State will sue over pending Interior Department decision to kill minerals access road in northwest Alaska

The Alaska state development agency leading the work on a 211-mile minerals access road in northwest Alaska said it will file a lawsuit over a pending decision by the U.S. Department of the Interior that would block federal permits for the project.

The action would violate a provision in the 1980 Alaska National Interest Lands and Conservation Act, or ANILCA, that guarantees a corridor across federal land to reach state-owned lands, according to Josie Wilson, spokesperson for the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority, the state development finance corporation, which is planning the road. ANILCA is a federal law governing management of federal lands in Alaska.

According to sources in the Interior Department cited in press reports, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, an agency of the Interior Department, plans to release a federal Environmental Impact Statement on the road and select a “no action” recommendation on permits, which could effectively kill the project.

U.S. conservation groups and some Alaska Native groups oppose the road because it will penetrate wild areas, but Native villages in the area and regional governments are supporting it, citing the economic benefits of new mines.

PJ Simon, First Chief of Allakaket, an Athabascan village near the route of the proposed road, said: “Allakaket wants a future of jobs and economic opportunities for our people, a legacy and future for our kids. We deserve the same opportunities as the billion dollar donors and conservation groups trying to lock us into a state of poverty with the highest food and energy prices in the nation.”

Road access to Allakaket would ease those problems.

Wilson, of AIDEA, said the pending “no action” recommendation is unusual in federal Environmental Impact Statements, or EIS, documents. Most EIS recommendations by an agency are for one of several alternatives spelled out in an EIS, but there is always a no action alternative which is rarely used, she said.

Ambler Metals LLC, a joint-venture of Australia-owned South32 Metals and Trilogy Metals, of Vancouver, B.C. are exploring high-grade copper deposits that include strategic metals in a region east of Kotzebue, in northwest Alaska.

The access road planned by the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority, the state development finance corporation, would connect the area being explored to the state-owned Dalton Highway that connects oil fields on Alaska’s North Slope with the Interior Alaska highway system.

Wilson said the section of ANILCA is explicit in saying that the Secretary of the Interior shall grant an access corridor from the Ambler Mining District, AIDEA said is a statement.

“There are nearly 600,000 acres of state lands with active mining claims that the Ambler access road would serve. Congress did not intend for a federal agency to arbitrarily deprive the state of the value of those jobs and minerals,” the authority’s statement said.

Here is the language from ANILCA: “Congress finds that there is a need for access for surface transportation purposes across the Western (Kobuk River) unit of the Gates of the Arctic National Preserve to the Alaska Pipeline Haul Road) and the Secretary shall permit such access in accordance with the provisions of this subsection.” The “haul road” referred to is the Dalton Highway.

Interior is most concerned about a section of the road that crosses the Gates of the Arctic National Park. Most of the road is on state of Alaska-owned lands but the federal government asserts that its authority to issue permits cover the entire 211 miles, including state lands.

There was an alternative longer road route considered by the BLM of a road route that is entirely on state lands that does not cross the national park, but the agency is not considering this either, according to reports.

Copper discoveries in the region, known as the Ambler Mining District, have a long history. Prospectors made the original discoveries in the early 1960s but most of the exploration over several decades was done my Kennecott, a major mining company.

The initial find was at Bornite, a large but lower-grade deposit. Kennecott made a subsequent high-grade deposit at Arctic, several miles to the east, which became the company’s major focus. Kennecott subsequently sold the properties to Trilogy Metals, which brought in South 32 as a partner in Ambler Metals, a jointly-owned subsidiary.

Several other metal discoveries, mostly copper, have been made in the area that would be opened up by the road.

While the region is considered highly prospective its remote location and inaccessabillity to surface transportation has so far blocked development even for high-grade deposits like Arctic.