As another Tulsequah field season nears, a mining company merger adds to persisting cleanup questions

Project officials say goal of restoring contaminated site starting in 2029 unaffected; tribal, environmental leaders voice concerns about Canada’s mining plans to state lawmakers

A worker conducts a drone survey during the 2025 field season at the long-abandoned Tulsequah Chief Mine. (Photos provided by the Government of British Columbia)

By Mark Sabbatini

Juneau Independent

A company overseeing a planned cleanup of the long-abandoned Tulsequah Chief Mine is merging with a larger mining company, adding to an already long and contentious list of questions about transboundary mining issues by stakeholders as another field season is set to begin next week.

An online briefing about plans at the Tulsequah site last Wednesday was followed the next day by an hour-long hearing at the Alaska State Capitol focusing on transboundary mining. The latter was largely a debate by environmental and Indigenous officials expressing fears of Canada’s mines polluting Southeast Alaska’s waters versus state officials who said no such contamination has actually occurred. 

Ongoing assessment of the mine and surrounding environment at Tulsequah is tentatively scheduled from May 19 through Sept. 24, said Deborah Read, the project’s site manager for Canada-based minerals company Teck Resources Ltd., during last Wednesday’s briefing. Much of the work involves making decaying or toxic mine areas safe for workers, collecting data about surrounding soil and waters, and improving transport to the site that is currently only accessible by air.

The hope is to complete a draft remediation plan by the end of the year, a final plan by 2028 and, if cleanup begins the following year, complete work a decade from now, according to Read.

However, questions about that timeline were raised after Teck announced last fall what it called a “merger of equals” with Anglo American PLC. Anglo American is a significantly larger company and its shareholders will own about 62.4% of the merged company — named Anglo Teck — while Teck shareholders will own 37.6%.

The merger won’t affect the scope or timing of the cleanup at Tulsequah, located in British Columbia about 40 miles from Juneau, Read said.

“We're doing this because we are a responsible mining company, and we value the well-being of the communities and the environments that we're entrusted with,” Read said. She said the new company is “​​going to be combining our leading environmental and social practices, and the plan is to honor all existing agreements with communities and Indigenous governments. So Teck's commitment to this project and the remediation planning remains unchanged.”

The copper, lead, zinc and gold mine that operated from 1951 to 1957 has been discharging acid mine drainage ever since into the Tulsequah River, a main tributary of the Taku River and a prime Alaska salmon habitat. Oft-discussed and never-realized cleanup plans involving the bankruptcy of a company that formerly owned the mine site and Canada’s government have been a source of frustration to tribal and other groups citing the threat the toxins pose to salmon and other natural life in the area. 

The persistence of those concerns was acknowledged during a House State Affairs Committee meeting last Thursday at the Capitol. 

“Every one of our meetings starts with and ends with the Tulsequah Chief Mine,” Doug Vincent-Lang, commissioner of the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, told lawmakers when discussing his meetings with transboundary mining stakeholders. “I can tell you that there has been a lot of frustration by user groups over that mine and the failure to make significant progress.”

However, he said long-standing legal disputes involving the former owner have been resolved and “for the first time I'm actually seeing significant movement for moving forward.” He said a visit to the site by some state department commissioners, including himself, as well as members of Alaska’s congressional delegation, is scheduled this summer.

One statement by Vincent-Lang, the first to testify during the hearing, became a focal point: “We've never found violations of water quality in our side of the border from (the Department of Environmental Conservation's) water quality sampling, and we've never seen contamination and fish in our side of the border” resulting from Canadian mines.

He said DEC reviewed more than 15,000 data points on the Taku River this year “and was unable to detect a signature that certain pollutants were present above natural conditions.”

A presentation hosted by Teck and other entities last December stated recent water quality sampling of the Tulsequah River near the mine shows toxins are still seeping into the water, but elevated pollution levels are not detected beyond three kilometers downstream of the mine site.   

Breanna Walker, director of Salmon Beyond Borders, said during last Thursday’s hearings the state’s pollution claims “may be true,” but that doesn’t mean contamination in Canada isn‘t having impacts in Alaska and doesn’t address the threats posed by new activity. Also, she emphasized, there are other existing as well as several future planned mines that are of high concern.

“Given the number of pollution events that have occurred — especially as I said with the Premier mine, which is less than 20 miles from the Alaska border and has a permit to continue allowable discharges, or discharges that are above the allowable levels in British Columbia — there are concerns about what may cross over the border,” she said. “And as we all know the fish do not recognize borders and the salmon that we often are relying on downstream in Alaska are swimming potentially into parts of these watersheds where there is pollution occurring.”

Among the main criticisms voiced by Walker and other representatives during the hearing was a lack of diligence by the state in holding Canada responsible for regulating and cleaning up mines at transboundary water sites, and failing to give proper consideration to concerns expressed by tribal governments.

“If the Dunleavy administration is going to say that it has it under control it must demonstrate through action, transparency and partnership with tribes right now,” said Paulette Moreno, a vice president for the Central Council of Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska. “It is not. Tlingit and Haida calls on the state to step up by working with tribes, our federal partners, to pursue enforceable international solutions, including a pause on new mining and transboundary watersheds, until protections are in place.”

House members on the committee showed a similar divide in their sympathies.

Rep. Ashley Carrick, D-Fairbanks, the committee’s chair, said while officials are stating the current impacts in Alaska from Canadian mining are minimal “what I'm also hearing is that the concerns downstream are very real and they have been real for a very long time.”

“There's a need for additional action and then, in the event that there is a major accident — truly an accident — on the part of the mining corporations, I think the concern is are we prepared for that?” she said, adding, “I don't think that folks should necessarily walk away with an idea that this (scrutiny) is opposed to all mining efforts. I think that there's just a desire for additional international cooperation, additional consultation efforts and ideally preserving these resources downstream.” 

Rep. Kevin McCabe, R-Big Lake, repeatedly challenged environmentally-focused presenters with the state’s no-pollution findings and at one point observed much of the “waste” cited by witnesses as a concern are naturally occurring substances.

“I grew up in, at one time, the largest open-pit mine in the world in northern Minnesota,” he said. “I used to swim in the tailings ponds and I'm all right.”

McCabe also asserted “there’s been more damage to our fisheries in Alaska by the fishermen themselves than there has been by mines, whether it be bycatch or overfishing.”

“So I am curious when we're going to have the mines come in here and talk about how the fishermen are damaging their own industry,” he said.

• Contact Mark Sabbatini at editor@juneauindependent.com or (907) 957-2306.