Chilkat Valley News - Serving Haines and Klukwan, Alaska since 1966

It really doesn’t matter whether one calls it “mining” or “exploration”, the latest shadow permit application from Constantine is land use abuse. Sadly, not many folks will have time to read the actual permit application. Public officials have collaborated to keep the proposals out of the public eye.

Logging, road construction, drilling and seismic blasting are scheduled from June through August within sensitive salmon and wildlife habitat. Heavy equipment to be used includes bulldozers, excavators, sonic track mounted drills (51 drill sites!), helicopters, blasting equipment, and water pumping equipment (2000 gallons per 12-hour shift!). Activities will include ten miles of new “trails” along the Klehini and across Glacier Creek and its tributaries, including fording streams in at least six different locations.

How is it that only now toward the end of May are we the people who live here just becoming aware of the full scale of this assault on our land and water and vegetation that are so generous to us in providing our healthy quality of life here? Why are local public officials silent on this? Or even pushing this through the Manager “recommending to the Planning Commission” approval of helicopter conditional use permit over the concerns and objections of the people who live here?

E-mailing your comments before June 1 to Sarah Church at dnr.fbx.mining@alaska.gov will put on the public record community input which is essential in the process of holding public officials at all levels accountable for their decisions.

Kathleen Menke