Coeur gets down to business at Kensington

There was hardly time to pour the champagne before putting on the hard hats. Within days of receiving their final permit in late June, Coeur d'Alene was moving equipment to start work on construction of the Kensington gold mine near Juneau. The first task is to make sure the ecology is taken care of, according to Tim Arnold, Coeur Alaska's vice president and general manager of the project. Coeur is currently mobilizing all the clearing and grubbing equipment and installing silt fences for sediment control.

Next on the list is tree-felling and upgrading the existing road from the dock facility to the mill site area, Arnold told Mining News. The road to the tailings facility will also be worked on. "By the end of this construction season we will be in all areas, but it's a pretty compact site," Arnold said. The largest amount of work will occur at the mill site, where the majority of the earthwork will take place. Coeur will also build a temporary construction camp.

Alaska Interstate Construction, based in Anchorage, has the civil works contract, and is building the camp pad, mill site pad, and all connecting roads. Channel Construction of Juneau is the logger, and Native Alaskan-owned Kuukpik, another Anchorage company, is the camp provider and caterer for Kensington.

Underground work through winter

By September there will be 90 people working on the project. "We'll probably have up to 100 before the heavy snows fly," Arnold said. Underground work will take place throughout the winter, and there will still be crews on the surface. Arnold himself has more than 25 years of experience in hard rock mining, and transferred to Juneau in spring 2004 from Coeur Rochester in Lovelock, Nev., where he was also vice president and general manager at the world's seventh-largest primary silver mine.

The permitting process for Kensington began back in 2000, and Coeur has received 33 major permits. "I think the state of Alaska has done an exceptional job of putting together the large mine permitting group, it's streamlined the process," Arnold said. Coeur has also gone to considerable lengths to meet the needs of local people. "We have gone through many public meetings and read thousands of letters. We have tried to figure out ways to accommodate the most significant issues," Arnold said.

The Southeast Alaska Conservation Council's appeal against the Forest Service's Record of Decision approving Kensington was rejected in March this year.

SEACC had alleged the mine plan violated the Endangered Species Act, Clean Water Act, National Environmental Policy Act, and the National Forest Management Act.

"I don't think anyone's concerns were unjustified," Arnold said.

"Coeur has done a pretty good job of trying to mitigate concerns - for example, about fueling vessels at Cascade Point.

We will take them outside Berners Bay at certain times of the year and fuel them somewhere near Juneau." Adjustments to the plan go right down to shaded lighting and the size of the parking lot, Arnold added.

"I would say it's pretty typical of most projects - people object," Arnold said. "They have a concern for Berners Bay, so do we. Their questioning of what we do has spurred us to a lot of thought in the way we are going to do the mine. You put this much thought into a project; the project gets better and better."

Another issue raised by environmentalists was the use of Lower Slate Lake as the mine's tailings facility, chosen over the option of dry stack tailings. "The tailings facility that we have in the current plan is best economically and environmentally, and it reduces the amount of affected wetlands significantly," Arnold said. "We will take an unproductive, subalpine, brackish lake and improve the fisheries. It will be a better habitat for the macroinvertebrates."

Coeur will construct a dam that will raise the water level in Lower Slate Lake by about 85 feet, increasing the size of the lake from about 20 to 56 acres, and flooding the majority of Mid-Lake Creek, the main inflow to Lower Slate Lake. The tailings will not be toxic. Coeur is a leader in environmental policy, Arnold said, pointing to the company's investment of more than $110,000 at Rochester to rescue 110 Townsend's big-eared bats and find new homes for them. In recognition of that work, Bat Conservation International named Coeur Rochester its 2003 Corporate Conservationist of the Year.

When the Kensington mine is eventually reclaimed, after its estimated 10-year life, all the facilities will be removed, the portals will be sealed and the waste rock will be reclaimed. "It will be tough to tell that we were there," Arnold said. Safety is another of Coeur's top priorities at Kensington and elsewhere. Coeur Rochester won the Department of Labor's Mine Safety and Health Administration Sentinels of Safety Award in 2000, and the mine has also received the Nevada Mining Association's Safety Award six times.

Production at Kensington is scheduled to begin in late 2006. The mine is expected to produce 100,000 ounces of gold annually. Coeur is committed to a policy of local hire, but for those employees who are brought in from further afield, as Arnold was, Juneau is "a wonderful place to live," he said. "It's a little bit of paradise."