Mining company balks, Mental Health Trust cancels Amanita mining exploration lease plan

Avidian Gold withdrew its proposed lease for a mining exploration project off Amanita and Esro roads Wednesday after widespread objections from neighborhood residents.

The Alaska Mental Health Trust Land Office canceled the finding that the proposed lease was in the best interest of the trust. Stopping this now was the right decision.

The proposal showed a lack of due diligence by the trust, which had failed to acknowledge that people live in the vicinity of the 680 acres that would have been set aside for a three-part mining exploration program. And the people in that neighborhood were not informed about the plan, leading to grave uncertainty about the future and quality of life in that part of the community.

The trust land office in Anchorage also failed to publicize the proposal aside from a legal ad in the Daily News-Miner, a notice that attracted little attention in the area.. Many residents heard about the plan with about a week remaining in the public comment period.

The residents near Amanita and Esro roads, as well as all Alaskans, need to hear from the trust land office about what went wrong with this process and how the trust intends to improve the situation.

Avidian, a small company based in Toronto, has other projects in the area and has said its intentions are that ore from mining sites could become a source of supply for the Fort Knox mine, owned by Kinross, a larger Canadian company.

Kinross said it had no contracts or discussion with Avidian about Fort Knox getting ore supplied by truck. But this was very early in the process.

Fort Knox is expected to have excess capacity to handle ore, according to articles in the mining press, a factor that has been part of the strategy for Avidian and other companies. Kinross is already planning to being trucking ore from Tok to Fort Knox, running 88 round trips per day.

“Without the need to outline a project large enough to support the building of a gold recovery and tailings disposal system, the Kinross Alaska strategy is changing how gold exploration companies evaluate and explore road-, rail- and river-accessible assets across much of Alaska,” North of 60 Mining News said this week.

“The most intriguing potential source of ore for the Kinross Alaska mill could be at Freegold Ventures Ltd.'s Golden Summit property immediately north of Fort Knox.”

“Another junior, Avidian Gold Corp., is exploring the Amanita and Amanita NE properties south and east of Fort Knox.”

Neighborhood residents said Wednesday that while the Mental Health Trust proposal, which is not the same as the Amanita and Amanita NE prospects, has been canceled, they still intended to submit comments to the trust land office about how this proposal was handled.

Comments can be submitted to the Alaska Mental Health Trust Land Office at 2600 Cordova Street, Suite 201, Anchorage, AK 99503, or by fax (907) 269-8905 or email to mhtlo@alaska.gov.