North of 60 Mining News - The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North

Northern Dynasty is taking an innovative approach to the permitting process, the company's environmental project manager for Pebble, Ella Ede, told the Alaska Association of Environmental Professionals March 18. Unlike other mining companies, Northern Dynasty took the unusual step of submitting its 2004 environmental study plan to all the relevant agencies so that they could comment before the permit application process even started.

Pre-application meetings are a common practice in Alaska's oil and gas industry and have helped to expedite the permitting process for exploration and development projects, Bill Van Dyke, petroleum manager for the state Division of Oil and Gas, told Mining News.

Northern Dynasty also hoped to solicit comments from the public, and the 132-page plan is online at the Alaska Department of Natural Resources' website, although the company was disappointed with the public's lack of response.

"Our goal is to get it right, to collect the right data and make sure we haven't missed anything," Ede said. "We don't want to find out two years from now that we should have been collecting something that we didn't. We did get review comments from most of the state and federal agencies." Northern Dynasty still welcomes comments from the public about the plan and is stepping up its community outreach program in 2005. The company recently hired an Alaska Native as a community relations consultant, and Ede herself was raised in rural Alaska.

More than 100 'Iliamnans' hired

Last summer Northern Dynasty hired more than 100 people from the Iliamna area to work on the Pebble project, including Native observers who accompanied the field teams to air their questions and concerns. Many of the observers became so interested in the project that they started working as technicians, Ede said. To keep in touch with local people, Northern Dynasty holds community meetings, representatives make informal visits to villages - Ede could name all 14 of the villages in the region off the top of her head - and publishes newsletters about Pebble. A website at http://www.ndmpebblemine.com is under construction.

"We have an open door policy. We'll engage and talk to any stakeholder, especially in the community," Northern Dynasty's chief operating officer, Bruce Jenkins, added.

The company accesses the site using six or seven helicopters, and Iliamna's "fantastic" airport infrastructure, Ede said: "We made a commitment to the communities that we would only access the area by helicopter, not using ATVs."

2,500 samples in 2005

More than 30 different consulting firms and laboratories are providing expertise on the environmental side of the project, more than 80 percent of them Alaska-based. Northern Dynasty has surveyed 100,000 acres of wetlands so far. In 2004 the company took approximately 1,950 primary samples of water, soils, sediments, fish tissue, vegetation and so on, spending $8 million on its environmental studies for the year.

In 2005 Ede expects to take 2,500 samples and spend $13 million, which will include work on providing power for the project.

Northern Dynasty made an agreement with Homer Electric Association in January to work on supplying power to the proposed mine.

"You name an energy source and we've investigated it. Including nuclear," Jenkins said. "This is a one-and-a-half billion-dollar project that requires power, secure power on a sustained basis 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. You do not jeopardize a one-and-a-half billion-dollar project with innovative, experimental alternative power generation… You rely on wind - you can't guarantee power… The current focus is on how we make use of the capacity that's already on the grid."

Pebble's mine life is currently estimated to be 30-40 years. The two-year construction of the mine will provide around 2,000 jobs and the mine itself will require 1,000 employees throughout its life.