Revival of Juneau-area gold mines still stalled.

• Author: Ripley, Kate
• Position: Alaska-Juneau gold mine - Special Section: Mining's Rough Ride

It's similar to an eerie carnival ride as the train jostles and rolls along the tracks of the Sheep Creek tunnel, an "adit" in miners' jargon. Cool air circulates through the dark, wet corridors, creating a constant draft through the hundreds and hundreds of feet of underground tunnels.

Beams of light from the miner's lamp reveal rusting ore buckets, a hoist, a timber saw and an old ore cart - a few of the many dilapidated ruins of the Alaska-Juneau gold mine, deep inside the rock of Mount Roberts near downtown Juneau.

The old equipment and vacant underground chambers are reminders of the capital city's gold-mining heritage, when the A-J employed more than 1,000 men at its peak. The mine produced $80 million in gold from 1913 to 1944.

Today, Echo Bay Alaska Inc., a subsidiary of the Canadian firm Echo Bay Mines Ltd., wants to breathe life into the old A-J, as well as into the historic Kensington gold mine 45 miles north of Juneau. The company is awaiting the release of final environmental impact statements for both projects, as well as approval from the Juneau city-borough on large-mine permits.

The Juneau public is deeply divided over the possible resurgence of mining in the area: Environmentalists lament the loss of wildlife and habitat in the 400-acre Sheep Creek Valley, which Echo Bay would dam for use as a mine tailings disposal site; while others promote the positive impacts of economic diversification.

Echo Bay, based in Edmonton, Alberta, is an 85 percent owner of the A-J; the other 15 percent non-operating interest belongs to Watts, Griffis and McOuat Ltd. of Toronto, Ontario.

By contrast, the Kensington, which operated sporadically from 1887 to 1938, has proceeded more quietly than the A-J in its environmental review process. Echo Bay is a 50 percent operating partner of the Kensington Venture, while Coeur Alaska Inc., a subsidiary of Coeur d'Alene Mines Corp. of Idaho, holds the other 50 percent interest.

Although the A-J has received more public attention than the Kensington, the Juneau Planning Commission, charged with approving or denying the mine permits for the two projects, could actually decide the fate of the Kensington's permit before the A-J's, says Murray Walsh, director of the city-borough Community Development Department.

"We're going to have to produce a fairly monstrous report of our own on the A-J after the final environmental impact statement comes out," Walsh says. "The Kensington could just zoom right through by comparison."

With the A-J's final enviornmental impact statement due out by November, municipal staff in Walsh's department will need at least two months to analyze the information and make final recommendations to the planning commission, Walsh says. That means the nine-member commission could make its final decision on the A-J permit in January or February.

If federal officials release the Kensington's final environmental impact statement this fall, the planning commission could take up the question of granting the large-mine permit for the project before December, Walsh says.

Alaska-Juneau Mine. The proposed project is humongous: 1,000 ounces of gold extracted from 22,500 tons of ore every day. "The is a phenomenally wide ore body," explains David Stone, public relations manager for Echo Bay in Juneau. "In certain places it's as wide as 800 feet."

The low-grade ore would have to be blasted free. A network of conveyors, crushers and chemicals would remove the gold, breaking it free from the rock that binds it.

"The only way to mine it is to take it all," says Anthony Williams, chief of underground operations at the A-J. "It's very rare to see any of the gold with the naked eye. We're talking about a needle in a haystack."

Over the mine's expected life of 13 years, more than 100 million tons of ore tailings, or waste rock, would be dumped behind a 345-foot high concrete dam built at the opening of Sheep Creek Valley...