Usibelli gets earful from residents

CHICKALOON — Usibelli Coal Mine officials aren’t buying claims that developing a nearby strip mine would decrease property values and coal dust would harm residents.

That message was delivered Wednesday, when mine staff met with Sutton and Chickaloon residents at a Chickaloon Council meeting.

Usibelli spokesperson Lorali Carter and Wishbone Hill Project Manager Rob Brown also told the approximately 35 people crammed into the tiny council cabin at Mile 76 of the Glenn Highway that they’re hoping to draw on local skills and talent to work at the mine. The Alaska-owned company based in Healy is a high-paying employer with a solid reputation for taking care of its workforce, they said.

“What’s really neat is that 37 percent of Usibelli’s 130 full-time employees are second-, third- or fourth-generation working for the company,” said Carter, who grew up in the Valley and previously worked for Matanuska Electric Association before jumping over to UCM about a year ago. “That demonstrates that Usibelli Coal Mine is a good company to be associated with. I know I’m looking forward to having longevity with the company.”

During her PowerPoint presentation, Carter stressed how much everyone depends on coal and its associated minerals for everyday products such as cell phones and even wind turbines.

“There’s a trickle-down effect from mining that is important in so many ways in our daily lives,” Carter said, adding that our own bodies are made up of the same minerals found within the earth.

Wishbone Hill coal is particularly attractive to the company and its main buyer, JPower of Japan, because it’s the only bituminous variety around that can be accessed fairly easily from a major road system. Bituminous coal is valued by JPower because it’s a “cleaner-burning” product, Carter said.

Sutton and Chickaloon residents have been fighting UCM’s plans to develop a portion of the company’s 8,000-acre spread along Moose Creek because they fear pollution of local water wells, coal dust pollution, increased truck traffic, damage to homes from blasting, unsightly coal pits, a disturbance to fish and wildlife and a decrease in property values.

Unlike the Healy mine where the closest home is five miles away, there are more than 100 Sutton-area homes within a mile of the Wishbone Hill site and several homes sit right against the mine property line.

Concerned residents are now claiming that Matanuska Valley Credit Union has indicated it won’t provide home loans for properties that lie a certain distance from the mine.

Carter countered that claim by telling those gathered that she talked to the credit union’s president, Al Strawn, earlier in the week and that he told her he only knew of one home loan that was turned down for reasons not related to the mine and that there is no plan to deny loans to buyers in the Buffalo/Soapstone area.

The Athabascan Tribe in Chickaloon recently filed a document presenting its concerns about the mine to the United Nations Independent Expert on water and sanitation.

“The Wishbone Hill issue is a test case in Alaska to see how the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples might be used to intervene in development projects,” tribe leaders say in the document.

Carter said Usibelli has followed every regulation and every law in Alaska and nationwide during its permitting and exploration process at Wishbone Hill, and that the company also has agreed to certain restrictions placed by the Mat-Su Borough, such as covering truck loads, washing trucks and using dust-suppression measures.

She also pointed out that Usibelli will go above and beyond what other mining companies might do by reclaiming each strip of land as it is mined to prevent an unsightly pit near the Glenn Highway communities north of Palmer.

When asked about a lawsuit in Seward that claims children’s health was affected by coal dust from the loading facility at the dock there, Brown told the crowd he doesn’t believe those claims have any validity.

“The DEC has been on site six or seven times in the last year and not a single time have they written us up for any violations,” Brown said. “We have our employees checked every year and their lungs are clear. I don’t believe children are getting sick.”

Carter and Brown welcome further questions at their Palmer office in their attempt to be good corporate neighbors. Carter can be reached at 982-6744.

Contact K.T. McKee at kate.mckee@frontiersman.com or 352-2252.