From frozen ground to far-off markets: how Alaska's natural resources are dug up, drilled, and shipped out.

• Author: Anderson, Tasha
• Position: TRANSPORTATION

Alaska abounds with natural resources. The trick, of course, is how to get money for them. It seems crass, but Alaska's industry IS its natural resources, whether they're cut down, mined out, snatched up in nets, meticulously preserved to show off to the participants of Alaska's tourism industry, or an integral part of a subsistence lifestyle. Alaska works endlessly to make sure that all of its natural resources can make money in harmony; a productive and respectful balance can be achieved. Of course, some items need to leave the state to realize their best value, in particular, the natural resources Alaska has locked deep underground. In Alaska, the transportation process often begins with a drill or an explosive charge.

Red Dog Mine

Red Dog Mine is a joint venture between NANA Regional Corporation, Inc., one of the thirteen Alaska Native Regional corporations, and Teck Alaska Incorporated, a subsidiary of Teck Resources Limited, a diversified mining company headquartered in Vancouver, Canada. Red Dog is located in Northwest Alaska, approximately eighty-two miles north of Kotzebue and forty-six miles inland from the coast of the Chukchi Sea. The Alaska Department of Natural Resources, Mining, Land & Water website describes the location as "remote and undeveloped," an excellent example of understated accuracy.

The land is owned by NANA, and the mine is operated by Teck. Red Dog Mine has more than five hundred employees, many of which are NANA shareholders.

Red Dog is the largest zinc mine in the United States and represents 79 percent of US zinc production and is the second largest lead producing mine, representing 33 percent.

The zinc and lead which are obtained through conventional open-pit mining (which includes drill and blast mining methods), milling, and flotation technologies. These techniques produce zinc and lead concentrates. Concentrates are intermediate products--the ore dug from the ground, which is now "the consistency of talcum powder" according to Shelly Wozniak, corporate communications manager for NANA, has been somewhat refined, but is not yet in a state that can be immediately used for commercial purposes.

Wozniak says, "After processing, mineral concentrates from Red Dog Mine begin a long journey out of Northwest Alaska. This journey begins with the DeLong Mountain Transportation System [DMTS]."

The DMTS is a transportation system that comprises a fifty-two-mile, thirty-foot-wide, all weather industrial haul road; a shallow water dock located on the Chukchi Sea approximately twelve miles south of Kivalina; offshore conveyers concentrate loading facility; and fuel distribution and storage systems, according to the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority website, the organization that owns DMTS. Initial construction on the system was completed in 1990 and a port expansion was completed in 2000.

"At the end of the port are the two largest...