Transboundary salmon runs are at risk — Gov. Dunleavy doesn’t seem to care

A tailings pond and a disused water treatment plant are seen in this 2013 photo at the Tulsequah Chief Mine site about 40 miles northeast of Juneau. (Rivers Without Borders photo)

By Breanna Walker

On Dec. 5, Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation Commissioner Randy Bates published an opinion piece refuting Salmon Beyond Borders’ and the Alaska Longline Fishermen’s Association’s assertion that the Dunleavy Administration has largely abandoned the promises outlined in the Alaska-British Columbia Memorandum of Understanding and Cooperation, signed 10 years ago by the Walker Administration. Clearly, we struck a nerve.

Bates engaged in a little deflection and finished off with an ad hominem attack on those of us calling out the State’s obfuscation. That said, we agree with Bates that clean water is of the utmost importance. What we disagree with is that the Dunleavy administration has done enough to ensure Alaskans, transboundary wild salmon runs, and our fisheries continue to have the clean water they require in order to remain healthy and productive in the face of B.C.’s polluting mining boom upstream.

One of the points Salmon Beyond Borders and ALFA made that Bates ignored is that Alaskans, including sovereign tribal nations, fishermen, and community members, now find out about B.C. transboundary mine pollution events not from the State of Alaska, but from the media. This violates Section 4 of the Alaska-B.C. Statement of Cooperation (SOC), signed a year after the MOU. Examples include the news that the Red Chris mine tailings dams are leaching toxicants into the Stikine-Iskut watershed headwaters and heavy metal contamination from the Premier gold mine tailings dams were detected at 886% of allowable levels in the shared Salmon River system, one mile from the border near Hyder. Notably, Canadian researchers warn that the stability of the Red Chris and the Premier mine earthen tailings dams is questionable. 

While Bates may have recently asked B.C. for an update on the status of Tulsequah Chief Mine cleanup, which we appreciate, the Dunleavy administration has dropped Gov. Walker’s 2018 direct requests to B.C. to immediately and fully clean up Tulsequah Chief Mine pollution. The Tulsequah Chief has been contaminating the Taku River system since it was abandoned almost 70 years ago, and the B.C. government has been promising it will clean it up for more than 10 years. Notably, the state did not publicly ask questions of the province, or Teck, the historical owner of Tulsequah Chief, during the Dec. 3 public webinar, and the webinar lacked transparent dialogue. 

The Dunleavy administration has also dropped Gov. Walker’s request that B.C. transboundary mines meet the State of Alaska’s reclamation bonding requirements — the money mining companies put up to ensure there is money to fully clean up when they close, or if there is a disaster — so that situations like the Tulsequah Chief do not happen again. In fact, to the contrary, Alaska Department of Fish and Game Commissioner Doug Vincent-Lang told National Fisherman that B.C. bonding requirements for its transboundary mines upstream of Alaska are “proper,” even though B.C. doesn’t require mining companies to post a full mine reclamation bond before operations begin, as the State of Alaska requires.

Almost every Southeast Alaska municipality, several tribes and commercial fishing groups, and legislators formally called for a permanent ban on tailings dams on transboundary rivers in 2021-2023. Why then, has the Dunleavy administration not held B.C. accountable for its existing and proposed tailings dams, including the leaking mine waste dams at Red Chris and Premier mines, and the potential financial impacts of B.C. mine pollution on Alaskans under Section 5 of the SOC? 

The stack of State of Alaska public letters expressing concern and asking questions of B.C. and Canada goes back to the Knowles administration in 1998, to the Parnell administration in 2014, and to letters under the Walker administration, ending in 2018. Strikingly, under Gov. Dunleavy, public communication between the State of Alaska and B.C. and Canada has seemingly evaporated, outside of the State of Alaska’s singular webpage which contains very little detail and completely fails to reference the well-documented, widespread, and long-standing concerns and requests from Tribes and thousands of Alaskans. 

Additionally, the Dunleavy administration has not provided formal public comments on any proposed B.C. transboundary mine project, as Alaska Tribes and stakeholder groups like Salmon Beyond Borders have diligently done. Three proposed B.C. transboundary gold mines — the polluting Red Chris mine in the Stikine-Iskut watershed, New Polaris around the corner from the polluting Tulsequah Chief in the Taku watershed, and Eskay Creek in the Unuk watershed — are currently in the B.C. environmental review process. The Eskay Creek gold mine, whose proposed earthen tailings dams would be built in the Unuk headwaters, may be approved by B.C. in January 2026. 

Finally, Bates uses the same old, tired “Outsiders” rhetoric in an attempt to smear Salmon Beyond Borders. The fact is, we are Alaskans and care deeply about our home. We are now in year eight of the Dunleavy administration. Under Gov. Dunleavy’s watch, we have seen an enormous expansion of B.C. mining development on shared rivers; over 100 B.C. hardrock mine projects are in some phase of exploration, proposal, development or operation in the transboundary region. And we just heard last week from B.C. and Teck, the historical mine owner, that the Tulsequah Chief Mine may be cleaned up in 10 years "if all goes well." This does not feel like meaningful progress. 

Last year, a new report described how Canadian mining pressure along Alaska-B.C. rivers could lead to “undocumented extinction” of wild salmon runs. And yet, the State of Alaska responds to Alaskans’ concerns with hollow promises and weak reassurances. It’s almost as if Bates, Vincent-Lang, and other state officials are out to protect the image of foreign-owned and operated mines over everything else, including Alaska’s wild salmon and the economy and ways of life that they make possible. We need to do better. The fate of our shared salmon rivers depends on it. 

• Breanna Walker lives in Juneau and is the director of Salmon Beyond Borders, an Alaska-based campaign that has been working with fishermen, business owners, community leaders, and concerned citizens, alongside tribes and First Nations on both sides of the Alaska-B.C. border, to defend and sustain transboundary wild salmon rivers, jobs, and people’s way of life for over a decade.