Borough planners recommend mining changes

PALMER — Wrangling over the proposed coal mine near Sutton has moved to the Mat-Su Borough Planning Commission.

The commission is due to meet with the borough assembly Oct. 26. An item up for discussion will be a pair of resolutions that came out of the commission this month. Those resolutions amount to recommendations made by the commission to the assembly.

First a bit of background. The borough has no permitting process for mining. That is a function of the state. The borough plays into the process in that it can offer opinions to the state when it is considering whether to approve a mining permit application.

The first planning commission resolution recommends the assembly create a guide for this process by laying out a set of principles for what the borough should look at when deciding what to tell the state’s Department of Natural Resources.

“Coal deposits in the Mat-Su Borough exist near residential housing,” the commission wrote in the introduction to that set of principles. “No other community in Alaska has an open pit coal mine within 5 miles of a residential neighborhood, and this presents unique challenges for land use planning.”

Among other things, the commission seeks to make sure coal miners pay attention to dust suppression — ceasing mining in high winds, paying for independent monitoring of dust and watering down the coal — and to the impact vibrations from blasting operations have on fish eggs in nearby streams, as well as keep noise levels down and shield light sources to prevent light pollution.

The planning commission also wants coal miners, in the state’s application process, to add two documents: a transportation plan and a health impact assessment, something new to the borough but which the commission says is “in wide use internationally.”

The second resolution is slightly more straightforward. The borough’s position has been that it really can’t force mining operations to do anything. The commission wants the borough to lobby to change that. The idea would be to ask state lawmakers to insert a clause into the statutes saying that municipalities can have their own application process in addition to the state’s.

According to the minutes from that meeting, most of the testimony when the commission took up the resolutions Oct. 4 was in favor of the resolutions.

Bonnie Zirkle, who lives near where Usibelli Coal Mine, is exploring the possibility of a coal mine on Wishbone Hill and said she was very worried about dust, in addition to a number of other concerns.

Jessica Winnestaffer, another area resident, worries about fish in the streams. A fisheries biologist, she noted that her work now is to repair damage done to Moose Creek when the area was mined in the 1920s.

The only person to testify against the resolutions was Kay Slack, who said the state regulations were good enough.

But Usibelli spokeswoman Lorali Carter said the company submitted oral and written comments on the resolutions and is working to see that the resolutions don’t go any further, noting that both resolutions amounted to recommendations to the assembly, which has to choose to act on them before they have any effect.

Carter’s written comments called into question the science the commission used to talk about the dangers of coal dust. She also argued that the state process is exhaustive and additional borough regulations are unneccessary.

“Usibelli Coal Mine Inc. is committed to working with the Mat-Su Borough and the community as we move forward with our feasibility study on the Wishbone Hill project and will continue to reasonably address concerns of policymakers and residents,” she wrote.

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.