Energy & Mining

For many years, tribes in Southeast Alaska have been concerned with nearby mining projects across the Canadian border in British Columbia. The headwaters of three major rivers – the Taku near Juneau, the Stikine near Wrangell, and the Unuk near Ketchikan — are in B.C. but flow into Southeast watersheds.

Louie Wagner lives in Metlakatla near the mouth of the Unuk River. He’s concerned about the Eskay Creek Mine, a large gold and silver mine up a Unuk tributary.

“There (are) already two mines working and the third one which could be the second to third largest mine in the world,” Wagner said. “And where they’re going to put their retaining wall for their mining tailings is pretty scary.”

Eskay Creek Mine was an underground mine producing gold from 1994-2008. The mine’s new owner, Skeena Resources, wants to start again using open-pit extraction that it estimates will produce 2.8 million of ounces of gold and 80 million ounces of silver over a dozen years. The company plans to build a tailings dam to hold millions of tons of mine waste — forever.

Subsistence users, like Wagner, believe the Unuk River’s ecosystem is too vulnerable.

“During the spring and summer the water is so shallow, it really can’t handle any pollution,” he said. “Doggone, we lose all our wildlife. It’ll be lost forever.”

Wagner is part of the Southeast Alaska Indigenous Transboundary Commission (SEITC), which represents 17 tribes in Southeast and has been fighting the mine’s development and others like it. This month, the commission requested a pause in mining operations, fearing the mine’s waste could contaminate the river. Their worries stem from past events. Ten years ago, a tailings dam broke at B.C.’s Mount Polley mine, spilling millions of gallons of mine waste into a nearby river that supported Southeast Alaska salmon runs. The B.C. government declined to sanction the mining company over the spill.

According to the commission, the B.C. government hasn’t heard their concerns. The commission has been working with attorneys from the nonprofit environmental group Earthjustice. Mae Manupipatpong is one of the attorneys.

“Really the crux of this case is just to ensure that these SEITC member tribes who could be potentially impacted by this project have a voice in the process and are not sidelined just because they are on the other side of an arbitrarily drawn border,” Manupipatpong said.

In an email, David Karn with B.C.’s Ministry of the Environment declined to comment writing that “it would be inappropriate for government to provide any further commentary at this time,” because the proceedings are ongoing.

Earthjustice is looking to a Washington D.C. based human rights organization to help out. They submitted a 47-page request to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to pause the Eskay mine. The request calls the mine’s impacts “serious” and “a foreseeable, imminent, and significant threat.”

Manupipatpong said B.C. law requires informed consent from Alaska’s nearby tribes because their ancestors have historically used the Unuk watershed.

“We’re hoping that the commission can pressure B.C. and Canada to do the right thing,” she said. “Of course, as an international body, they can’t force them to, but we are attempting to use this mechanism just as another way to get B.C. to listen.”

The legality of the transboundary mines has long been controversial. Six years ago, the tribal commission filed a 215-page petition with the Human Rights Commission asking the group to investigate transboundary mines. Then, two years later, they filed another petition focused on six mines near the Taku and Unuk rivers. The Human Rights Commission agreed to look into the matter and found last year that the transboundary mines could violate the rights of Southeast tribes. This February, the tribes submitted another request to the commission asking for a formal hearing. Now, Southeast tribes want the Eskay Creek Mine paused.

The state of Alaska has put the issue on the back burner. During former Governor Bill Walker’s administration, Lt. Governor Byron Mallot was tasked with seeking better communication with B.C. In 2015, Alaska and B.C. signed a memorandum of understanding to increase the state’s role in transboundary mine decisions. However, those discussions haven’t continued – at least not publicly.

A few years ago, the tribes conducted a study documenting their ancestral use of the watershed. It was financed by international conservation group, Re:wild. Since then, Re:wild has been backing the tribes’ efforts. Re: wild works in over 80 countries and touts well-known actor Leonardo Dicaprio as a founder. Nina Hadley is also with the organization.

“We’re particularly interested in protecting the Alaska – British Columbia transboundary region because it’s among North America’s top ecological hotspots,” Hadley said.

Re:wild credits the region’s Indigenous populations for safeguarding biodiversity for thousands of years. Hadley said that’s one they support “deep consultation” between Canada and the downriver tribes.

“What I mean by that is a formal dialogue between the tribes and the B.C. government that aims to build trust, that aims to build respect, and aims to build that shared responsibility. That kind of consultation is just not happening.”

Time is limited — Skeena Resources completed a feasibility study last year and is waiting on the government to release an environmental assessment. BC already has an agreement with the Canadian tribe, Tahltan Central Government, which owns the territory near the mine.

The board of Homer Electric Association, or HEA, unanimously approved a purchase contract on Aug. 13 with Renewable IPP, a power producer that’s built several large solar farms in the state.

Jenn Miller is the CEO of Renewable IPP. She said the company is working to give Alaskans energy options beyond natural gas.

“When we started the company, our mission was to not only diversify Alaska’s energy generation mix, but to do it in a way that actually reduces energy costs for Alaskans,” Miller said.

The path to get the project approved is years in the making.

Renewable IPP has been working with HEA to build a solar farm on the Kenai Peninsula since 2021. They previously considered a site in Sterling before settling on the current location. Miller said they expect to finish construction by 2028.

“While folks might say, ‘Man, can’t you move faster?’” she said, “you know, we spent three years working it, and I think without that level of due diligence, you wouldn’t have a project that delivers value on so many fronts like you do with this Puppy Dog Lake Project.”

The Puppy Dog Lake Project in Nikiski would be the largest solar farm in Alaska. Once it’s built, the farm could produce up to 30 megawatts, which is enough to power about 9,000 homes where the average household uses about 550 kilowatt hours a month. Renewable IPP also built the state’s current largest solar farm in Houston, which produces 8.5 megawatts of electricity — less than a third of the power the Nikiski project is expected to.

The purchase agreement comes as Alaska’s railbelt faces a looming shortage of natural gas, with utilities looking for ways to import natural gas.

Since Renewable IPP set its sights on the peninsula, the Kenai Peninsula Borough Assembly also approved property tax exemptions for independent power producers.

The new solar farm would double the amount of renewable energy the region uses from about 12% to 24%, according to HEA. Keriann Baker oversees strategy for the utility, and she said the contract will allow them to purchase electricity for less than what they currently pay for power. But, Baker said the utility continues to support developing natural gas.

“We’d like to see some policies like royalty relief that makes it easier for producers here, because a strong and thriving natural gas environment is healthy for everyone, but at the same time, we also want to protect our members responsibly from the volatility that we’re seeing in the fuel market, and we want to diversify,” she said, “we just don’t want to do it in a way that provides rate shock to our members.”

In addition to solar energy, the board also approved replacing an old, inefficient gas turbine at the power plant in Nikiski. The utility doesn’t expect the replacement to happen until late 2027 or early 2028. Once both projects are online, Baker said they could cut about one sixth of the natural gas currently being used.

HEA’s board threw out its old energy portfolio goal at the end of last year, which was to have 50% of energy coming from renewable sources by 2025. They updated the utility’s strategic plan to simply diversify its energy sources instead.

Baker said HEA is looking at other renewable energy sources outside of solar to accomplish that at the lowest cost to ratepayers.

“Really it’s anything right now. We’ve talked to tidal groups. We’ve talked to geothermal groups. We’ve talked to nuclear groups. We’ve talked to wind groups. I mean, we really are an all of the above utility,” She said.

HEA currently has an agreement with GeoAlaska, which is collecting data on Augustine Island to see if it’s possible to connect geothermal energy to the peninsula and beyond.

While the project and contract costs aren’t public until both parties finalize paperwork with the Regulatory Commission of Alaska, Miller said they received a $2 million grant from the Alaska Energy Authority that’s bringing down overall costs for ratepayers. They expect to finish the filing in the next couple months.

Southeast Conference and the Juneau-based nonprofit Alaska Heat Smart have received a $38.6 million federal grant to help homeowners in Southeast and Southcentral coastal Alaska buy electric heat pumps to replace traditional fossil-fuel based heating systems.

AK Heat Smart has already helped to get heat pumps in 1,000 households across the region. This new infusion of money, which came in an announcement from the Environmental Protection Agency last week, will “supercharge” those efforts.

“It was, you know, definitely a feeling of shock,” said Andy Romanoff, Alaska Heat Smart’s executive director. “Then a little little bit of terror at the same time, which soon translated into excitement.”

Romanoff says the region is poised for more heat pump installations.

“We like to say coastal Alaska, from Ketchikan to Kodiak, is sort of the Goldilocks zone for heat pumps,” he said.

On Alaska’s southern coast, winters are not too cold and summers aren’t too hot, so heat pumps can easily maintain comfortable temperatures. And communities like Juneau, Sitka and Ketchikan have clean, renewable electricity in the form of hydropower, while Kodiak combines hydropower with wind energy. When heat pumps tap into those grids, they’re essentially emissions-free.

But even when they run on diesel-generated electricity, heat pumps can save homeowners up between 25% to 50% on heating bills when compared to traditional oil-based heating systems.

“That’s a really big lift, especially in our rural communities,” said Robert Venables, executive director of Southeast Conference. “And that is one of the primary focuses of this project, where over half the funds are really intended to those small rural villages that struggle with heating costs.”

The new funding will establish the Accelerating Clean Energy Savings in Alaska’s Coastal Communities Program, administered by Southeast Conference and AK Heat Smart, with help from Alaska Municipal League. The program will dole out financial incentives for heat pumps in communities from Ketchikan to Kodiak. Homeowners will be eligible for between $4,000 up to $8,500, depending on household income, to put towards a heat pump.

The program proposal was selected from more than 300 applicants nationwide who submitted bids under the EPA’s Climate Pollution Reduction Grant program, which ultimately divvied up $4.3 billion dollars total to states, local governments and a tribe for 25 projects that will cut down on the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions.

The biggest potential hurdle to this program’s success, Romanoff says, may be the workforce. There’s money for heat pumps, but there’s not really enough people to install them. He hopes more HVAC professionals, plumbers, electricians and even companies that have traditionally serviced oil boilers will go all-in on heat pumps, following this funding announcement.

“This is a chance to either grow a business, start a business, move into the space and recognize that this is where things are going, especially with this kind of infusion of money,” he said. “Now is a great time to get on the train and go for the ride with us, because we’re leaving the station.”

The program is expected to be officially up and running sometime next spring.

Correction: A previous version of this story characterized the new program as a rebate program, which would give refunds for heat pumps after purchase. Instead, homeowners will receive direct financial incentives ahead of purchase.

A federal judge is sending Interior Department officials back to the drawing board after concluding a Cook Inlet oil and gas lease sale didn’t adequately consider the possible impacts on endangered beluga whales in the area.

The ruling temporarily suspends a lease held by dominant Cook Inlet producer Hilcorp. The privately held Texas-based oil and gas company won a 5,693-acre lease in a 2022 sale.

Hilcorp was the only bidder in the lease sale, which was mandated by the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. At the insistence of West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin, that climate-focused federal law also included provisions mandating oil and gas lease sales in Cook Inlet and the Gulf of Mexico.

A coalition of Alaska-based and national environmental groups challenged the Cook Inlet lease sale. They argued the Interior Department agency that offered the sale had not taken a hard enough look at the possible impacts of drilling on the endangered population of roughly 300 beluga whales that live in Cook Inlet. Oil and gas production involves loud undersea noises from things like piledriving, drilling and vessel traffic, and the groups argued that can interfere with belugas’ echolocation.

U.S. District Judge Sharon Gleason agreed, but she stopped short of vacating the lease sale entirely. She ordered the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management to come up with a supplemental environmental analysis and a range of alternative lease arrangements that better account for the possible impacts on Cook Inlet beluga whales.

“In sum, the Court finds that BOEM failed to consider a reasonable range of alternatives at the leasing stage in violation of [the National Environmental Policy Act] because it failed to consider any alternative that would offer for lease a reduced number of blocks that would meaningfully reduce overall impacts, could feasibly meet the purpose and need of Lease Sale 258, and would better allow for ‘informed decision-making and informed public participation,’” Gleason wrote in the 49-page order.

That could ultimately force the Interior Department to shrink or cancel Hilcorp’s lease, said Earthjustice attorney Carole Holley, who represented the Center for Biological Diversity, the Natural Resources Defense Council, Cook Inletkeeper, Alaska Community Action on Toxics and the Kachemak Bay Conservation Society.

“This ruling just confirms that the Inflation Reduction Act is far more limited in scope than industry and its allies, and in this case, the state of Alaska, have been pushing, and it does not override NEPA, or our other bedrock environmental laws,” Holley said by phone.

The National Environmental Policy Act is a Nixon-era law that requires federal agencies to evaluate the possible environmental impacts of their actions. Earthjustice and a variety of conservation groups are also challenging similar lease sales mandated by the Inflation Reduction Act in the Gulf of Mexico.

Though the state of Alaska and federal government often clash on resource development, Alaska intervened in the case to support the lease sale. Department of Law Communications Director Patty Sullivan said in a prepared statement that the state was disappointed by the decision.

“In 2022 Congress sought to provide certainty for this overdue and long awaited lease sale,” Sullivan said. “The state is disappointed with the continued uncertainty in leasing caused by the court’s order, which is counter to the intent of Congress to provide certainty.”

A spokesperson for the Alaska office of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management did not respond to a phone call seeking comment. The agency manages oil and gas activity in federal waters, which generally begin three miles offshore. Most Cook Inlet oil and gas production occurs onshore or in state waters.

Hilcorp is the only company with active federal leases in Cook Inlet, though none of its 15 federal leases were producing oil or gas as of January 2024, according to Interior Department data. Hilcorp did not respond to a phone call seeking comment.

Oil and gas industry analysts point to long-term trends, including rising renewable energy production and higher production costs, as reasons for lackluster interest in recent oil and gas lease sales.

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management will be required to update the court on its progress on a supplemental environmental analysis in six months, the judge ruled.

When hooligan start running in Southeast Alaska at the end of winter, the Wagner family heads to the mouth of the Unuk River.

Tazia Wagner steers the skiff as her uncle throws a weighted cast net into the muddy water. He hauls up a net full of wriggling, oily little fish. They’re aiming to fill five five-gallon buckets. That’s their hooligan allotment under federal regulations for subsistence in the river. It used to be a lot higher, until the population collapsed around 2004. The Wagners blame that collapse on mining operations that started upriver in the 1990s.

After the buckets are filled, they take them back to the Melodee Dawn, the family’s old commercial seiner.

It’s docked near a rising sun petroglyph painted onto the rocks above the river. Tazia’s grandfather Louie Wagner says that sun is thousands of years old and is a family crest of their ancestors, the Tlingit brown bear clan, or Teikweidí.

“It’s not just fish,” Tazia says of her family’s legacy on the Unuk, and what’s at stake. “It’s a loss of cultural identity and a loss of connection to the land and to our people.”

To save what’s left of this hooligan run for future generations, the Wagner family helped form the Southeast Alaska Indigenous Transboundary Commission, or SEITC. It’s currently a coalition of 17 tribes with the goal of securing a seat at the table in how proposed mining projects are managed on Canadian soil if they directly impact watersheds in Alaska.

In April, British Columbia’s ministry of the environment sent the SEITC a letter in response to their request for consultation on the Eskay Creek mine, a large gold mine at the headwaters of the Unuk. It was in production in the ‘90s but was eventually shuttered. The SEITC say the lower Unuk River is still recovering from the downstream impacts. Now, a Canadian mining company is in the permitting stage for reopening the mine. Skeena Resources, Ltd, the company in charge of the project, said the mine is “extremely high-grade” and could produce up to 2.8 million ounces of gold and 80 million ounces of silver in a little over a decade.

Guy Archibald, SEITC’s director, said there is a lot of administrative language about statutes and process in the letter, but the way he read it was simple.

“Different groups of Indigenous people, apparently, are only eligible for different levels of human rights,” Archibald said.

Essentially, the letter said that British Columbia is developing a process for consulting with US tribes that would be “distinct” and “differentiated” from Canada tribes.

Esther Reese, SEITC’s president, said it felt like a continuation of a “colonial divide-and-conquer” tactic. She said the tribes across the border were their neighbors and equals before their ancestral homelands were split by an international boundary, which now feels like a wound.

David Karn represents the Environmental Assessment Office of British Columbia’s Ministry of the Environment. He didn’t agree to a recorded interview but sent a long email response. Karn said in the email that the province’s goal is to honor the Canadian Crown and “act with good faith to provide meaningful consultation appropriate to the circumstances.”

Karn also said that the tribes across the Canadian border are interested in being part of deciding what that consultation for SEITC will look like. Those tribes include the Tahltan, whose territory encompasses the headwaters of the Unuk and Eskay Creek, the site of the proposed gold mine the SEITC are pushing back against. The Tahltan tribal government has publicly supported the mine.

Archibald said that time is not on SEITC’s side here. While British Columbia’s tribal consultation policy is being developed, Archibald expects Eskay Creek to go into the environmental application stage. That’s one step before a lease is granted.

“And so they kind of skipped over the whole idea that the Southeast Alaska tribes do have rights that need to be recognized,” said Archibald.

The coalition’s greatest leverage comes from the Desautel case, a 2021 Canadian Supreme Court decision that set the precedent that Indigenous people who live outside of Canada can be granted the same rights as those in the country if their traditional territory lay within what is now Canada.

“I think if we interpret Desautel, it’s very clear from the evidence we’ve submitted that we meet the threshold legal test for recognizing SEITC and its tribes as protected under the Canadian Constitution,” said Ramin Pejan, an attorney for Earthjustice, a nonprofit environmental law group representing the SEITC.

Earthjustice and the SEITC believe British Columbia’s policy is in direct opposition to the Desautel decision. And they have since been joined by the Lummi nation in Washington, who say that British Columbia is expanding a large port on a river that threatens their fisheries.

“Although this is an issue of Indigenous rights in which Lummi, Alaskan and many First Nations find common cause,” Lummi Nation Chairman Anthony Hillaire said in a prepared statement, “it also affects every person who lives here and who depends on the clean waters, the rivers, and the fish of this region.”

Meanwhile, SEITC and British Columbia are in the briefing stages of a potential case with the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights. The tribal coalition submitted a petition in 2020 accusing Canada of violating their human rights, including their right to a healthy environment on the Unuk River and the international commission accepted it for further review.

Archibald said the next steps for SEITC and the Lummi Nation are clear.

“We’re going to push back in every administrative way possible,” he said. “Is this eventually leading to a lawsuit? Very possibly. But we would like BC to do the right thing.”

Hooligan grease is made by fermenting and cooking down tons of hooligan. It’s an important food culturally for Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian peoples. Largely because, as Tazia’s mom Lee Wagner says, it’s delicious. She describes it as rich and fishy, like an umami butter.

The family called it “liquid gold.” But further up the river, there is real gold. And the Wagners say that’s the problem. It’s why they helped form the SEITC.

“We thought we were kind of alone in all of the effects of our subsistence and our cultural rights and our way of living being slowly stripped away,” said Lee Wagner. “But we’re discovering that we’re not the only ones, and that’s really, really scary.”

The five buckets they filled today won’t be enough to make grease.

“Not at all. Maybe a little drop,” Lee Wagner laughed.

But Tazia Wagner chimed in to say that the hooligan represent more than that. They mean ancestral rights, food sovereignty, agency.

She’s sitting in the captain’s chair of the Melodee Dawn, her grandfather’s chair. The evening view out the pilothouse windows was a pod of sea lions. Behind them, snow-capped mountains and the yawning mouth of the Unuk.

“It’s to feed, not only ourselves and our bodies, but also our souls, and to be able to share all of that with each other — that’s that connection,” she said. “It’s really, really frightening to think about how one day without any of this, how it would look for any of us, Native or non-Native. I don’t know what that is supposed to look like.”

A group of North Slope cities, tribes and Alaska Native corporations is challenging new federal restrictions on oil development in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska.

Voice of the Arctic Iñupiat filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Anchorage last week that takes aim at a Biden administration rule completed in May. The rules tightens environmental restrictions on development in the NPR-A, an area of federal land the size of Indiana.

The lawsuit says that the Bureau of Land Management rule effectively confers wilderness status, the highest level of environmental protection, to 13.1 millions acres that were previously designated for protection, and bars leasing on another large swath.

The advocacy organization is largely funded by the Arctic Slope Regional Corporation and the North Slope Borough. It has been clamoring against the rule for months. Its campaign may have received a boost with a U.S. Supreme Court opinion last week called Loper Bright. It removed some of the latitude government agencies had to impose regulations on matters not specified in law.

Voice of the Arctic Iñupiat says the people of the North Slope benefit from oil development, primarily through local taxes on the industry.

“These tax receipts provide the vast majority of revenue for the North Slope Borough, which is then used to provide a wide range of essential public services,” the lawsuit says, “including sewer, water, heat, sanitation, schools, clinics, hospitals, wildlife and fisheries management and research, infrastructure, and social and cultural programs.”

The group says the Biden administration’s environmental restrictions threaten to reverse progress that has improved their lives.

Many environmental groups hailed the Biden administration rule for the Reserve. They said it would protect birds, wildlife and other resources important to subsistence. The protections in the rule helped lessen their anger at President Biden for allowing ConocoPhillips to proceed with Willow, a large oil development underway in the NPR-A.

The Center for Biological Diversity, on the other hand, says the rule doesn’t go far enough because it still allows oil and gas development on about half of the Reserve.

“This could potentially result in the additional extraction of hundreds of millions of barrels of oil and subsequent hundreds of millions of metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions,” said Cooper Freeman, Alaska director for the Center for Biological Diversity. “The planet, the Arctic, Arctic wildlife and communities across Alaska just can’t withstand that level of destruction from climate change.”