Little Exploration Done in Juneau Gold Belt.

• Author: SCHMITZ, RICHARD F.
• Position: Mines remain closed - Alaska - Brief Article

Low Gold Prices Keep Operators at Bay

Between the time French Pete staked the first claim at Treadwell in the 1880s, and 1944 when the massive Alaska-Juneau mine closed due to the demands of World War II, the ore-bearing geological formation termed the Juneau Gold Belt has been ground zero for Alaska's gold riches.

This Gold Belt formation stretches, roughly, from Windham Bay to Berners Bay--about 90 miles across the heart of the Alaska panhandle. In its heyday, the A-J Mine produced 88 million ounces of gold and was the flagship--albeit low grade--of as many as seven mines, which drilled, crushed and processed the gold-bearing quartz veins of the Gold Belt.

Today, the Juneau Gold Belt is just about entirely relegated to the history classroom. In the first part of the 1990s Vancouver, Canada-based Echo Bay launched a dedicated drive to put the A-J back into production. Low gold prices and opposition from environmental groups combined to halt the effort, and earlier this year Kvaerner Environmental wrapped up the mine's latest complete shutdown.

"In the late 1980s-early 1990s there was significant exploration and interest in gold deposits around Juneau," said Al Clough, who heads up the Juneau chapter of the Alaska Miners Association. "A lot of effort was spent. But with the fall of gold prices and political opposition around here, the Juneau Gold Belt is definitely on a back burner. If mining companies can't come up with a production model that works, they're going to look at other deposits."

"But," Clough said, "the geology hasn't changed."

The Gold Belt is not completely dead, however. Just north of Berners Bay, 45 miles north of Juneau, Coeur Alaska (a subsidiary of Coeur d'Alene Mines of Idaho) maintains a small but persistent presence at its Kensington project, which includes the old Kensington, Jualin and Terrible mines. "There's not much there--a small camp," said Coeur Alaska Spokesperson Margaret Dowling from her office in a Mendenhall Valley business park. "There's a rotating shift of four people. There's a water treatment plant, an equipment shed, a couple of vehicles."

For the most part, on-site efforts at the Kensington project are limited to maintenance and water-quality sampling. At Coeur Alaska's offices, ongoing work is centering on finalizing a new operating plan and submitting these changes to modify the project's operating permits.

"We're still working to improve the mine's economics through increased efficiency and...