Water rights, regulation of mining in spotlight Legislative Preview
Important priority: Ensure regulatory agencies staffed
adequate staffing in the agencies to achieve Gover- nor Dunleavy’s goals of increasing economic growth partly through mining. One particularly important function of the DNR is the dam safety review that is done in the Division of Min- ing, Land and Water. The division has two staff people assigned to this with the program lead, Charlie Cobb, P.E., a 20-year veteran in the field. If any part of a mine proposal attracts public scrutiny, it is the impoundment dams that hold mine tailings and water. These must have sound design and engineering to prevent seepage or even a failure, and it’s the responsibility of the DNR to make sure the design and engineering are up to par. All state agencies will be under intense budget scrutiny this year but it is at least fortunate that the parts of DNR and DEC important to mining are less dependent on state general fund revenue. They are more self-supporting through program receipts like fees, and in the case of DNR, income from sales of materials like gravel. DNR’s Division of Mining, Land and Water , for example, generated nearly $27.3 mil- lion in revenues last year, much of it through mining claim rentals, royalties and sales of gravel. Although Alaska’s constitution bans dedicated rev- enues the income from certain activities, like mining rentals and material sales, can still be “designated” by statute to support certain functions, including regulatory work. Although this is no guarantee (the Legislature has the final say in appropriations), law- makers generally respect the revenue designations. Meanwhile, it’s still early to know what mining-re- lated bills will have priority in the Resources commit- tees of the state House and Senate. One proposal on the table is a bill by Sen. Chris Birch, new chair of the Senate Resources, that would curtail the ability of the courts to in effect rewrite a ballot proposition created through a citizen initiative. Just this happened in the case of Ballot Measure 1, the so-called salmon initia- tive, that appeared in altered form on the November, 2018 general election ballot. The ballot measure had been challenged by the state administration as an unconstitutional appropri- ation of state resources and the Supreme Court struck
BY TIM BRADNER
For The Alaska Miner Alaska’s reputation as a mining-friendly state took a step up when Mike Dunleavy was elected governor and took office in early December, and in mid-Janu- ary when a new, fairly business-friendly Legislature took office in Juneau, the state capital. Dunleavy makes no bones about this support for mining. He grew up in Pennsylvania coal country and, in Alaska, three of his daughters work at the Red Dog Mine near Kotzebue, a region where the new governor worked in education. The timing is fortunate. Alaska may now be on the cusp of a burst of new minerals development with the big Donlin Gold project having received its feder- al permits and Pebble, another potential large mine, moving through the federal regulatory process. The state’s pro-mining stance is important be- cause both projects, which could employ thousands of people in high-paying jobs, also need state regulatory approvals. Alaska has stringent mine approval pro- cedures, particularly for its mine dam safety permit, and state agency staffs need support from the gover- nor and Legislature. An important priority for the industry is ensuring state regulatory agencies are adequately staffed to work on permits and authorizations, not only in an efficient manner but also to be thorough so the au- thorization is not found to be defective in litigation by a third party group. Although the state overall is facing continuing budget deficits the agencies important to mining, like the Departments of Natural Resources, Fish & Game, and Environmental Conservation, are already lean after several years of budget cuts. This should be apparent, but it is still important that legislators and the governor be reminded of the importance of
The Alaska Miner
January 2019
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