Southeast moves toward mining boom.

• Author: Swagel, Will
• Position: 1996 Alaska Miners Convention

It's a struggle, particularly for a valuable property in Juneau, but operators are slowly overcoming environmental roadblocks in anticipation of a rich harvest of precious metals.

Thirty-three miles up the Haines Highway from the town of Haines, John Schnabel runs his 235 Cat excavator and a couple of loaders near the Porcupine River, just as he has for the last 22 years. Schnabel, 76, believes he is the last placer miner working in all of Southeast. He ascribes his long success to his talent for pulling out of the ground gold left behind by less efficient mining techniques used at the turn of the century.

"If it wasn't for their generosity, we wouldn't be working," he chuckles. Still, Schnabel says, he has seen a lot of miners go out of business. But he believes that the tide is turning and that some good properties presently being explored in the Haines area will eventually come into production.

"Big Nugget Mine," as Schnabel calls his enterprise, pays the bills most years and turns a profit some.

Meanwhile, at the other end of southeastern Alaska, Abacus Minerals Corp. is similarly optimistic about a big hard-rock strike on southern Prince of Wales Island. The Niblack project is expected to be as productive a polymetal mine as Kennecott's Greens Creek on Admiralty Island in the 20-million-ton range.

"We look like we've got our teeth into something that's pretty exciting," says Abacus president Steve Todoruk, from his office in Vancouver, B.C.

Abacus and two partners - Teck Corporation, one of the bigger Canadian mining companies, and Salman Partners Inc. - pumped $4 million into the Prince of Wales Island project this year, double last year's spending. A lot of that money has been spent in nearby Ketchikan, making a welcome contribution to that town's embattled, timber-based economy.

A-J Mine

Echo Bay Alaska Inc., the owner (with the City and Borough of Juneau) of the historic Alaska-Juneau gold mine near downtown Juneau, has been occupying the point man's spot in the eyes of the public and the press for continuing efforts to exploit Juneau's world-class gold reserves.

A rare urban mine, Echo Bay has drawn the criticism of not only large environmental organizations, but even many of the 100 or so people who live in the historic neighborhood of Thane, where the mine is located, a few miles north of Juneau.

Echo Bay's agreement not to use cyanide in processing ore and not to dump mine tailings near a popular hiking area has done a lot to...