Nomeites raise concerns about IPOP to state regulators

Dozens of comments submitted to the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation call for IPOP LLC to be denied a state permit for its proposed gold mining operation in Bonanza Channel.
IPOP, a Nevada-based group on a long and controversial quest to begin dredging for gold outside of Nome near Solomon, was awarded a crucial federal permit earlier this year from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Now, local individuals and organizations who oppose the project are turning to the state to try to stop it.
IPOP needs a permit from the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation, or DEC, to discharge wastewater from the “doorway” of its containment system that the Army Corps has already approved. The DEC published a draft for this permit on June 28 and the public had until Aug. 5 to comment on it.
“What the applicant has proposed is to have a silt curtain doorway around their containment system,” said Allan Nakanishi, the DEC’s mining program manager. “That doorway was going to kind of act like an arctic entry, if you will, so that it limits the amount of turbidity and sediments and settleable solids escaping from that containment system.”
Nakanishi was speaking alongside other DEC representatives during an informational video call about the permit on Aug. 1. More than 50 participants were on the line and the meeting lasted for over two hours.
As the session was only intended to clarify aspects of the permit and the public comment process, any input given during the call was not officially recorded to influence DEC’s decision.
Nonetheless, many callers made clear their strong concerns about how this project would affect the fragile estuary environment of Bonanza Channel and Safety Sound.
Nakanishi commented on the issues and confusion that seem to have resulted from the Corps’ decision to give IPOP a permit. That federal permit had originally been denied; the Corps has given little explanation about why it reversed course.
“The Corps’ reversal of that decision really hasn’t addressed the concerns... raised about this project,” Nakanishi said. “All I can say about that is that I think the agency probably should take a second look at the rationale on how the decision to deny was reversed, and how those concerns that were raised during the denial are addressed in the new decision to re-issue that permit.”
In approving the project, the Corps gave IPOP permission to use a silt curtain containment system. That means the DEC can’t respond to comments that are about the general use of the silt curtain—it only has jurisdiction over the wastewater that gets released from that containment system.
Even so, many written public comments raised issues with the details included in the draft of the DEC’s permit.
For example, the DEC permit would give IPOP a mixing zone, allowing the company to exceed water quality standards in a 100-foot radius around its suction dredge. Submitting comments for the Village of Solomon, Deilah Johnson pointed out problems with permitting this zone.
“In this case, DEC failed to take into account the unique situation of having a suction dredge permit in a high-value, high-functioning estuary ecosystem with anadromous fish, important bird habitat, and an active subsistence community,” Johnson wrote. “This is unprecedented in Alaska. Indeed, in many states, suction dredge mining is prohibited in waterbodies with anadromous fish. As DEC has made clear, it did not authorize the suction dredge operation, but it is responsible for any potential discharge. DEC has the power to deny a mixing zone and it should. Approving a mixing zone in Bonanza Channel is essentially turning part of a high-functioning ecosystem that other states only wish they still had to a water treatment facility, for which the Clean Water Act sought to prevent.”
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, too, recommended getting rid of this mixing zone on the grounds that the Corps permit suggests IPOP is supposed to use their silt curtains until turbidity is reduced to background levels. The EPA also recommended more robust turbidity monitoring requirements for IPOP to more accurately measure the project’s impact.
In addition to their environmental concerns, several comment writers and several callers on the Aug. 1 virtual meeting also voiced discontent about the DEC’s process of gathering feedback.
The DEC had denied the Village of Solomon’s request for a public hearing on the permit so that comments could be collected in person. The state agency instead scheduled the virtual question-and-answer session with just three days’ notice, and with just four days to go before the Aug. 5 public comment deadline.
Several callers noted the short notice about the meeting and the lack of advertisement.
Agency representatives did not give a clear justification about why they couldn’t have scheduled both a hearing and a public meeting, emphasizing that the department decided an informational meeting would better inform the comment period.
The dozens of public comments that were submitted by the Aug. 5 deadline were overwhelmingly negative about IPOP’s plans.
A diversity of Nome’s population and organizations was represented in those opposition letters, including Kawerak, the Village of Solomon, NSEDC, the City of Nome and many private citizens. Only an IPOP representative, James Buchal, wrote in favor of the project, claiming that “the opposition continues to be the product of an Alaska Native elite.”