State's failure to examine Kinross trucking scheme is obvious with plan to double mine traffic from Fox to Fort Knox
The state Department of Transportation and Public Facilities, responding to clear signals from Gov. Mike Dunleavy, continues to act as if it is a partner with Kinross on the mine trucking plan, not an independent entity looking out for the public interest.
The state secretly invested $10 million in the project through the Alaska Permanent Fund and Dunleavy has made it clear he has no time for naysayers. “There is too much ‘no,’” he told the Daily News-Miner, citing this project among many others that he supports. “I need Alaska to say yes to everything.”
Kinross, a Canadian mining company, stands to make hundreds of millions from this “high margin” project over five years or so, and wants to be hauling on the highways by next year.
There are many public safety questions about turning our highways into industrial mining roads that remain intentionally unexamined by the Dunleavy administration.
The new plan to double Kinross truck traffic from Fox to the mine is the latest evidence of the pitfalls of saying yes without blinking or thinking.
The transportation department is still telling the public that Kinross plans to run its 95-foot trucks directly from the mine site near Tetlin to the Fort Knox mine off Cleary Summit on the Steese Highway. Here is the state’s FAQ about the project.
But the problem with the state’s description of the trucking route is that Kinross no longer plans to “take their proposed configuration all the way to Fort Knox Mine near MP 20 Steese Highway.”
The company decided on a major change in the trucking plan, one that contradicted previous statements to the public and local officials, fairly late in the game. Three months ago Kinross concluded that the double-trailer configuration on the 8-mile section from Fox to Cleary Summit wouldn’t work.
The company said it needed to break down the trucks to haul single trailers on that section of the Steese to avoid one of the steep and sharp sections on the climb to Cleary Summit.
This would double the number of ore trucks running on that section of the road.
Two years ago Fort Knox said the “base case” would have 4 to 8 trucks going either north or south every hour of the day, a total of 96 to 196 truck trips per day.
For political reasons, for purposes of easing community opposition, for practical reasons to improve operations, or some combination of all three, Kinross now insists it will be on the low end of that truck traffic plan.
But there is nothing in writing and no guarantee that the number of trucks won’t eventually be higher than Kinross predicted two years ago. There is a lot of money riding on this plan for the company and every reason to increase the rate of deliveries to Fort Knox.
If and when the maximum estimate from two years ago for truck traffic is reached, the section between Fox and Fort Knox would see a truck with a full or empty trailer going past every four minutes of every hour of every day for years to come.
Kinross says it hopes to avoid breaking down the trucks in Fox so that two trailers can be pulled up to Cleary Summit at once. What’s the plan? Build a new road to bypass one or more of the tight curves? What are the safety implications of the increase in truck traffic from Fox to Cleary Summit?
Kinross says “our project team” is trying to work around this road hazard and pull two trailers at once.
The Department of Transportation should be “our project team” for Alaskans, demanding answers for the public. But that won’t happen as long as Dunleavy says yes to everything.
This is from page 28 of a 32-page document submitted to a state transportation advisory committee examining issues related to the trucking project. That Kinross changed its plans in March for the Fox-Fort Knox section is noteworthy.
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