Representatives of the proposed Donlin Gold mine recently offered a status update on the project to the Bethel City Council. It included a bold timeline for completing what would be one of the largest open-pit gold mines in the world.
"If all things go well, in about 2031 we should be built," Donlin Gold General Manager Todd Dahlman told the council on Dec. 16.
"That means in late [20]27 we'll start setting up for construction, maybe do some early work," Dahlman said. "[In 20]28 you'll see construction hitting hot and heavy, [an] influx of people to do the work."
The proposed mine site sits along a tributary roughly 200 miles up the Kuskokwim River from Bethel. Donlin Gold estimates the size of the deposit at more than 1,000 metric tons. They want to extract an average of around 1 million troy ounces annually during the mine’s 27-year lifespan.
Following Dahlman’s presentation, Bethel Mayor Rose “Sugar” Henderson asked what would happen after the mine closes.
"Are you required to put the land back the way you found it when you're done, or is it, you're just gonna leave it like that?" Henderson asked.
"So our agreement is to restore basically everything but the open pit," Dahlman said.
At Donlin, that pit would be 1 mile long, more than 2 miles wide, and nearly 2,000 feet deep. After the mine closes, the pit would fill with rainwater and seepage. The contaminated water would need to be treated in perpetuity, according to environmental law firm Earthjustice.
While in operation, a 471-foot earthen dam would contain the toxic slurry of waste the mine would generate, known as tailings. Dahlman said that the dam design is the most reliable being used anywhere in the world. He said that the massive tailings pond that the dam would hold in place would be fully lined with an impermeable barrier.
"It's lined, and so there's never any solution from the tailings that goes into the dam. So you get a very, very robust, strong, dry dam," Dahlman said.
Dahlman said that as much water as possible would be removed from the tailings pond after the mine closes. The dried out mass of tailings would then be covered over with rock and topsoil.
Opponents of the proposed mine cite long-term risks of environmental contamination, including potential leaching of arsenic and mercury into the watershed. Other criticism has centered around impacts while in operation, including the small but real potential of a catastrophic tailings dam failure.
In June, United States District Court Judge Sharon Gleason ruled that the U.S. Army of Corps of Engineers and U.S. Bureau of Land Management failed to fully consider the potential impacts of a tailings dam failure. In their 2018 analysis, the agencies found a 2% chance of a failure over a 20-year period, but only looked at the impacts of a spill of 0.5% of the total tailings.
The suit, represented by Earthjustice, was brought by Bethel’s tribe, the Orutsararmiut Traditional Native Council (OTNC), alongside five other tribes from across the Yukon-Kuskokwim (Y-K) Delta. But the ruling was only a partial victory. Gleason denied previous claims that the agencies failed to consider health impacts, and that Donlin Gold’s barging plan would violate the federal Clean Water Act.
In state court, opponents of the mine have faced additional setbacks. Most recently, the Alaska Supreme Court upheld state water permits and a right-of-way permit to construct the proposed 315-mile gas pipeline from Cook Inlet needed to power the project.
Now, Donlin Gold says it's closer than ever to beginning construction. Dahlman said that the project has launched a new feasibility study needed to attract as much as $11 billion in investment.
He told the Bethel City Council that the project would create nearly 3,000 jobs during construction.
"Once it's built, we'll be hiring ... somewhere between 7[00] and 800 people direct hire," Dahlman said.
Donlin has touted its record of local hires in dozens of Y-K Delta communities. It has what it calls a “contractual preference” to hire shareholders of the Alaska Native corporations it has partnered with that stand to reap the benefits.
The mineral rights are owned by the regional Calista Corporation. Nearly all of the surface rights are held by The Kuskokwim Corporation (TKC), representing 10 middle Kuskokwim River communities closest to the proposed mine site.
Royalty payments for Calista are estimated at $1.5 billion over the mine’s life. A percentage of this revenue would be shared among Alaska Native regional and village corporations across the state. It’s something that Donlin Gold has pointed to as a means of lifting up Indigenous communities economically through the project.
But following Dahlman’s presentation to the Bethel City Council, the benefits for Bethel itself remain unclear. Council members raised issues like increased barge traffic, cyanide transportation, land reclamation, and others. And with the local tribe, OTNC, leading the legal fight against the project, there’s still no consensus on Donlin Gold here.
