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Environmental appeal halts Pogo gold mine Northern Alaska Environmental Center appeals EPA water discharge permit, construction workers sent home Patricia Liles Mining News Editor
An administrative permit appeal filed on April 13 by a Fairbanks-based environmental group has invalidated the federally issued water discharge permit for the Pogo gold mine being developed about 40 miles northeast of Delta Junction, Alaska.
Lawyers working for the Environmental Protection Agency’s Region 10 based in Seattle will prepare a response within six weeks defending EPA’s issuance of the project’s water discharge permit under the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System.
EPA’s Environmental Appeals Board in Washington, D.C., a quasi-judicial review group, will rule on the appeal, taking anywhere from four to 12 months to decide, said Keith Cohon, EPA’s assistant region council and the agency’s lawyer handling the permit appeal.
“In the short term, it stays the affect of the permit … until the appeal is resolved,” Cohon told Petroleum News on April 20.
The Environmental Appeals Board’s decision can then be appealed to the Circuit Court of Appeals, and then on to the U.S. Supreme Court. An appeal in those judicial arenas has more stringent criteria defining impacted groups who can file such a claim, Cohon said.
To launch a valid appeal to the Environmental Appeals Board, an individual or group must have raised the same arguments or claims during the public comment period of the environmental review, he said. “It’s not appropriate to bring in front of the EAB arguments that have not been responded to previously,” he said.
The appeal filed by the Northern Alaska Environmental Center could be rejected on that basis. “It’s a subject being discussed,” Cohon said.
Ed Fogels, permit project manager for the Alaska Department of Natural Resources, said the appeal’s issues were “kind of a shocker to us. We saw none of these issues ever raised during the process.”
EPA issued its NPDES on March 15, the final regulatory permit needed for construction by Teck Pogo Inc., a joint venture formed in 1997 by Teck Cominco and Sumitomo Metal Mining to develop and mine the 5.5 million ounce underground gold deposit in the upper Goodpaster River valley.
Teck Pogo submitted its original plan of operations for Pogo in August 2000. A final environmental impact statement was released by agencies in September 2003. No valid claims The environmental group’s claims of inappropriate discharges and seepage have “no validity,” Fogels said.
One claim is that rain water running off of the dry stack tailings facility will go untreated into a 400-foot section of Liese Creek, upstream or before the stream’s water is collected in a runoff pond, then treated and discharged.
“They’re saying the water out of the dry stack needs to be regulated before it gets to the treatment plant,” Fogels said.
The other claim involves classification of the recycle tailings pond as waters of the United States and says its contents should meet Clean Water Standards. “That’s never going to happen because it’s rock and dirt,” Fogels said. “You don’t regulate water that is going into a pond to be recycled into the mill for makeup or to be treated.” Water permit needed for construction The water discharge permit is needed during the two-year construction of the underground hard rock mine and mill, where the number of builders may peak at 500. Water and sewage treatment facilities to accommodate those construction workers are covered by the NPDES.
More than 300 workers have started work at Pogo, beginning this winter with construction and operation of an ice road, cutting out a planned 50-mile route for construction of an all-season road and preparing temporary camp facilities for this summer.
The lack of immediate water discharge caused Teck-Pogo to halt construction work, said Karl Hanneman, manager of public and environmental affairs and special projects.
“We don’t have a permit to discharge, so we have to stop,” he said on April 20. “We looked for ways we could continue, but EPA didn’t find any legal method they could offer us to proceed.”
Rather than treating the sewage and extracting water, raw sludge would have to be removed from Pogo. With no ice road remaining and construction of the all-season road only beginning, that would entail flying out sewage material.
Cohon said EPA offered a solution that would allow Teck-Pogo to continue construction during the appeal process. “They stopped construction because of the uncertainty of the ultimate outcome of the appeal,” he said.
Construction of Pogo was originally estimated at $250 million. Prior to this year’s work, Teck-Pogo spent almost $80 million on exploration, permitting, engineering and other pre-construction work.
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