Alaska often conjures up images of gold - prospectors, miners and adventurers combing the creeks of the Interior searching for the next big discovery. The town of Fairbanks, and many of its surrounding communities, among them Ester, Fox and Chatanika, were founded because of placer gold discoveries on local creeks in the early 1900's. However, the communities that survived into this century survived because their economies diversified away from gold production; others - such as Meehan and Cleary - withered and died when the miners pulled out.
Alaska's Mineral Wealth
Gold and the stampedes it caused were critical factors in the European settlement of Alaska. Therefore, gold is the metal most often associated with this state's mineral resources.
However, Alaskan geology also hosts some of the world's largest and richest deposits of lead, zinc, silver and copper. Kennecott - one of the world's largest mining companies, got its start here with the Kennecott Copper mine (now a National Park) in the Wrangell Mountains, which mined one of the richest copper deposits ever found. And Teck-Cominco's Red Dog mine, located in the DeLong Mountains 50 miles northeast of the Native Village of Kivalina, currently holds the position as the world's largest lead-zinc mine. Platinum has also been mined here, and there are ongoing searches for the diamonds and sapphires that many prospectors are convinced lie undetected in stream gravels.
Modern Metal Mining in Alaska
While metal mining does occur in southeast Alaska (Greens Creek and Kensington mines, for example), and to a limited extent in south-central, the Interior and Arctic regions are the primary targets for the new mineral boom currently underway in the state. Started in the early 1980's, with the development of Red Dog, which is estimated to hold 25 million tons of zinc, and fanned to a fever pitch by the discoveries of the Fort Knox gold deposit near Fairbanks and the Pogo gold deposit near Delta, the last 20 years have seen rapid and aggressive claim staking and exploration by mining companies.
Additionally, during that time, in Interior and Arctic Alaska, six hardrock mines came into production - Ryan Lode (closed in 1993) Red Dog, Fort Knox and True North, Illinois Creek (now bankrupt) and Nixon Fork (closed due to falling gold prices). While these mines varied in size, from the quite small Ryan Lode, with a reserve of about 100,000 ounces of gold, to the very large Fort Knox mine, with, at time of permitting, 5. 2 million ounces of gold, to the gargantuan Red Dog, what was common to all of them was the modern mining technologies that set them apart from the placer mining process that used to be the hallmark of Alaskan mining.
The Costs of Mining
Although Alaska mining law requires reclamation of mine sites, the impacts of bulk-tonnage mining are impossible to eradicate after mine closure. A mine site may be returned to functionality as wildlife habitat or recreational area, but the process takes decades. Acceptable reclamation may also be thwarted by ongoing environmental degradation, such as impacts to water quality from heavy metal leaching, which was not accounted for in the original mine/reclamation plan. For example, open pits are rarely filled in at closure; instead, groundwater is allowed to seep back into the pit, eventually creating a pit lake. Unfortunately, the heavy metals and salts that are typically associated with mineral deposits also end up in the water, so that perpetual water treatment is necessary if the lake were to be used for aquatic habitat or recreational purposes. To date, in Alaska, no open pit mine has undergone complete reclamation or has been released by regulatory agencies as a completed, reclaimed mine project.
http://www.northern.org/artman/publish/mining.shtml
