Monday night could be an important one for the future of Juneau’s mining ordinance.
In April, five local businessmen proposed that the city make changes to its mining ordinance to make it easier for a company to open a mine in Juneau or reopen the Alaska-Juneau Mine. On May 1, the City and Borough of Juneau Committee of the Whole directed City Manager Rorie Watt and Mayor Ken Koelsch to look into setting up a committee to look into making changes to the ordinance.
Instead of presenting a plan for moving forward with the process, Watt is issuing the Committee of the Whole a memo advising that now is not the time to make revisions to the ordinance. Watt recommends a long process built on public participation and widespread education on the topic.
“Success in discussing this topic requires special handling, patience, substantial public communication and durable decision-making,” Watt wrote in the memo. “Mines take years to lease, finance, permit and develop and any CBJ decisions must take that timeline into account.”
Watt’s memo also states that the city doesn’t have enough staff to put in the time and effort that this topic requires. The issue of reopening the mine is so divisive, Watt wrote, that the city needs to be absolutely sure that changing the ordinance is the right thing to do before it does it. Making a sound decision, Watt wrote, takes time.
[A miner matter: Proposal would make reopening Alaska-Juneau Mine easier]
The memo will be under discussion at Monday’s Committee of the Whole meeting at 6 p.m. The meeting is open to the public to observe but not to make comments.
Watt, who was on the 2011 Alaska-Juneau Mine Advisory Committee (AJMAC), made three recommendations in his memo:
• The full Assembly — not just a subcommittee — should design a public process.
• The city should provide a large amount of education for members of the public so they can further understand the intricacies of possibly reopening the AJ Mine.
• Only after these first two steps are done, should the city proceed to considering the potential reopening of the AJ Mine.
The Assembly has already discussed the need to take the process slowly, but Watt’s recommendations would slow the process down even more. Guy Archibald, the Mining and Clean Water Coordinator for the Southeast Alaska Conservation Council (SEACC), opposes the proposed changes to the mining ordinance and knows that Watt’s recommendations don’t mean the Assembly won’t continue to look into the changes.
“I am happy Rorie recognizes that any change needs to be a deliberative process,” Archibald said via email, “although the question of, ‘Are any changes really necessary?’ has not yet been answered. I think the Assembly has more pressing issues to address.”
The AJMAC released its final report in May 2011, saying basically that reopening the AJ Mine depends on numerous factors, including the size of the mine. Watt proposed in this week’s memo that the Assembly pick up where the AJMAC left off, further examining the pros and cons of opening the mine, which hasn’t operated since 1944.
With periodic turnover in the members of the Assembly, Watt pointed out that this evaluation process will outlast the current group of Assembly members. Future Assemblies will be able to put their own fingerprints on any changes to the ordinance.
“To be perfectly frank,” Watt wrote in his memo, “a change now to our existing mining ordinance may not be durable. Several (if not many) Assemblies would have an opportunity to make subsequent changes.”
• Contact reporter Alex McCarthy at alex.mccarthy@juneauempire.com.
