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

When Steve Borell announced that he was retiring as the executive director of the Alaska Miners Association - a post he held for 22 years - the group's board of directors was charged with the daunting task of filling the void left by the association's highly regarded and beloved leader. Unbeknownst to the board members, or Borell himself, the outgoing executive director had been grooming his replacement, Deantha Crockett, for nearly a decade.

The new AMA executive director is the daughter of Marilyn Crockett - a woman highly regarded for her 41 years of service at the Alaska Oil and Gas Association. In a twist of fate typically reserved for a screenplay, the matriarch retired as AOGA executive director on Dec. 31, the same day Borell was clearing out his office at AMA. At the time, though, neither retiring resource leader was aware that the younger Crockett would assume the top position of the miners association.

Crockett did not immediately succeed Borell. Instead, Fred Parady, a former Wyoming legislator with deep mining roots, was appointed as AMA executive director. But, after three months, he relinquished the post, citing personal reasons.

Once again tasked with finding a person that could lead AMA into the future, the board found Crockett, a lifelong Alaskan with a background and education that is custom-fit to the task of AMA executive director.

"For the last seven years Ms. Crockett has worked at the Resource Development Council where she was the lead on mining and tourism issues. In that capacity she worked closely with AMA on issues of importance to the mining industry and is well known to many AMA members," said the AMA board of directors. "We are confident that, in addition to her experience with Alaskan resource issues, Deantha will bring new energy and ideas to the role and the executive board looks forward to working with her as we plan for the challenges of the coming years at AMA."

Crockett officially moved into the AMA top office on June 1.

A firsthand insight into the issues surrounding resource development in Alaska was not the only aspect of Crockett's upbringing that readied her for the task that lies ahead - it also provided her an early opportunity to get to know many of Alaska's resource leaders.

"It prepared me to find the very best source for the answer to the question I had," she explained to Mining News during a June 12 interview.

So, when Crockett needed answers to mining-related questions as she was earning a major in political science at the University of Alaska Anchorage she would go directly to the leaders of the industry, and many times this would be her predecessor, Borell.

Borell continues to mentor his successor as she settles into the office he occupied for more than two decades.

"He has been helping me out with a lot of the historical knowledge," explained Crockett.

In addition to bringing her up to date on the multiple issues of which the mining advocacy group is involved, Borell has offered his aviation expertise to take the new AMA executive director on a tour of some 20 placer mines across Alaska.

"He knows the operations, he knows the people - there could not be a better guide for that kind of trip," Crockett said. "We are going to go to those operations and meet those people that have been involved with AMA for years and years."

Pebble tops docket

Crockett assumes the helm of AMA at a time when Alaska's mining industry is shadowed by a faction determined to stop the development of the Pebble project situated in the Bristol Bay region of Southwest Alaska.

Whether the stratagems employed by the anti-Pebble contingent succeed in preventing a mine being built at the enormous copper-gold-molybdenum deposit, the AMA executive director said the effort is having a cooling effect on investment in Alaska.

"We are a young state; it is going to take a long time to get our infrastructure in place. It is an expensive place to operate, our geography and climate makes it expensive. These tactics taken by people who are anti-Pebble are something we shouldn't have to deal with," Crockett told Mining News.

Dealing with the effort to stop Pebble, though, fell high on the incoming executive director's docket.

Anti-Pebble groups have petitioned the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to exercise its presumed authority under Section 404(c) of the Clean Water Act to pre-emptively deny permits for the Pebble project.

In May, the EPA released its draft Bristol Bay Watershed Assessment, a report outlining a yearlong accumulation of information on the watershed and the impacts Pebble and other large-scale mining may pose to the world-class salmon fishery found there.

Four days into her tenure as AMA executive director, Crockett expressed the mining association's concerns about the assessment and potential Section 404(c) determination during a public hearing EPA held on the Bristol Bay Watershed Assessment in Anchorage.

"Spending less than a year to assess an area of 20,000 square miles is irresponsible. The fact that the assessment was carried out without firsthand, on-ground data gathering is also irresponsible. We believe EPA must go back and provide adequate time for the assessment to be comprehensive and based on sound science - or, even better, drop the assessment altogether," the AMA executive director chided EPA during her June 4 testimony. "A pre-emptive decision on a project, whether it is approval or denial, is unacceptable to the Alaska Miners Association," she added.

Crockett said the AMA is preparing in-depth written testimony, which will be submitted to EPA before the July 23 public comment deadline.

AMA's new leader is no stranger to standing up to the anti-Pebble contingent. During her time at RDC, Crockett was instrumental in the successful effort to overcome Ballot Measure 4, a broadly written initiative aimed at Pebble but which would have likely affected all metal mining in the state. "We fought so hard on Ballot Measure 4," Crockett reflected. "You had an organization that was against one project and knew that they could not make legislation that could only apply to a single project and so they threw out this horrible, unattainable standard to be applied to the mining industry statewide."

At the polling booth Alaska voters struck down the anti-Pebble initiative by nearly a 3-2 margin.

MSHA strikes fear

Crockett said the Mining Safety and Health Administration is another federal agency that is wreaking havoc with Alaska miners.

"One of the top concerns I have been hearing all over the state and with pretty high intensity is the MSHA enforcement that is going on right now," said the executive director.

In her first two weeks on the job, Crockett has collected "pages and pages of stories" from frustrated AMA members.

She said these accounts point to an agency more concerned with enforcement than with safety training and accident prevention.

"A couple of (operators) have had MSHA come in and not find anything, leave without writing a citation. And a week later that inspector is back with his supervisor because they don't think it is possible that a mine could be operating that safely," Crockett explained. "Now those inspectors have a real fear so they are just looking for anything to write a citation on."

She said this focus on enforcement and the safety administration's complicated one-size-fits-all regulatory system is particularly onerous for the small-scale placer miners.

"They don't have the manpower and it's not necessary in the first place," Crockett told Mining News. "It's oppressing and I think there is real fear and belief that MSHA is trying to shut down the little guy."

Modernizing AMA

In addition to directing the association's efforts to address the "files and files" of issues facing Alaska miners, Crockett plans to bolster the AMA's online presence.

"We are going to develop our website, we are going to start making our journal available electronically, we are going to start putting the issues that we are working on onto the website so that people can interface that way and we are going to develop our social media strategy," she told Mining News.

Recognizing that the AMA membership ranges from college students to centurions, Crockett says that along with modernizing the way the association interfaces with its members and the world, she plans to retain many of the traditional outlets.

"We have a huge cross section of people and I want to make sure we continue to cater to all of them," she said.

This cross section goes beyond age.

"One thing I want to make sure is captured is we are not just the big mines - we are the placer miners, we are operators, we are the geologists and explorers," said the AMA executive director.

And, Crockett is looking forward to input from the entire gamut of AMA membership.

"I have been involved with AMA for a long time but I have not been running the association for very long at all - so, while positive feedback is good, I really want the constructive criticism that comes with it," she said.

Author Bio

Shane Lasley, Publisher

Over his more than 16 years of covering mining and mineral exploration, Shane has become renowned for his ability to report on the sector in a way that is technically sound enough to inform industry insiders while being easy to understand by a wider audience.

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