Bill Jeffress, Chuck Hawley Lifetime Achievement Award EDITOR''S NOTE: Because the 2020 and 2021 AMA conventions were canceled because of the COVID-19 pandemic, at the 2022 Alaska Miners Association annual convention, a larger number of AMA members and member companies were honored for their contributions to Alaska mining. We felt their stories and nominations were so compelling that we are repeating them here. Enjoy and help us honor these best among us!
By James Fueg and Dan Graham After graduating with a degree in forestry from the University of Nevada, Reno, Bill started out his career working in the logging industry and eventually running his own logging outfit, only to watch that industry decimated by over regulation and environmental activism. Fortunately for us, Bill transitioned to environmental and permitting roles in Nevada’s booming gold industry before moving to Fairbanks with his family in the early 1990s so that he could work with the team that built and eventually operated the Fort Knox gold mine. Bill took a leadership role in the permitting of that project and helped to lay much of the groundwork for Alaska’s Large Mine Permitting system as it exists today. Under Bill’s leadership the Fort Knox mine became a role model for environmental stewardship through construction and into operations. Bill left Fort Knox to head
Photo by Lee Leschper
Bill Jeffress speaks at the 2022 awards program.
mining project, and probably also prospect of any significance in Alaska. Bill served on the Alaska Minerals Commission, participated in the Council of Alaska Producers, and remains a long-time active member of AMA, serving as President in addition to many other roles. However, Bill’s most important contribution to AMA has always his willingness to engage in any and all issues of concern to Alaska mining, regardless of whether it is an issue affecting placer miners on the 40 Mile River or large-scale mines in Southeast Alaska. Bill mentored many of the younger people now active in the Alaska mining industry and continues to be an important resource for all of us in the industry. He is also one of the nicest and most caring individuals we have had the privilege of working with. People can define a career by
what they do by building something themselves, or by being a mentor and role model for building up others. Bill Jeffress was heavy on the latter while also accomplishing the former. And Bill did this in a way that was always welcoming and never demeaning. If he had to explain a complicated issue four times before someone understood it, he was just as calm and polite the 4th time as the first time. In addition to the successful career he accomplished, Bill was very humble and balanced as a person. Very easy to just hang out with. He made sure to take the time each year to enjoy time hunting — and getting his boat off sandbars — with friends or spend January in Kona with family. Thank you, Bill, for making Alaska home for all those years and for giving us all you had to give and leaving the legacy you did.
up ADNR’s Office of Project Management and Permitting
where he worked to improve the effectiveness of the State’s mine permitting process. After leaving the State, Bill joined the team working on the Donlin Gold feasibility study and it was Bill’s deep knowledge of mining in Alaska and its unique environmental challenges that defined much of the proposal that was eventually successfully permitted. Bill opened the Alaska office for the global engineering consulting company SRK and in that role proceeded to work on just about every mine,
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The Alaska Miner
Winter 2023
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