Polishing plans: two Southeast gold mines await verdicts on development.

• Author: Kleeschulte, Chuck

S Within the next year the jury should come in on whether two large gold mines will re open in Juneau mines that should about double the state's production of the glittering metal and add sparkle to Juneau's and the state's economies.

Officials of Echo Bay Exploration Inc. this spring unveiled revamped development plans for reopening of the giant Alaska-Juneau gold mine in dow-ntown Juneau, in hopes of removing two of three main environmental objections to the development. The changes, which have resulted in a year's delay in the project, mean that federal and municipal officials will likely be deciding at almost the same time on whether to approve reopening of the A- J and of a second smaller project, the historic Kensington gold mine, just north of Berners Bay 50 miles north of downtown eau.

"There's no question but things will be busy around here this winter and next spring. With both projects now on effectively the same approval track, there will be a lot for us to consider,' says Murray Walsh, director of community development for the Juneau City-Borough. Alaska,juneau Mine. The A-J gold mine is the project that has certainly drawn the most attention. Juneau city leaders and the town's electric utility made the decision in 1983 to lease the sites of the A-J and the related Treadwell mine on Douglas Island to a mining company (then Barrick Resources) for a feasibility study of reopening of the properties. But it wasn't until February 1989 that Echo Bay Exploration Inc., which had acquired Barrick's interests three years earlier, said it was interested in reopening the A-J, once the world's largest low-grade gold mine.

Last year the company unveiled plans to build a 16-acre processing site just south of downtown Juneau, a diesel electric generating plant to supplement the town's hydropower supplies, and a 345-foot-tall dam to flood Juneau's Sheep Creek Valley to both hold mine tailings and to generate still more hydropower needed by the mine. These elements were the keys to resuming production of 22,500 tons of ore a day from inside the mountains that frame downtown Juneau.

The plan immediately stirred up a hornet's nest of environmental opposition. To meet as many of the concerns as possible, Echo Bay delayed the approval process for a required federal environmental impact statement (EIS) and took its plans back to the drawing boards for redrafting.

In May, officials unveiled new designs, the company moving its surface facilities several miles to the south to dampen the project's scenic and noise impacts on downtown Juneau and to melt avalanche concerns. It also switched to liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) to fuel its electrical generators to largely eliminate air pollution worries.

We really wanted our project to be the best one possible for the good of the community, so we tried to meet as many of the community's concerns as possible,' says David Stone, a spokesman for Echo Bay. The changes boosted the...