Alaska's largest mine and the world's largest producer of zinc counters its national top ranking by the Environmental Protection Agency for toxic releases, saying that the agency's decision to count naturally occurring metals contained in unmilled rock is misleading.

According to the latest Toxic Release Inventory report issued by EPA, Red Dog received the dubious honor of topping the nationwide list, due to the amount of metals considered toxic which naturally occur in rock at the remote mine site.

For the 2002 report to EPA, Red Dog's count of "toxic" materials was 481 million pounds of zinc, lead and other trace minerals, according to the mine's environmental superintendent Jim Kulas. In an interview with Mining News on June 28, he said that 99.94 percent of that total toxic release calculation covers metals contained in the mine's tailings and waste rock.

"A change in the reporting method made Red Dog number one on the list," he said. "We're not reporting any more relative to the company's production."

Located in the remote northwestern region of Alaska, the mine operated by Teck Cominco Ltd. produced 579,300 tonnes of zinc and 124,300 tonnes of lead concentrate in 2003. Red Dog's work force of about 400 moved more than 8 million tons of rock to mill more than 3 million tonnes of ore in order to extract those valuable metals, worth more than $400 million.

Remaining mineralization which is of a low grade and not economically recoverable is classified as waste rock, which must be moved to access the higher grades of ore. In addition, some trace amounts of metals remain in Red Dog tailings, which are stored at the mine site under strict monitoring from environmental agencies.

Even though that mineralization remains locked up in its host rock, the metals must be counted in Red Dog's annual report to EPA for its Toxic Release Inventory. Red Dog's volume of lead and zinc mineralization puts the mine at the top of the nation's Toxic Release Inventory.

"Federal regulations do not distinguish between natural materials locked away in rock which is safely stored on the plant site from hazardous releases of man-made chemicals from an industrial plant which is released into the environment," Rob Scott, general manager at Red Dog, said in a June 23 press release. "As a result, the TRI numbers paint an inaccurate and misleading picture of what actually happens at one of the most regulated mines in the world."

Actual releases lower

In a four-page document on its website detailing the company's TRI reporting, Teck Cominco detailed the amount of materials "actually released" to the environment, whether it be to water, the air or to the ground.

Metals that were released in water totaled 800 pounds per year, Kulas said, an amount that is controlled, monitored and "heavily regulated." It's roughly 60 to 70 parts per billion of zinc, far cleaner than drinking water standards of 5,000 parts per billion.

Area streams feeding into the Red Dog deposit contain naturally occurring, significantly elevated levels of zinc and lead, thanks to Mother Nature, Kulas added. In fact, that visible mineralization, noticed by pilots flying over the remote area, first led geologists to prospect the area in the 1950s.

Actual air releases reported in 2002 included 42,400 pounds, and 153,600 pounds were released to the ground, the company said on its website. The total of "actual releases" of toxic materials was 196,716 pounds.

Of that total, the largest category was methanol, of which 153,556 pounds were released. Methanol is used in winter drilling, the company said.

Zinc made up the next highest category of releases, with 32,531 pounds "actually released," and with 284 million pounds reported. Teck Cominco said the mine "actually released" 8,289 pounds of lead, but had to report 188 million pounds to EPA.

Other releases also reported to EPA included 1,176 pounds of polyaromatics and 7.5 grams of dioxin, as well as 1,164 pounds of trace elements that included cadmium, chromium, copper, cobalt, manganese and nickel.

Reporting method changed

Red Dog's sheer volume of lead and zinc mineralization helps to put the mine at the top of the nation's Toxic Release Inventory. Nationwide, 4.79 billion pounds of toxic materials were reported released to EPA in 2002. Of that, 26 percent came from the metals mining industry and 23 percent from electric utilities, according to EPA's website.

A recent change in the method of counting those rock-hosted minerals in the mining industry also helped boost Red Dog to the top of the toxic release list, Kulas said. Called the Barrick decision, mines were allowed to exclude waste rock from their toxic inventory report if mineralization contained less than 1 percent of metals.

But that cutoff for waste rock doesn't fit Red Dog, which does not mill any rock with less than 1.7 percent mineralization, Kulas said. "That's an indication of doing business in Alaska, where it costs more to operate," he said. "Our cutoff is significantly higher."

Mining operations were first included in the EPA toxic report in 1998, 12 years after the first TRI report was authorized under the Emergency Response and Community Right to Know Act. Originally the intent was to provide the public with information about what toxins manufacturers and chemical plants were releasing into the environment.

In 1998, EPA expanded the list of facilities required to report to include six other industries, including mining. In its first year of inclusion on the TRI, the mining industry reported more than 3 billion pounds of "releases." In 2002, that dropped to less than 1 billion pounds, thanks to the Barrick court case.

"The addition of mining significantly changed the annual inventory with mining immediately rising to the top of the report due to the very nature of the mining process," said Steve Borell, executive director of the Alaska Miners Association, in a press release. "The TRI report does not distinguish between toxic releases to the environment and the huge quantities of naturally occurring substances that are disturbed as part of the mining process but are not released into the environment."

Misleading view of mine

Red Dog's report creates a distorted picture of the actual potential for human health or environmental risks, the company said in its press release. Large volumes of waste rock or tailings are moved around but the contained metals are not released, and do not pose any risk to the public.

Furthermore, the mine's nearest settlement, the village of Noatak, is 45 miles away. The coastal village of Kivalina is about 17 miles from the port site on the Chukchi Sea for concentrate loading, and that is about 55 miles from the mine and mill facilities.

"We are concerned that the TRI report is going to be misinterpreted and misrepresented. In fact, at Red Dog we work very hard to ensure that our mining practices are designed to minimize the impacts to the environment," said Helvi Sandvik, president of the NANA Development Corp.

Red Dog is on land owned by NANA, the Native regional corporation in the northwestern part of Alaska. Teck Cominco leases land from NANA and operates the mine and mill, and markets the mineral concentrates. The state-owned Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority owns the mine's transportation system, which consists of a road system, the port and storage facilities.