Alaska’s Lower Slate Lake to become toxic waste dump
Published: August 16, 2009
Updated 6 months ago
The Army Corps of Engineers has approved a permit for Coeur Alaska Inc. to use Lower Slate Lake as a dumping site for millions of tons of toxic waste produced at the nearby Kensington gold mine.
“The project has been the subject of a national environmental fight over whether navigable lakes and rivers can be used as repositories for toxic mine tailings,” reported The Los Angeles Times. “The corps last week announced it was extending Coeur Alaska’s permit until 2014 and reiterated that the company could construct a tailings storage facility in Lower Slate Lake, below the mine.”
Sen. Mark Begich (D-AK), who has been a proponent of the plan to deposit the toxic mine tailings in the lake, said in a prepared statement that once the project is finished, it will provide an “improved fish habitat.”
Mine tailings are the useless substances left over after a valuable ore has been extracted from the ground. Tailings are usually suspended in waste water, but can also be made into a paste and stacked in layers on dry land.
In January, lawyers for Coeur Alaska argued before the Supreme Court that even while their dumping would kill all the lake’s aquatic life, after 10 years of mining the lake could restocked with live fish.
The Army Corps of Engineers first approved the permit in 2005. However, “[environmentalists] sued to halt the practice, saying dumping the mine tailings in the lake would kill fish,” the Associated Press reported. “A federal appeals court blocked the permit, saying the dumping is barred by stringent Environmental Protection Agency requirements under the Clean Water Act of 1972.”
It was eventually appealed to the Supreme Court, which upheld the project’s legality.
“The Supreme Court case centered around a to-be constructed facility for disposing of mine waste known as tailings, the ground up waste rock left over after metals are removed from ore,” reported Jeremy Hsieh with Juneau Empire. “Coeur plans to dump the tailings into Lower Slate Lake and treat the water flowing out to Berners Bay; the environmental groups sought a wetland disposal option that would preserve the lake.”
The Empire report adds: “‘We still believe the (wetland) plan is best for Berners Bay, but we’re glad the Corps of Engineers made its decision quickly,’ said Lindsey Ketchel, executive director of the Southeast Alaska Conservation Council, one of the environmental groups involved in the lawsuit.”
Coeur Alaska’s permit extends through July, 2014.
“This is good news for an ailing southeast Alaska economy, and after 20 years of study and debate, Alaskans can finally go to work,” said Sen. Begich. “The mine will create hundreds of good-paying jobs for Alaskans and help expand the mining industry in a responsible way.”
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If the Army Corp of Engineers says it’s OK you can bet your ass it will be a catastrophe. Those are the idiots that couldn’t build roads in the real world so they go to work for the government, and look what happens.
This is one of the reasons I will not wear gold or silver.
Even a wedding ring.
I would encourage others who are horrified by this kind of behavior to do the same.
The neoCons have totally abandoned the republicans and are now furiously infecting the democratic party.
This is one example.
They have only begun and “don’t shit where you eat”, the most basic of environmental understanding, has been lost already.
I fear for the ecocosmology movement, and unless things change it will become yet another bowel movement uber alles.
If true, the human species on this planet has a one-planet future.
The Corps of Polluters are in lockstep with the bastards in Juneau and are determined to make sure Alaska lives up to it’s reputation as THE most polluted state in the union. There are hundreds of toxic waste sites left over from mining and the military during WWII and beyond. Because of its geographic location the politicians still believe that Alaska is their own personal fiefdom to do with as they please. All are anti-environment and pro dig it up, cut it down, pump it dry and fuck the people of the state.
There is a massive toxic waste dump at the end of the Palmer Airport runway that the DEC (Department of Environmental Conservation) still refuses to address as it “belongs to the military.” The military says it belongs to the state. It is actually a site where they consolidated waste from several severely polluted sites across the state. It is right on the edge of the Matanuska River, one of the largest and most productive salmon fisheries in the state.
I was called down there by property owners just below the dump, where rusting barrels poke out of the berm built there. It is huge. The first thing I noticed was the smell. The owners took me out behind the house where there was a row of about 50 toilets, They showed me the inside of the bowls where the ceramic was completely eaten away by the groundwater used to flush them. I asked the owners how long a toilet lasts and they said “about six months.” They then took me back to the site, right on the edge of their property. We stopped at a small pond which looked O.K., until one of the owners took a long stick and poked it in the mud below the water. Instantly a gush of disgusting muck swelled to the surface that produced a choking, burning smell and then came the mud, rainbow colored and throwing off an oily sheen. This pond drains directly into the Matanuska River.
The berm has hundreds of rotting barrels and is devoid of vegetation, and is leaking oily substances that drain down to the area of the pond. We had to back off after a few minutes because of the smell. My throat was sore for days afterward.
We went back to the ranch house and went inside where we were greeted by a nasty odor. I asked them if they burned diesel for heat, they said no, that’s the sell of the chemicals leeching up under the house. They were going to burn it down and move out. I don’t blame them.
After calling the DEC and military and even the Mayor of Palmer, who denied it was even there and denied it was leeching into the Mat-Su River. He changed his mind after I ran a picture of it on the front page above the fold the next day. He denied responsibility also. When I left the state in 2001 it was still here, still leaking who knows what kind of waste into the river. I think twice now before eating salmon from the Mat-Su, however all this evil crap winds up in the Bearing Sea anyways, one of the richest fisheries in the world.
BegBitch and the Palmer Mayor should be tied to stakes in the water and forced to drink the shit coming out of the pond. That might just convince them, after their faces rot off, that there is a huge problem there.
It will never happen. As long as there are trees to cut, fishing rights to give over to the huge conglomerates who rape the waters of every living thing, mines to dig up and oil to pump, which is then sold overseas (what happened to national security?) they will be there to take their bribes and push forward the complete destruction of our state.
If you want to see Alaska, go see it now. It will not be there much longer except as a gigantic waste dump.
And when you order salmon at the restaurant, be sure to ask where it came from.
Robert S. Finnegan
Editor
Southeastasia Independent Media
seanews1@yahoo.com
Jakarta, Indonesia
Army Corp of Engineers….hmmmmm. They’re the “mathematicians” that had “constipation” and worked it out with a pencil, when they “built” the levies in New Orleans. By now, maybe they use “slide rules”….err, I mean “slide whistles.”
Look for new businesses popping up, like “Eye Glasses” for “mutants” with three eyes, or “monocles”, maybe “Volume Shoes” will run “specials” for mutants with one or three feet.
Bhopal, Alaska—–”The New YOU-CON Gold Rush”
I just hope “fishy-pants-palin” eats the fish from the lake and gives us a report.
The abbreviation for Alaska is AK, not AL. AL is the abbreviation for Alabama.
The Army Corps of Engineers were made infamous by Katrina, because these things they build won’t even hold water, much less toxic waste.
They must not know that the Alaskan waters are already growing more acidic which is a danger to the billion dollar fishing industry.
Or that new dangers have been discovered that mandate stopping of any water contamination.
Saving a few pennies, they think, will cost many dollars.
“Penny wise but pound foolish”
isn’t it amazing what we’ll do for baubles, but we don’t care to make sure we will continue to have fresh water and food?
When will people wake up and realize that companies care nothing of the future, they only care about what they can get “now”.. They are short sighted and destructive, and that’s great for profits.. horrible if you want to have a planet to live on tomorrow.
Humans really are a scourge and cancer.
Lake = Toxic dump. Good idea.
Humans are the scourge of this planet. It is beyond stunning that a lake will be allowed to be ruined, with all of the attendant destruction of the plants and animals that depend upon it, to have a place to store toxic crap from the production of flashy crap that dimwitted, shallow humans want. This kind of shit makes me embarrassed to be a member of the human race.
Dec. 21, 2012 can’t come too soon (if the interpretation of Mayan prophecies is true). We don’t deserve to remain here. As in The Matrix, we are like viruses, depleting everything and moving on for more destruction.
Why not clean the lake up and use Wasilla as the toxic dump site instead?
I guess Ralph Nader was right after all…..the democrats seem to be as bad as the republicans when it comes to sacrificing the environment for short-term profits for a small group of people.
I’m confident the public would be willing to provide the same income to Alaskans employed by the mine over its’ lifetime if they do another useful job (e.g. rebuilding local infrascture, restoring declining fisheries, etc.) instead for the same length of time) instead and save the lake as well as the integrity of the Clean Water Act.
Seems to me that the right-wing kooks on the Supreme Court may be in violation of the Clean Water Act themselves by their salivating over their ignominious anti-environmental victory.
buh bye.
CB
The issue is that the gold will still be there, and someone down the road will still want to get it. And, we actually kind of need gold for various technologies, so we kind of have to get that out.
But, we don’t have to do the “cheapest” thing and destroy the lake in the process, we have _other_, less (if not non) destructive ways to do it.
I have no problem with mining resources, so long as you don’t lay waste to everything around in the process. That’s our biggest problem, everyone wants it cheap and easy and fast, no one cares to do it right.