Alaska Minerals Commission recommendations

State regulatory reform

1. The governor carefully consider the state's report, The State of Alaska Assumption of the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System. If the program presented is beneficial to the state, pursue and fund state primacy.

2. The administration vigorously defend the new Public Interest Litigant statute against legal challenges.

3. The administration continue to develop more efficient and timely permitting processes, maintaining high quality internal staff, using third party contractors, requiring a periodic permitting status report accounting for agency staff and management and seek improved participation and coordination by federal agencies.

4. The governor direct the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation to develop mixing zone regulations.

Access and infrastructure

5. The administration assist in infrastructure development to benefit mining and other industries, including a prioritized list of potential "Roads to Resources," and seek funding for a long-term program that would create unrestricted public road links between potential developments and existing overland supply lines, major rivers or tidewater.

6. Modify the statute governing rural airstrips to eliminate unauthorized use of such remote mining access strips by individuals and commercial entities.

7. Support state agencies in extending electrical grids into areas where mineral development is occurring or is anticipated.

State's rights issues

8. Resolve land tenure, navigability and right of way access issues, to include pursuing precedent-setting "quiet title" actions, asserting an access route under the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, funding a centralized systematic navigability program and navigability determination process, and to pursue expedited transfer of state-selected lands along the Denali Highway.

Data acquisition

9. Acquire baseline geological and environmental knowledge statewide, investing $5 million per year on airborne geophysical surveys and complementary geological and geochemical surveys, and to endure that state agencies provide baseline standards for water quality standards mandated by the Alaska Clean Waters Act.

Regional economic development

10. Fund a $250,000, two-year project marketing relevant mineral development opportunities in southeast Alaska.

Education and research

11. Support the Alaska Minerals & Energy Resource Education Fund with $50,000.

12. Provide adequate budgetary support to the UAF School of Mineral Engineering maintaining the school as a separate entity so that its mission is not diluted through assimilation into broader programs.

Federal issues of state concern

13. Federal and state agencies work together to clarify that disposal of tailings into wetlands is either regulated as a treatment works or as a disposal site, and that regulation would not require tailings and associated waters to comply with water quality standards until discharged from tailings area.

14. Until the Jones Act is repealed, the governor shall publish an annual report documenting its harmful effects on Alaska commerce.

15. The Legislature pursue reinstatement of the Alaska Mineral Resources Assessment Program, required by ANICLA, by lobbying the congressional delegation.

16. The Alaska Legislature support SB1466, the accelerated land conveyance bill proposed by Sen. Lisa Murkowski, provided the bill contain language that makes rescinded withdrawal lands immediately subject to public land laws of the U.S. and to mineral entry; and that it contains language and funds that allows BLM to make a detailed inventory of other Alaska land withdrawals that are no longer necessary and that should be rescinded.

17. The governor and Legislature work with the congressional delegation to require the National Marine Fisheries Service to define the scope and application of the "Essential Fish Habitat" program, limit NMFS authority to marine waters and leave management of anadromous fish within state waters to state regulators.

18. The governor assert one RS 2477 access route through a Conservation System Unit, and insist that no more CSU lands be created in Alaska, and to exchange mineralized areas from existing CSU lands, allowed by ANICLA.

19. The governor communicate with the U.S. Department of Labor to ensure that appropriate funds are available for the required unfunded mandate of annual training for gravel operations throughout Alaska now required by the Mining Safety and Health Administration.