Kinross to start ore haul before advisory committee concludes its work on highway analysis

At a minimum, state transportation officials could have directly answered the simple question asked Tuesday by Patricia MacDonald, a former truck driver and a member of the committee analyzing the highway corridor on which fully loaded Kinross ore haul trucks will start running this month.

Some of the 95-foot Kinross trucks are already running from Tetlin now, but they are not loaded with 50 tons of rock. The plan is to gradually increase the number of trucks to about 60 loads per day, the company says.

The Transportation Advisory Committee—created by the Dunleavy administration under public pressure—has yet to finish its work examining the Kinross plan. MacDonald, who represents Healy Lake Village, is one of more than two dozen committee members.

She asked this of the Roads and Highways Advisory Board meeting Tuesday, attended by Transportation Commissioner Ryan Anderson and a host of other state transportation leaders: “You are putting Alaskans at risk by allowing this industrial ore haul to travel from Tetlin all the way through the corridor to Fort Knox. I would really like an answer as to why they are allowed to begin hauling when the TAC committee has not even come up with any sort of recommendations?”

In one sense, it is easy to understand why anyone employed by state government ducks that question. Gov. Mike Dunleavy doesn’t want any obstacles placed in the way of the Kinross trucking operation and the commissioner knows the company line.

Anderson continues to defend his passivity by saying he has no choice because Kinross is just another highway user and the vehicles are legal.

“One question that we get asked quite a bit is ‘Why is DOT allowing this use on the highway?’ And as the state transportation department, you know, in all reality our laws and regulations require us to address highway uses fairly and objectively. And also we don’t distinguish between commercial uses on the highway system. And so, you know, what we’ve seen so far and what’s out there operating are legal vehicles, and so that’s where we’re at,” Anderson said Tuesday.

But Kinross is not just another highway user. And the state has choices. This is not a simple matter of saying the trucks are legal and no additional state rules are needed, as the Dunleavy administration wants people to believe.

What limited steps the Dunleavy administration has taken to improve safety have been entirely due to public pressure from critics. But bureaucratic damage control is not enough.

The Kinross plan is for an industrial operation, designed to run 24 hours a day for years. Nearly everything the trucks will carry is waste rock that will be dumped to extract about 14 ounces of gold.

This is not at all similar to trucks that are delivering food, fuel, equipment, building supplies and other things that are not 99.999 percent garbage.

State regulations describe a process by which roads can be designated as industrial routes and rules can be established to benefit the public.

State regulations say the department “will, in its discretion, by regulation, designate a specified highway as an industrial use highway if its design features allow it to accommodate long or heavy loads.”

Permits and limits on operations would follow. For example, the state could limit the number of trucks and say what hours they could operate. The state could attach other operating restrictions, none of which would please Dunleavy.

When first proposed, Kinross said it would run two to four trucks per hour for up to five years.

Company officials bristled at calculations based on the high end of that range and claimed the number would be lower. It now says it will run 2.5 trucks per hour. But that figure is always subject to change.

The original “base case” was to haul 3,900 tons of rock a day to Fort Knox. The company later reduced the “base case” to 3,000 tons per day, meaning fewer truck trips.

There is nothing stopping Kinross Gold, 70 percent owner of the project, from running more trucks than the 2.5 per hour. I believe that is a public relations number.

The 3,000-ton highway delivery rate to Fort Knox “is the limiting bottleneck,” consultant John Sims wrote in a feasibility study of the project. He referred to 3,000 tons as the “chosen highway transport rate.”

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