The City and Borough of Juneau’s mining ordinance continues to be scrutinized by a subcommittee appointed by Juneau’s mayor.
Now it’s adding four more members, two from the planning commission and two from the general public.
At least 10 people have put their names forward when the mining subcommittee meets next week.
Here are the names submitted as of Wednesday:
- Guy Archibald
- Sam Dapcevich
- Chris Dimond
- Ben Haight
- Christine Hess
- John Kato
- Dan Miller
- Kyle Moselle
- Paul Voelckers
- Murray Walsh
Walsh was the city’s planning director in the early 1990s when Echo Bay’s failed attempt at re-opening the AJ Mine was being debated and litigated.
He said the community has learned a lot since then. But he still believes the city’s mining review process is too strict.
“We don’t regulate logging like this,” Walsh said Wednesday. “We don’t regulate fishing like this, we don’t regulate other forms of development this way, so there is a certain kind of – I don’t know – fear expressed in the original ordinance that I don’t think we need to succumb to anymore.”
A former director of Southeast Conference, Walsh said environmentalists will leverage the review process to slow down or kill projects they oppose.
“There are people who simply don’t like any kind of industrial activity in Southeast Alaska and they’ll use whatever means are available to prevent it,” Walsh said.
One of the most vocal critics of re-writing the mining ordinance also is vying for a seat at the table.
“The decision seems to have been made to go ahead and move forward you know without really answering the fundamental question of: ‘Is it necessary?'” Southeast Alaska Conservation Council’s staff scientist Guy Archibald said Wednesday.
Archibald said the promise of economic development needs to be weighed against long-term environmental effects.
“We need to look at it over a period of probably hundreds of years rather than just a 20- or 30-year life of mine,” Archibald said. “That’s how we protect our children’s children.”
The mining subcommittee was created earlier this year by Juneau Mayor Ken Koelsch, after the Juneau Assembly was approached by a group of well-connected businessmen who argued the mining law is needlessly burdensome.
The city commissioned an analysis from Bob Loeffler, a professor of public policy at University of Alaska Anchorage.
The 54-page report found that the city’s mining ordinance does, in many instances, overlap with what state and federal regulators consider.
But the report noted that overlap is different from duplication.
The city’s mining ordinance often complements the state and federal process, the report said. And in only two cases did it find examples of where the city’s review could actually duplicate the work of state and federal regulators.
Applications to sit on the city’s mining subcommittee are due Monday.
It meets the following Tuesday and will forward its recommendations to the full Assembly.
