46°

The Canadian government provided 30 days for U.S. citizens and officials to review more than 1,000 pages of technical information recently provided by Vancouver, British Columbia-based Redfern Resources Ltd. about its Tulsequah Chief Mine project, located in the Taku River watershed. The clock runs out on Friday.

The tight deadline is cause for alarm for Tlingits and Taku River gillnetters who rely on the health of the transboundary river and have been watching the development of Redfern's proposed underground mine for more than a decade.

"We want to be adequately protected,'' said Doug Dobbyns, a non-Native consultant to the Douglas Indian Association. "The subsistence resource is the biggest issue for the Douglas Indians."

The fast-approaching deadline also is prompting a flurry of last-ditch appeals from politicians such as the mayor of Juneau, Bruce Botelho, who wants Canada to provide a Juneau public hearing on the Tulsequah Chief project and a formal review by the International Joint Commission or another bilateral panel. A previous request for a bilateral panel was declined, he noted.

"We are the community most impacted downstream by (the mine) activities,'' Botelho said.

He plans to send a letter stating the city's concerns this week. Similar letters have been sent to federal Canadian officials by state Rep. Bruce Weyhrauch and Sen. Kim Elton, both of Juneau.

Chris Zimmer, spokesman for the Transboundary Watershed Alliance, said, "It's too fast. It's an inadequate way for (Canada) to do business with their neighbor.''

But he is even more concerned that Alaska's agencies and its governor are "not standing up aggressively" to ensure that the Taku is adequately protected, he said.

"We get a much different attitude from the (Gov.) Murkowski administration," he said.

Murkowski spokesman John Manly said the governor supports the mine and "believes the Canadians can do it right." But, he said, "We don't want our fisheries affected."

Regulators weigh in

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game and the Alaska Department of Natural Resources all plan to comment to Canadian federal regulators on the project by Friday.

Following that, the Canadian federal government will decide whether to certify the project, setting the stage for final permitting.

"We want to make sure that they are doing as good a job as we would,'' said Ed Fogels, DNR's large project mine manager. "We're not familiar with their rules. If their standards are appropriate, that's fine."

EPA officials in Washington, D.C., said last week they are concerned about how best to protect the fisheries and water quality in the Taku River. But the recent report provided by Redfern, though voluminous, contained little information that was not already available, they said.

The report was provided two years after the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans submitted more than 100 questions about the project to Redfern.

Bill Riley, director of EPA's Office of Environmental Assessment, noted that the next phase of the project - permitting - probably will include much more information on environmental impacts.

"That's where a lot of the nitty-gritty issues on water quality will be addressed,'' he said.

On one important point the project is murky. Alaska and EPA regulators said they do not know how or if the mine could be held legally responsible for damage to Alaska waters or fisheries. They did point out that the Taku River is covered under the U.S.-Canada Boundary Water Treaty and the Pacific Salmon Treaty.

But the lack of legal clarity concerns Errol Champion, who owns a cabin and property on the U.S. side of the Taku River valley.

"I don't think we've got adequate resolution and understanding between the governments about how it would be handled if there was an incident,'' he said.

"It doesn't seem to be a high priority for our state government,'' he added.

Project details

So far, Redfern has conducted some extra work requested by EPA and Alaska regulators. For example, this spring the company tested its proposed mine effluent on aquatic organisms in the Taku River - shrimp, fish and algae - to determine the long-term impact, said Redfern President Terry Chandler.

Some of the preliminary results of the chronic tests on organisms showed "reduced biological activity'' and so the mine will have to design treatment for its effluent at a higher standard, Chandler said.

The proposed Tulsequah Chief mine, approximately 40 miles from Juneau, has mineral deposits including zinc, copper, lead, silver and gold. The deposits were previously mined from 1951 to 1957 and caused acid pollution to leak into the watershed.

The deposits were discovered by a Juneau resident, W. Kirkham, who was prospecting in the area, according to the company.

Two contentious aspects of the project are its proposed access road and tailings pile. The proposed 100-mile road cuts through territory that has been claimed by Canadian Taku River Tlingits, setting off a legal battle that has now reached the Canadian Supreme Court.

The company also plans to deposit its tailings in a floodplain. Redfern's Chandler said the tailings pile will not contain any acid-bearing sulfides and that even if its walls failed, the tailings and water discharge would not be toxic enough to cause environmental harm.

Chandler said he hopes to obtain final permits for the mine in 2005 and operate it eight to 12 years. He claims that the new mine will solve the water quality problems caused by the original mine because of a process that will treat all the water passing through the site. The treated water will be piped and discharged into the sediment of the Tulsequah River, he said.

Mining frenzy?

Several mining companies have begun to explore areas near the proposed Redfern site. There is even talk of reopening the original Tulsequah Chief mine, which is not part of the current Tulsequah Chief project, Chandler said.

"Our sense of (reopening the old mine) is that that company is waiting for our access road to be assured and then they will decide,'' Chandler said.

Zimmer, of the Transboundary Watershed Alliance, accuses the British Columbia provincial government of encouraging new mine development in the sensitive watershed in an irresponsible fashion.

So far, at least four exploration projects in the watershed have begun, Zimmer said.

"We ought to get a better transnational group to take a look at this,'' he said.

Botelho agreed. "New claims in the same watershed ... raise additional alarms about whether safeguards are in place," he said.