State OKs coal permit

SUTTON — The state has approved Usibelli Coal Mine’s application to renew its permit to mine coal at Wishbone Hill over the objections of the project’s critics.

“While this renewal process has taken much longer than previous renewals, we understand that Governor Parnell and his team at (the state Department of Natural Resources) want to ensure that coal mining in Alaska is done responsibly, with strict adherence to the laws governing this development,” said Vice President of Business Development for Usibelli Coal Mine Rob Brown in a press release about the permit approval.

The Mat Valley Coalition also issued a press release.

“Hundreds of residents have come together to protect our community by opposing open-pit strip mining. The Mat Valley Coalition remains steadfast in our commitment to protecting the health and way of life of our community from this destructive project,” the press release states.

The coalition includes as reasons for opposing the project the proximity of the mining area’s entrance to a school — it’s right across the Glenn Highway from the Ya Ne Dah Ah school in Sutton; the mining operation’s quarter-mile proximity to neighborhoods; and an expected traffic increase in the area as mining ramps up.

According to the renewal notification the state put out, DNR has made a list of requirements that Usibelli must comply with. Among them:

• A series of monitoring wells to make sure that contaminants don’t enter groundwater and make their way into areas’ streams. A DNR review found that the potential impact to nearby Moose Creek was less than 2 percent.

• Limitations on blasting “to prevent the shockwaves and instantaneous pressure changes from explosives that can injure or kill fish.”

• Reclamation bonds — essentially an insurance policy that will pay to set things right if the project goes south — in the amount of $34,800 for work on the site in the run-up to development, and a $7,940,616 bond once work begins on the site.

• Requirements that Usibelli immediately halt work and call the state’s Historic Preservation Officer if it finds any historic sites and that it call the officer and Alaska State Troopers if it finds any human remains.

• Orders that Usibelli must work with the Mat-Su Borough “and the local community” to minimize noise impacts.

• And, a similar requirement to work with the borough to minimize impacts from lighting on the site.

The mining permit is just one of about 30 permits Usibelli has to get before it can mine coal at Wishbone Hill, Brown said in an interview. Opposition groups have been actively involved in many of those permit approvals and renewals.

Brown said that the mining permit is the biggest one Usibelli was after, stretching to 3,200 pages.

“It’s the one that really outlines how you’re going to do just about everything at your mine site,” he said.

It’s also one that had wound up causing friction between the state and federal governments when, in August 2012, the federal Office of Surface Mining asked the state to justify its moves to renew Usibelli’s permit in light of complaints that it had been allowed to lapse over the decades during which it has been in existence and was therefore invalid. The state defended its process. Usibelli said that the permits were not invalid. Since then, Brown said, the federal government has not replied.

“There has been no communication, I guess formal communication I should say, that I know of between DNR and OSM since August of 2012 regarding our mine permit,” Brown said. “It’s been two years since they’ve written back and we’ve been asking, too.”

The company has still not announced whether it has decided a mine at Wishbone Hill in the Buffalo Mine Road/Soapstone Road area — a part of the borough that was home to numerous mines in past decades — is economically feasible, though it announced previously a Japanese power company has agreed to buy all the coal it can mine in Sutton.

“Usibelli is pleased to have the mining permit renewed for Wishbone Hill, and our next steps will be to review market conditions and make necessary adjustments to our feasibility study before making any definitive decisions on the timing of future development,” Brown said in the press release.

Wishbone Hill coal is valuable on the world market, as the smoke that comes from burning it tends to contain lower levels of harmful pollutants than other coal, Brown said.

Usibelli currently mines coal in Healy and exports it out of Seward, supplying all the coal Alaska needs.

The company says its Wishbone Hill project would be much smaller than its Healy operation. Wishbone Hill would produce 500,000 tons per year. Usibelli has done test runs out of Port MacKenzie that show shipping from there is feasible. The mine would send 12 semi-tractor trailers on three roundtrips to Point Mac each night the mine is in operation.

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