The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North

Region benefits from Donlin Creek project

Local hire commitment pays off as village residents escape from drugs and alcohol and are promoted to supervisory positions

Alaska's Donlin Creek gold project is still several years from becoming an operating mine, but it has already made a huge impact on the lives of people in the surrounding rural communities. Since making a commitment in 1996 to employ as many Native corporation shareholders as possible, operator Barrick Gold achieved a shareholder hire rate of 92 percent in 2005, with a turnover rate of just 10 percent, down from 318 percent at the start of the project.

Donlin Creek is a joint venture between NovaGold Resources and Barrick, with Barrick as operator. Previously NovaGold had partnered with Placer Dome, which was taken over by Barrick in late 2005. Barrick also tried to take over NovaGold recently, but was unsuccessful. The ongoing legal battles between the partners, who dispute the wording of the joint venture agreement, have had little effect on employees at the site. If anything, the pace of work has stepped up as Barrick races to meet a deadline in November this year, by which time it must complete a feasibility study.

In 2006 the project employed about 155 residents of the villages in the area, and another 50 people from Anchorage. The village residents included 29 from Aniak, 29 from Kalskag, 27 from Russian Mission, 16 from Crooked Creek and 12 from Bethel. Chiulista Camp Services, a wholly owned subsidiary of Native corporation Calista, acts as an agency to help Calista shareholders find work at the Donlin Creek project as drillers and helpers, core cutters, administrative assistants, heavy equipment operators, mechanics, caterers and for anything else that is required.

The high employee turnover at the beginning of the project was largely due to failed drug and alcohol tests. Now that people have seen that by adhering to the project's rule that prohibits drugs and alcohol they can obtain responsible, high-paying jobs, many have given up their bad habits. Substance abuse is a scourge in rural Alaska, and Donlin Creek is helping to combat it. Without the project, there would be few employment opportunities in the region.

"There's a continuous program of improvement in all skill levels," George Gardner, president of Chiulista Camp Services, said at the Alaska Miners Association's convention in Anchorage Nov. 9. "If this goes into feasibility and in fact does become an operational mine, we'll have an opportunity for those employees to have a career in the industry, and that's something we are certainly looking forward to. There's a stronger sense of pride in the community, within the workforce, and it has become, in my mind, and in a lot of people's minds, it's become a model for working with indigenous entities such as we are."

 

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