OPINION: State is barreling ahead with a highway plan that benefits mining companies, not Alaskans

When I first came to Alaska in 1968, gold cost $43.50 per ounce. Six years earlier, the gold dredge age had just ended. The slender corridor of the Richardson Highway was my family’s lifeline to Fairbanks, as it is today for Delta, Salcha, Dot Lake, Dry Creek, Tanacross, Tok, Tetlin and Northway.

Kinross Gold’s plan is to use a fleet of massive trucks to haul ore on the Richardson and Alaska highways from its Mahn Choh prospect near Tetlin to its Fort Knox mine north of Fairbanks. If it proceeds, Fairbanks residents will also share the Mitchell Expressway, Peger Road, Johansen Expressway and Steese Highway with the behemoth trucks. However, eight rural communities have only the Richardson to reach advanced medical help, groceries and to family. Concerned that our outlook is a Kinross truck with 60 16-axle, 52-tire, 80-plus ton (and 60 empty 40-ton return) double trailers, 120 per day every 10 minutes, 24/7, 365 days a year along with emergency vehicles, tourists, army convoys and snowplows for more than five years, I called for a public meeting and contacted a group of longtime Alaskans who, like me, were worried.

On July 13, along with former Delta administrator Mary Leith, I hosted a public meeting against the Kinross ore haul plan. Sixty-five residents gathered at the Delta Community Center to hear each of the Fairbanks and Delta speakers. Among the three Delta speakers, trucker Bill Ward explained that from 2020 through 2021, Gov. Mike Dunleavy and Kinross had meetings, sometimes including Department of Transportation officials. He added that as the Kinross-Tetlin mine became more known, a group of longtime Fairbanks residents concerned about our highways, formed Advocates of Safe Alaska Highways (ASAH).

I learned that the large international Canada-based Kinross Gold’s open-pit mine at Fort Knox, 19 miles east of Fox, has one of the few processing mills in the state. Recently, as manager and operator, Kinross has partnered at 70% with Contango Ore at 30% in the new Peak Gold, LLC with Tetlin. Although a mill could’ve been built at Tetlin, Kinross preferred to truck the ore 250 miles to Fairbanks to extend the life of Fort Knox. There is no precedent for an industrial extraction company to not create its own haul road or to not pay a toll for the use of a state highway. The Red Dog Mine Road was built by Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority, which charged Red Dog for the use thereof. It was a wise investment. To date, AIDEA has made a substantial amount over the cost of construction.

Fort Knox is running out of gold, and the permitting for mills takes years to obtain. Wishing to delay the phenomenally expensive and complicated restoration of its reputedly mile-wide, mile-deep pit, Kinross is actively recruiting feeder veins of the Interior’s gold, which may extend all the way to the old Lucky Shot Mine at Hatcher Pass.

Fairbanks engineer Jenny Campbell explained that Kinney Engineering, paid by DOTPF, has a yearlong contract to study the impacts of the Kinross ore hauling plan on the Alcan, Richardson and Steese. Because there is no precedent model for the huge trucks, Kinney must rely on the template of a conventional 2-trailer, 6-axle truck tested on dry summertime roads to predict possible crashes. “Even with that model, which is not analogous to the 16-axle trucks,” Campbell said, “Kinney predicts 10 more crashes per year with the Kinross plan.”

In the fall of 2022, needing facts, retired lawyer Barbara Schuhmann submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to DOTPF, but was denied. She filed an appeal, and finally, in March 2023, a large document was released to ASAH. With Dunleavy and Kinross having gotten a 39-month lead time on the ore haul plan, ASAH created a petition to register the people’s objections. Campbell joined the Transportation Advisory Committee (TAC), a group of 20 people, some of whom meet every two months with Kinney Engineering.

Schuhmann began, “The Tetlin to Fort Knox corridor is about to face a paradigm shift. With an industrial ore haul going on 24/7, 365 days a year, there will be no break, no way to reorganize your plans to commute to doctors, to shop, to see family, to hunt, to recreate, no way to avoid a truck if you are on the road for any time. Those trucks will be running for the foreseeable future. We are talking mass. The ore trucks sit so high off the road that the bumper of an ordinary vehicle doesn’t meet it. In a collision, the smaller vehicle ends up under the trailer, with the top crushed or sliced off.” She added, “If a bridge or section of the road fails, rural residents will have no way north.”

Ward pointed out that Alaska’s roads are not the interstates of the Lower 48. The Alcan, Richardson and Steese corridors have countless personal driveways and school bus pick-up stops, and are used by army convoys, emergency vehicles, school buses, tourists and thousands of residents.

Campbell quoted a DOTPF engineer who is slated to soon retire, explaining that 17 of the 39 bridges on the proposed corridor are not able to support the weight of the behemoth trucks that the public has yet to see. On his behest, one bridge now reads, “35 tons for emergency vehicles” (not “trucks,” 120 times a day) and the other says, “41 tons” for same, clearly half the amount of the loaded Kinross trucks. Schuhmann explained, “Without very expensive overlay of thicker material on the Richardson from Delta to Salcha,” she predicts “the road will turn to gravel.”

On Feb. 15, DOTPF Commissioner Ryan Anderson stated that planning has begun for replacing five bridges along the route: the Robertson River, Johnson River, Gerstle River, Chena Flood Control Project’s northbound bridge, and the Chena Hot Springs Road overpass northbound on the Steese. There is no timeline for any of these projects, however, and costs are projected at $300-400 million.

Initially, DOTPF promised 16 passing lanes along the route (now downsized to a maximum of 10) and now recognizes the necessity of replacing the bridges. However, not long ago, on the front page of the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, Kinross stated that some of the trucks will roll as early as January 2024.

Regarding the promised passing lanes and suggested bridge replacements, Campbell cited that Fairbanks public radio station KUAC recently aired a piece saying that construction bids for needed safety constraints are coming back much higher than DOTPF anticipated for projects across the state. They can’t afford to do any bridges any time soon. She added, “There’s a disconnect between what the roads are going to see and what the roads can handle.”

The numbers: In 2020, mining provided 4,700 jobs in Alaska. In 2022, Kinross paid $240,000 to Tetlin and $13.6 million to the Fairbanks North Star Borough, as well as about $5 million to the State of Alaska. The state’s real GDP in 2022 was $49.6 billion.

Schuhmann summed up, “The Dunleavy-Kinross plan is unreasonably dangerous and there are alternatives.”

Gov. Jay Hammond once said, “Industry has to pay its own way if they want access to Alaska’s minerals.” Let’s follow his advice.

Judy Ferguson is a longtime Delta Junction resident.

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