New environmental assessment for Ambler mining road could set stage for its rejection

The U.S. Department of the Interior has issued a new environmental assessment of a planned minerals access road in northwest Alaska. This could complicate efforts by companies to develop discoveries of copper, cobalt and other metals made in the region, and that are important to the nation’s clean energy transition.

Firms exploring the area said Wednesday that the new assessment gives the Interior Department more ammunition to decide against the road, which would chill exploration.

The new draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement analyzes three possible routes for the road to the Amber Mining District and finds more difficult problems with permafrost and wildlife impacts than were documented in an earlier assessment done under the Trump administration.

Conservation groups sued to halt the project and, under the Biden administration, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, an Interior agency, agreed to do a new assessment of impacts.

Ramzi Fawaz, CEO of Ambler Metals, a minerals joint-venture exploring the discoveries, said the Interior Department has expanded the scope of the review well beyond what the courts had ordered in the lawsuit.

Ambler Metals has meanwhile paused a multi-year exploration program in the region until issues on the access road are resolved.

The BLM has committed to having a final Environmental Impact Statement and Record of Decision by next spring, which could allow time for a 2024 summer exploration season to be mobilized.

However, BLM has previously slipped on timetables – the latest assessment is six months late – so companies lack confidence the new deadline will be met.

If built, the road would be a 211-mile industrial link constructed west from the Dalton Highway, an existing north-south state highway that links Interior Alaska highways with North Slope oil fields. The state of Alaska is leading development of the road through the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority, a state development corporation.

In the 1980s AIDEA similarly built a road, and a port, for the producing Red Dog lead-zinc mine, also in northwest Alaska. If the road, and mines, are built companies would pay tolls to AIDEA for use of the road.

Three road routes are analyzed in the SEIS including AIDEA’s preferred Alternative A (shortest of the three at 211 miles) which crosses a small portion of the Gates of the Arctic National Park. BLM is required to grant the corridor through the park, if that route is chosen, under the 1980 Alaska National Interest Lands and Conservation Act, or ANILCA.

However, the agency has the option of endorsing a longer Alternative C, which crosses more permafrost and environmentally sensitive areas but does not cut through the national park. Alternative B is longer than A by a few miles but still crosses the park.

The new SEIS has more information on problems such as in permafrost areas and also argues that more wildlife are affected than was considered in the first review.

Interestingly, villages near the road route that originally joined conservation groups in lawsuits later withdrew them, citing economic benefits of better access. Fred Sun, tribal president for the Native Village of Shungnak, a small community in the region, said he now supports the road because it would bring high-paying jobs in mining and reduce living costs.

“The road has the potential to bring our communities access to more affordable goods, fuel, and housing. And our people will benefit from high-paying jobs right here in our region, which will allow families to remain in our communities and afford the supplies needed to continue our subsistence way of life,” Sun said in a statement.

However, other tribal groups are still in opposition. The Tanana Chiefs Conference, a politically influential regional tribal association of Interior tribes, and which opposed the road project in court, issued a statement saying that the analysis “is still inadequate, particularly in its analysis of subsistence and environmental justice impacts.”

Environmental groups that are in the lawsuits are also still in opposition. “We maintain that an industrial road in the Brooks Range would be a disaster on multiple levels,” said Katie McClellan, mining impacts and energy manager for the Northern Alaska Environmental Center.

If BLM selects the longer, more costly Alternative C as its preferred alternative, possibly to avoid the national park, it could be a deal-killer for the road, the companies say.

That’s because it would be longer and with steeper terrain and more permafrost that will soften with climate change. Those would drive up costs.

The updated analysis also identifies 66 communities whose subsistence activities could be potentially affected, and said that any road alternative may significantly restrict subsistence uses in nearly half of these communities.

This expands the number of communities considered from 27 in the 2020 analysis. The draft supplemental EIS also contains updated information on potential impacts of the proposed road to caribou and fish populations.

“The latest draft includes additional data and analysis informed by robust Tribal consultation and cooperation, on-the-ground perspectives, and public input,” BLM Alaska State Director Steve Cohn said. However, critics say the new analysis fails to provide documentation on the wildlife assertions.

Mining activity and future potential public use of the road are identified and analyzed as “reasonably foreseeable,” a term that is defined in the National Environmental Policy Act and its implementing regulations and guidance.

Alaska U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski doesn’t agree with BLM’s assessment. “This road is guaranteed under federal law (the 1980 ANILCA) and will facilitate access to crucial supplies of copper, cobalt, gallium, germanium, and other minerals that our nation currently imports from abroad,” Murkowski said.

“This is particularly important as China cuts off exports of gallium and germanium, cobalt is produced through modern-day slavery in the DRC (Democratic Republic of Congo), and some of our best analysts are forecasting shortages of copper within a decade,” the senator said.

“Given the clear terms of the law and the strategic importance of this project, you would expect the Biden administration to prioritize its approval with reasonable mitigation measures for subsistence. You would also expect them to recognize that Alaska has demonstrated that subsistence rights can safely co-exist with road infrastructure. My team and I will review this document closely, but based on what Interior released today, it does not appear they have undertaken the serious, credible analysis that we expected and deserved.”