The city’s new subcommittee to look into the future of mining in Juneau has its first members.
At Monday night’s City and Borough of Juneau Assembly meeting, Mayor Ken Koelsch named three Assembly members to the new subcommittee. These members will decide where to go next with the process, and will select who else to add to the committee.
Koelsch named Assembly members Maria Gladziszewski, Norton Gregory and Beth Weldon to the subcommittee, with Gregory serving as the chair.
“I think they create a balance,” Koelsch said of the selections.
Gladziszewski was on the most recent committee to look into mining in Juneau, specifically looking into reopening the Alaska-Juneau Mine with the AJ Mine Advisory Committee (AJMAC). Gladziszewski has preached caution when it comes to looking into revising the mining ordinance. Weldon has spoken in favor of exploring the mining ordinance, saying that opening up a mine in Juneau would bring more jobs to the city.
Gregory, who is in his first term on the Assembly, has also spoken in support of further exploring the mining ordinance. Koelsch said he is interested to see how Gregory handles the challenge.
“He is new to the Assembly and is ready to learn a lot about the mining ordinance,” Koelsch said, “and I think that in the end he will definitely have some stepping up to do and he’s willing to.”
The formation of this subcommittee comes from a recent proposal to revise the city’s existing mining ordinance in order to make Juneau more attractive to companies looking to open a mine. By a 6-3 vote, the Assembly voted to form the subcommittee at a June 12 Committee of the Whole meeting, despite City Manager Rorie Watt suggesting that the entire Assembly should be involved in the process.
Gladziszewski agreed with Watt and voted against the formation of the subcommittee in this fashion. Gregory and Weldon voted in favor of the subcommittee taking this form.
Even the aim of this subcommittee has yet to be established. Assembly members have disagreed about whether this subcommittee will look specifically at reopening the AJ Mine or if it is just going to be looking at the possibility of opening a mine in Juneau sometime in the future.
This will be the first committee to look into the future of mining in Juneau since 2011, when the AJMAC released its findings. That group, which included both Watt and Gladziszewski, wrote that the feasibility of reopening the AJ Mine depends on many factors, including the size of the mining operations.
There have been numerous attempts to reopen the mine since it went out of business in 1944. A group called Echo Bay Alaska attempted to reopen the mine in the early 1990s, but mining operations ended in 1997. FBI and EPA investigations revealed that the company leaked chemicals into Gold Creek and had lied about the chemicals it was using.
As has become customary with city meetings addressing the mining ordinance, Monday’s meeting was well attended. Three of the five men who originally proposed the changes to the ordinance — Frank Bergstrom, Jim Clark and Bill Corbus — were in attendance. Multiple environmentalists, including Southeast Alaska Conservation Council Executive Director Meredith Trainor, were in attendance as well.
Koelsch now puts the process in the hands of the subcommittee, but said he’d be willing to work with Gregory to help him along as well. Koelsch outlined his vision for the next steps for the committee at Monday’s meeting.
“The subcommittee is to recommend a process, including a public process to be taken,” Koelsch said, “recommend that the subcommittee should include additional members and it is to recommend timelines.”
• Contact reporter Alex McCarthy at alex.mccarthy@juneauempire.com.
Assembly member Maria Gladziszewski speaks at a May 1 meeting about the long process of building the City and Borough of Juneau’s mining ordinance. Gladziszewski is one of three members of the city’s newest committee that’s looking into revising the mining ordinance. (Alex McCarthy | Juneau Empire)
