Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions
Floor Speech
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Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I rise today to introduce legislation that would potentially help in solving a significant unemployment problem in my home state of Alaska. Today, joined by my colleague, Senator Mark Begich, I introduce the Niblack Mining Area Road Authorization Act to permit road access to proposed multi-mineral mines on southeast Prince of Wales Island in Southeast Alaska.
Prince of Wales Island, formerly the main area for timber activity in Southeast Alaska, has fallen on hard times during the past decade. In 1990, when Alaska's timber industry in total harvested more than 1.1 billion board feet of timber, Prince of Wales was the center of activity. In 1994, for example, timber jobs accounted for 32.8 percent of all wages on the island. Six years later, with total regional harvests having fallen to about 350 million board feet, timber accounted for less than 19.8 percent of wages on the island, according to the Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development. Today, with total harvests of timber being just above 100 million board feet a year in the region--just 35 million board feet being harvested from federal lands in 2011--and timber jobs statewide having fallen from about 4,000 to just over 400, Prince of Wales has been particularly hard hit. According to the State, timber jobs have fallen by more than 1,700 positions on the island.
As of April, the unemployment rate on the island was ``down'' to 15 percent, compared to 18.1 percent in March. The rate in the Hoonah-Angoon census area, which covers the other potentially significant timber area in Southeast, stood at 20 percent in April, compared to 25.6 percent in March, 2012. Those rates are nearly 8 percent to 12 percent higher than the national average and higher than traditional rates, even after out migration from the island over the past decade.
While the Viking Lumber Co. of Klawock remains the largest private-sector timber employer on the island, the island, the third largest in the United States, is badly in need of new employment opportunities. Fortunately today's high metal prices are encouraging a resurgence of mineral development on the 2,231 square-mile island.
Currently, Heatherdale Minerals of Canada is considering reopening the Niblack Mine, a gold, copper, zinc and silver deposit. The company is in advanced exploration and development study of the estimated 9 million-ton mine, forecast to cost $150 million to $200 million to reopen. The mine, likely to last at least 12 years, is forecast to produce 1,500 tons of ore per day and require 130 workers at the mine site, and another 60 at a processing mill, which could be located near the site, or in Ketchikan, AK, 40 vessel miles away.
The Niblack property is also close to another mineral deposit that is in the advanced stages of economic feasibility review, the Bokan Mountain Rare Earth Elements, REE, mine. Bokan Mountain, being considered for opening by Ucore Inc. of Canada, likely will employ 200 workers. It, too, will involve an investment of between $150 million to $200 million for the mine and a preliminary tailings processing plant to process the heavy rare earths, REEs, located at the site of a former uranium mine. Both mines currently estimate they could be open within three to four years, depending on final economic reviews and current permit approval timeframes. Bokan Mountain is located about 28 miles south of Niblack and can be accessed by boat by traveling down the relatively protected Moira Sound to the end of South Arm.
The two mines could produce substantial numbers of high-paying jobs for the residents of southern Southeast Alaska. Niblack, for example, predicts the average salary for mine workers at its facility will be $80,000 a year. The problem of getting those jobs to people who need them is one of logistics.
There currently is no road access to reach either mine site, both likely to be supplied by boat from Ketchikan, Alaska. That means that potential workers on Prince of Wales will need to travel by boat or more likely by plane to Ketchikan, in order to turn around and take a mine boat back to the island to report for work--a costly, time-consuming, often unpleasant and, sometimes, dangerous process given sea conditions in Southeast Alaska. Or they will need to pilot their own small boats to the mine site, a hazardous process given that reaching Niblack from the community of Thorne Bay to the north--a site that is located on the island's road system--will require a daily 60-mile one-way boat trip down perilous Clarence Strait, a difficult water body during fall, winter, and spring storms when seas can easily top 20 feet waves.
But the problem could be solved, if a road could be extended the roughly 26.3 miles to connect the Niblack mine, by means of existing logging roads, to the State highway system on the island. Such a road will involve at least 2.5 miles of logging road reconstruction and the construction of 26.3 miles of new road. Those roads, if built to existing logging road standards, are estimated to cost $7.075 million--the cost certainly rising if the roads are built to Federal Aid Urban Highway standards. The issue is that 18.3 miles of that new construction is across federal lands in the Tongass National Forest and, more importantly, across areas classified as inventoried roadless under the 2001 U.S. Forest Service roadless rule, as it was reimposed on the Tongass in 2009.
Looking at the topography of the area, located inside the Eudora inventoried roadless area, the road would begin at the Haida, Hydaburg, Native village corporation's West, Cholmondeley, Arm sort yard and head Southeast through the Big Creek Valley and climb to a mountain pass at the roughly 1,400-foot elevation. From there it will drop onto land owned by the Kootznoowoo Native village corporation of Angoon and follow existing logging roads that lie on the western side of the South Arm. The route then runs south and parallels South Arm on the west side until the southern end of the bay is reached. Then the route follows the shoreline of the south end of the South Arm until the far southeast corner of the bay is reached--the location of existing cabins and a State of Alaska Department of Fish and Game fish weir. From this point, there are two potential route alternatives: the 1A route continues to run in a southerly direction through a mountain pass of slightly more than 500-feet elevation passing two unnamed lakes. Once it reaches the shoreline of Dickman Bay, the road turns in a more easterly direction and runs across the south end of Kugel Lake and Luelia Lake, and the north end of Kegan Lake. From the 900-foot elevation pass on the west side of Luelia Lake, the route continues to run in an easterly fashion and must cross 1,200- and 1,400-foot passes before the route turns north to reach the Niblack mine at tidewater. That total route is 26.3 miles of new construction and a total distance of 28.8 miles. There is an alternative, Route 1B, early in the route corridor to reduce the elevation and add switchbacks required to reach the first pass--an alternative that would add 1.9 miles to the road.
There is another alternative route, Route 2A, that leaves from the same location and runs on the same route until the south end of South Arm. The second route then turns in a northerly direction and continues to follow the eastern shoreline of South Arm, Cholmondeley, for roughly 1.5 miles. The route then turns in an eastern direction and climbs through a mountain pass of about 900-feet elevation. From this pass, the route descends into the existing road system on Kootznoowoo lands near the south shores of Miller Lake. At the eastern terminus of these existing roads, the new route picks up again and continues in a southeast direction along the south end of Clarno Cove and Cannery Cove until Cannery Point is reached. From there the route turns into a southerly direction and climbs to another mountain pass of roughly 1,000-feet elevation. The route then follows the hillside to the west of Niblack Lake and meets another mountain pass of the same elevation and then descends in a southerly direction along the west side of Myrtle Lake to reach the Niblack Mine and tidewater. That route involves 24.6 miles of new construction, 6.1 miles of road reconstruction and involves a total length of 30.7 miles, thus costing more. It involves, however, constructing only one pass higher than 1,200 feet, compared to 3 on the first route, but may have more environmental impacts given its route along Cannery Cove and Niblack Lake.
I mention the two detailed routes only to indicate that substantial work has been done to select a potential road corridor to the Niblack mine and to make clear that I am not prejudging the route with the fewest environmental impacts. I am leaving that to the Forest Service to decide after an environmental assessment or impact statement is undertaken. The legislation I am introducing simply says that the Forest Service should permit development of a road along one of the two routes, picking the route that both minimizes the costs, while also minimizing the effects on surface resources, prevents unnecessary surface disturbances and that complies with all environmental laws and regulations.
This road, I need to point out, will not set a precedent in any way weakening the inventoried roadless rule's implementation in Alaska, regardless of how I feel about that rule. Under the original regulations governing roadless areas in Alaska issued by the Clinton Administration in January 2001, Section 294.12(b)(7) permits roads to be built across inventoried roadless areas if needed ``in conjunction with the continuation, extension or renewal of a mineral lease on lands that are under lease by the Secretary of the Interior. ..... Such road construction or reconstruction must be conducted in a manner that minimizes effects on surface resources, prevents unnecessary or unreasonable surface disturbance, and complies with all applicable lease requirements.''
The patents on the Niblack property certainly predate the creation of the roadless rule. The mine was discovered in the late 19th century, according to the U.S. Forest Service. Modest copper production occurred between 1902 and 1908 and modern exploration on the 2,000-acre site began in 1974, some 150 patented claims being in place at the mine.
The point is that Niblack is certainly a real prospect that offers the likelihood of real employment for many who are unemployed on Prince of Wales Island, if they simply can access the site from their homes in Craig, Klawock, Hydaburg, Thorne Bay, Kasaan, Whale Pass and even Coffman Cove, located on the northeast end of the island. The need for these jobs has prompted the City Council of Craig to formally request Congress to accelerate the approval of a road corridor to the mine site. Such a road could be built by the mine, but more likely funded and built by the Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities at state expense. Workers could then access jobs at the Bokan Mountain facility by workboat, should a route to that mine never be approved.
It makes no sense in a state that already contains 58 million acres of formal wilderness, and in the Tongass National Forest, that already contains nearly 6.4 million acres of parks and wilderness areas, to bar construction of a road that does not cross any wilderness areas, but could provide a good income to a third of all of the people, 363 people, unemployed on the island as of April 2012, according to the Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development.
I would hope that this Congress would look favorably on allowing a road to this mining area, so that residents on the island can get the jobs they so desperately need in the years ahead.
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