The Alaska Contractor - Summer 2008

Coeur hopes to
begin production at
Kensington gold mine
in 2009
BY PATRICIA LILES
With completed underground mine workings and surface
processing facilities, the Kensington mine northeast
of Juneau should be producing about 150,000
ounces of gold annually, employing about 200 people in the
year-round operation.
But instead, the recently constructed underground hardrock
mine and surface processing facilities sit idle, even after
the mine’s developer, Idaho-based Coeur d’Alene Mines
has spent some $270 million to build the new operation.
Problem is – the mine’s planned operation for disposal of
tailings, which is the rock left over after gold is extracted, has
to be changed to a process that will not only meet regulatory
approval, but will pass muster with environmental groups
that protested the project’s waste storage plan.
Managers at Coeur Alaska had planned to store the leftover
rock in the Lower Slate Lake, a 23-acre alpine lake. That
process was included in Kensington’s plan of operation that
concluded in 2005 with the approval of federal and state regulatory
permits and the start of construction in mid-2005.
Environmental groups argued against the tailing disposal
plan and appealed the permits issued by regulatory agencies,
a conflict that ultimately resulted in the wetlands permit for
the tailings disposal plan to be suspended by federal regulators.
The previously approved plan was argued thorough a
variety of court proceedings, concluding with a March 2007
ruling by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals that vacated the
permits associated with the tailing facility.
Meanwhile, construction crews working for Coeur continued
on the underground mine workings and the surface
processing plant and other related facilities. That work was
concluded in August 2007, according to Coeur.
In January 2008, Coeur submitted a modified plan of operation
to the U.S. Forest Service, the lead regulatory agency