"Red Devil Series"

This is a three-part series reported from a village of 20 people on the Upper Kuskokwim River that stands to gain the most from the proposed Donlin mine. Red Devil was built by mining almost 100 years ago, and now carries a toxic legacy of mine pollution. But to its residents, the Donlin Gold mine represents hope. Like so many communities in Alaska, resource extraction is at once a lifeline and a risk.

Red Devil, Alaska, Part I

Outside Rebecca Wilmarth’s kitchen window, there’s a big green well-manicured lawn. It’s an unusual sight in one of the most remote places in Alaska. Wilmarth says there’s a history of big gardens and meticulously-kept lawns in Red Devil. The gardens grow some of the only fresh produce residents will eat and then save the rest for the winter.

“You know that sounds kind of cliche but we really do, you know, think about that,” Wilmarth said.

While talking, Rebecca’s phone pings occasionally with emails. She has to string together multiple part-time jobs to make a living here. She’s the agent for Ravn, maintains the airstrip, sells fuel and occasionally puts up travelers in a small, one-room cabin next to her house.

Rebecca also sends her seven-year-old daughter to Palmer for school because Red Devil doesn’t have one.

Red Devil used to be home to Alaska’s biggest mercury mine. Before the mine started in 1933, there was no permanent village. At its height, after the mine came, the village had a bar called the Mercury Inn, a school, a clinic and a store. Miners came from nearby communities. But it shut down in 1971 and people slowly left to find other jobs. Now, there isn’t much here. The population? Roughly 20.

“So we’re just kind of in this stagnant position and the people who are here just don’t want to turn their back on this lifestyle and make a lot of sacrifices to stay here. Because they think it feel like it still beats city life,” Wilmarth said. “I love everything about it. Just the isolation, I guess, from the rest of the busyness of the rest of society,”

But, Wilmarth and other residents think the proposed Donlin Gold mine could help revive Red Devil. The mine would be built just 50 miles down the Kuskokwim River. It would employ 800 people.

Rebecca Wilmarth’s father is Dick Wilmarth, the very first Iditarod champion. He also loved Red Devil and passed that on to his daughter. “Gold miner’s daughter” is tattooed on Rebecca Wilmarth’s right arm.

The proposed mine requires a lot of infrastructure: a port, an airstrip, a power plant, a proposed 315-mile pipeline to bring gas for the power plant from Cook Inlet, a road and fiber optic cable. Donlin says it expects to mine 1.3 million ounces of gold over a 27-year period. And that period could be even longer. As part of its lease agreement with the two Native corporations, which own the land and surface rights, Donlin promised to prioritize hiring local shareholders, like people who live in Red Devil.

The Donlin mine could be one of the biggest gold mines in the world. And the project is well on its way. Last year, it secured two vital federal permits and a handful of state permits. This year, it expects to receive several more. It’s also completing its safety certification for the seven dams it plans to build. That can take up to two years. It’s unclear when they will actually start mining.

“I think that’s what this area needs right now is the development of some kind,” Wilmarth said.

Glen Morgan and his brother Joe were raised in Red Devil but left with his family once the mine closed. Glen lived in Anchorage since 1997 but returned in 2015 with his wife, Theresa, after they  retired. Glen’s parents are buried there. Glen wants to bring back basic services, like a health clinic for the people that still live there.

They would love the community to grow to a population of 200 — the same size it was when the Red Devil mine was in full swing just three miles away.

The old mine is now covered in trees and brush with a trail leading back toward where the buildings once stood. At the beginning of the trail leading to the mine site is a sign overgrown with fireweed. On a recent day, Joe Morgan hacked those out of the way.

The sign read: “Red Devil Mine, U.S. Department of Interior Bureau of Land Management. DANGER. Material at mine site may present human health risks.”

The Red Devil Mine left behind more than just the memory of good jobs. Developed before there were environmental safeguards, it also left behind pollution. The federal government has been working on a clean-up there for years.

In part two of our series, we’ll look at how Red Devil residents weigh the risks of that mercury pollution, and possible pollution from the mine, against he promise of jobs.

This is a three-part series reported from a village of 20 people on the Upper Kuskokwim River that stands to gain the most from the proposed Donlin mine. Red Devil was built by mining almost 100 years ago, and now carries a toxic legacy of mine pollution. But to its residents, the Donlin Gold mine represents hope. Like so many communities in Alaska, resource extraction is at once a lifeline and a risk.

Red Devil, Alaska, Part II

Leann Morgan stands at a makeshift table on bank of the Kuskokwim River, cutting a huge northern pike.

Leann and her father, Joe Morgan, make pike a regular part of their subsistence diet. They eat salmon, lush and sheefish. In the fall, they hunt moose.

But the pike they eat contain high levels of mercury. So high, in fact, that the federal government issued a warning to elders, children and pregnant women to limit how much they eat from the area. But Leanne and Joe Morgan aren’t worried.

“Never get sick or anything … so we’re fine,” Leanne Morgan said.

This part of the Kuskokwim winds through a mercury belt. That type of mercury is called cinnebar, and naturally infiltrates the northern pike and other fish as part of the environment.

It also makes the area ripe for mining. In 1933, when there were few mining regulations, Alaska’s biggest mercury mine started operating and created its own town. It’s called Red Devil. At the mine’s peak during 1940s through the 1960s, around 200 people lived in the town. But the mine shut down in 1971, when the price of mercury ore dropped too low to turn a profit.

After the owners left, it was discovered that the mine tailings were leaching into Red Devil Creek, a tributary of the Kuskokwim, as well as the surrounding groundwater. No one knows when they started leaking. Those tailings contain methylmercury ⁠— a particularly poisonous form that was a byproduct of the mining operations. It can cause neurological damage, especially to unborn babies. Arsenic and antimony were also found in the tailings; both can cause cancer.

Mike McCrum is the project manager for the Red Devil Mine for the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Land Management. He says the owners did remove the groundwater from the mine site, but then literally just walked away, abandoning it.

The materials left behind were toxic enough to attract federal attention. Throughout the 1980s, the Environmental Protection Agency tested the site and found that the tailings required extensive remediation.

Typically the EPA oversees these efforts under a law called the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act or CERCLA. If the owner walks away from the site, like what happened in Red Devil, the EPA can use a fund called the Superfund to pay for remediation.

But what’s happening in Red Devil is different. In 1987, federal and state agencies began examining remediation. The site is not technically a Superfund site, with access to those funds. Instead, BLM has control over coordinating state agencies and local organizations, as well as paying for the cleanup.

So far, BLM has torn down the old buildings, buried the tailings in a liner and planted a gate warning people of its health risks. It set up a weir to stop the leaching in 2014. BLM is set to come up with a final remediation proposal within the next year. But McCrum says communicating the risks from the mine to the community has been a challenge. People rely on fish food and don’t experience any immediate problems.

“Communicating risk to people is a challenge because it’s a pretty abstract concept that you’re talking to people whose food security is at risk,” McCrum said.

BLM tested the water from Red Devil Creek. It tested the fish that swam in that creek. It tested people’s hair. It tracked the northern pike and lush that swam in the Kuskokwim River and its tributaries. The state Department of Environmental Conservation and BLM tested groundwater flow around the mine and the wells of people living in the town. The results are complicated.

The northern pike that live farther up the river from the contaminated mine site showed higher mercury levels than those nearer to the old Red Devil Mine site. In fact, the BLM wrote this in a 2012 update to the Middle Kuskokwim communities:

“This report also highlighted the complexity of mercury chemistry within the aquatic food ecosystem, which includes fish species that seasonally migrate within the Kuskokwim and its tributaries.”

BLM’s McCrum says the northern pike prefer slower moving waters. Red Devil Creek, which flows into the Kuskokwim River, is very shallow and small, perfect for smaller fish but not pike. And the way the Kuskokwim River flows at the mouth of the creek is too fast for northern pike to live. McCrum says the creek dilutes the contamination before it reaches the river, and based on that, McCrum says there’s no correlation to the tailings leaking out into the river and the health of the pike.

The Kuskokwim Corp., a Native village corporation, owns the surface rights to the mine.

Vice President Andrea Gusty, says the lengthy remediation process for Red Devil is too slow, putting more residents more at risk.

“It’s been frustrating because we know the level of contamination that is in this historical mine site,” Gusty said.

Gusty is also not satisfied with the level of testing, and believes more information is needed to truly understand the risks of the mine’s contamination.

BLM says it takes a long time to gather feedback and do enough testing in order to clean up a toxic site like the Red Devil Mine.

For now, Red Devil residents aren’t too worried about mercury contamination. Joe Morgan, who caught the pike in the Holitna River, will still eat it.

Despite the Red Devil clean up, the residents are not as worried about possible contamination from the proposed Donlin Gold mine that’s about fifty miles down the river from the village. It’s a massive mine plan, but residents point out that Donlin Gold has to build it under much stricter scrutiny.

Not everyone in the region agrees. The Association of Village Council Presidents originally supported the mine, but recently withdrew its support over environmental concerns and worries it would impact subsistence animals.

In Red Devil, residents emphasize jobs. The proposed mine requires a lot of infrastructure: a port, an airstrip, a power plant, a proposed 315-mile pipeline to bring gas for the power plant from Cook Inlet, a road and fiber optic cable. Donlin says it expects to mine 1.3 million ounces of gold over a 27-year period. And that period could be even longer. As part of its lease agreement with the two Native corporations, which own the land and surface rights, Donlin promised to prioritize hiring local shareholders.

Donlin already has its major federal permits in hand, as well as some state ones, and hopes to get more of its state permits by the end of the year. Its also completing its safety certification for the seven dams it plans to build. That can take up to two years. The mining will begin after that.

With lots of optimism, Red Devil residents are beginning to put in place the skeleton of basic services for the people who live there now, and the people they expect when the mine opens. In part three, we look at the challenges of reviving an almost ghost town.