpretation of the regs over the past several years as well as some significant open questions. The current proposed changes can be obtained from the DNR's website, but the process is...
