DEC to issue permit for IPOP

The Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation is set to approve an Alaska Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit to IPOP LLC, according to an email sent out on September 30 by the DEC.  The DEC issued the notification as courtesy, saying the applicant has a chance to review the permit over the next five days, ending Oct. 7, before issuing the permit.
No more public comment is taken.
IPOP LLC proposes to dredge for gold in the sediments of Bonanza Channel. IPOP intends to use a cutterhead dredge, a processing barge and a couple of tender boats to seasonally mine during summer and fall in the shallow waters of Bonanza Channel. IPOP will construct a launch ramp, set up a mancamp at the site and proposes to cut channels into the shallow waters to operate their equipment.
 The project, since it was first proposed in 2018, encountered fierce opposition in Nome as the operation is to take place in an important and fragile estuary which also happens to be a favored spot for fish camps. Initially, after years of reviewing several iterations of IPOP’s application for a permit, the Alaska District of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers denied the project application, only to have the denial reversed by the Pacific Division of the Corps when IPOP appealed the denial.
The Corps issued a permit which stipulates that IPOP use a silt curtain containment system and the Corps’ authority regulates the discharges within the silt curtain. Basically, the muck stirred up from the cutterdredge is to be contained in a curtain system, and the DEC only regulates what turbidity escaping from an opening of the silt curtain behind the cutterdredge and the gold processing barge.
The state’s DEC’s narrowly focused permit is to authorize the discharge of wastewater and outfall from the double doorway opening at the end of the silt curtain outside of the containment system surrounding the mining operation and through which the dredge and other support craft may pass. “The discharge from outfall 001 consists of wastewater containing suspended particulates created during dredging and gold recovery operations and other activities disturbing the substrate within the silt curtain,” the DEC permit says. “The pollutants of concern are turbidity and suspended solids which are authorized to exceed water quality criteria within a 100-ft. radius mixing zone centered on outfall 001.”
The DEC, despite numerous requests for a public hearing, did not travel to Nome for a public meeting on the matter and only held a virtual meeting in which regulators explained the scope of their limited permit, fielded questions and took comments.
Most comments, both verbal and in writing, centered on the concern of the proposed mining activity’s effect on the pristine and sensitive environment of Bonanza Channel and the habitat for a multitude of species: plants, birds, fish and mammals. The agency responded that none of the comments caused changes to the permit.
When addressing comments that raised concerns about cultural or subsistence resources, the DEC did not take them into consideration, pointing in justification to their narrowly defined authority of this permit. “The APDES permit considers comments regarding how the specific permitted activity affects the local population based on factual information that is directly related to the proposed discharge,” the DEC’s response to comments reads.
Even comments from the federal EPA that recommended that the silt curtains be maintained until the turbidity is reduced and that a 100-foot mixing zone should be removed from the permit, did not result in changes to the permit. The EPA also recommended that turbidity be monitored at two locations: one upstream of the barge and silt curtain and one downstream of the doorway of the silt curtain. “The addition of the upstream location will allow the facility to more accurately determine the background turbidity level in Bonanza Channel, so that it can be compared with the downstream location to determine wither the activity causes an increase in turbidity outside of the silt curtain,” the EPA said. In response to these suggestions, the DEC has modified the permit to include an upstream monitoring location and revised the maximum time between the doorway breach and the taking of samples to be no greater than 30 minutes.
IPOP still needs a permit from the state’s Department of Natural Resources. David Charron, with the mining section of the DNR, responded to a Nugget request inquiring about the status of the permit application saying that the DNR “has not made a decision nor has it issued any approvals to IPOP LLC under their Application for Permit to Mine in Alaska (APMA) F20242875 for the proposed Bonanza Channel Dredging Project.”
“Our office continues to adjudicate their requests for DNR permits and the case file remains in application received status,” wrote Charron.