Open pit mine prospect alarms residents of Amanita Road off Chena Hot Springs

Plans by a small Canadian company to expand mining exploration off Amanita Road near Fairbanks for possible open pit mining have taken residents of the neighborhood along Chena Hot Springs Road by surprise.

It’s no wonder.

The Alaska Mental Health Trust Land Office in Anchorage did little to publicize the proposed lease of 680 acres to a small Canadian gold mining company. The proposal is for a three-part exploration project. If successful, exploration would probably be followed by development that would include trucking rock to Fort Knox for processing.

“There will be minimal to no ground disturbance for the first and second phases of the development plan, and very little temporary disturbance from the third phase,” the land office claimed in its Dec. 18 announcement.

I think the land office should have said there would be little disturbance from the first and second phases of the “exploration plan,” as the development plan would be contingent on what is found underground. Portions of the land are owned by the Fairbanks North Star Borough.

The document to approve exploration says nothing about the development phase, which would come later. But Avidian Gold of Toronto would enter the three-phase exploration plan with a desire to develop. It has other property nearby, closer to Fort Knox and leased from the state, that is already proposed for mining.

Fort Knox, also owned by a Canadian company, is shifting its operations to depend on more trucked-in rock, including a plan to have trucks making 88 daily roundtrips from near Tok to Fort Knox, operating 24 hours a day, starting in 2024. At that rate, there would be a truck going either direction every 8 minutes for four-and-a-half years. The state should be looking at, among other things, the impact on roads and traffic.

For the proposed Amanita lease, the trust office has failed with its public relations, damaging its community relations in the process.

“We are all shocked that the MHT thinks it is acceptable or appropriate to consider exploration for potential mining in such close proximity to people’s homes,” one resident wrote on Jan. 11.

If the exploration phase is a success, what would the next steps look like? Pretending that those questions are of no importance at this stage is a disservice to the beneficiaries of the trust and the public.

The trust posted a legal ad last month in the Daily News-Miner, but did little else to spread the the word about a major project for a residential neighborhood off a road about 5.8 miles from the start of Chena Hot Springs Road.

The Mental Health Land Trust Office in Anchorage should have shown some recognition that this is a quiet residential area, instead of appearing to assume that this is an entirely unpopulated zone with no possibility of conflicts over land uses. The assertion by the land office that “potential public concern may be interruption to existing public recreation trails” is clearly only a small part of the public concern.

The trust claimed under a listing about “due diligence” that it failed to do a site inspection because of snow cover and the COVID-19 pandemic. But that was OK because trust officials had done site inspections and aerial inspections of the “Amanita project” nearby, the mining project on state leases already in the study phase.

The approach blessed by the trust leaders would be more accurately called a “lack of due diligence.”

The trust should conduct a public hearing, by Zoom if need be, and explain the ultimate vision of Avidian Gold and what this would mean for local roads, water wells, noise, dust, surrounding property and the quality of life.

Amanita Road is pretty much a one-lane affair and the people who live along it and in nearby areas are worried about the lack of information, the potential for a big loss in property value and the end of a lifestyle they cherish. There was no discussion by the trust in its announcement of access to the property or what sort of vehicles would be used if development takes place.

Michael Abbott, CEO of the Alaska Mental Health Trust Authority, and Wyn Menefee, executive director of the trust land office, have yet to respond to an email I sent Sunday night asking what steps they took to involve the neighborhood in the decision.

Abbott responded Monday night the land trust office would respond Tuesday after the holiday.

The December document signed by Abbott and Menefee makes no mention of the nearby residential neighborhood or how it would be impacted. The trust officials appear to have looked at this as a matter of dollars and cents with no regard for neighboring property owners who are not in the mining business.

Based on the text of the document signed by Abbbot and Menefee, the public was led to believe that no one lives anywhere near the proposed mining areas off Amanita and Esro roads. There is a bird sanctuary and a residential neighborhood next to the property.

“Adjacent land use trends are almost exclusively mineral exploration and development and public recreation. The applicant leases a 14.6 km block of State of Alaska Mining Claims and an Upland Mining Lease. Beyond Avidian’s share, the Fort Knox Mine is located contiguously just to the north,” the trust alleged.

In response to this claim, one resident asked, “What about all the homes, subdivisions and families that live adjacent to these parcels? What about the Audubon Riedel Nature Reserve that is adjacent to the property?”

The trust asserts that “the highest and best use is anticipated to be mineral exploration and development. This is consistent with adjacent Trust lands at Fort Knox.”

“What about all the people that live here that have the adjacent lands? They are much closer than Fort Knox,” a resident said.

Public comment on the proposal will be accepted until Jan. 25 at 4:30 p.m.

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.

The “Amanita” project shown here, which is on state mining claims, is to the northeast of the 680 acres the Alaska Mental Health Trust Land Office plans to lease for mineral exploration to Avidian Gold.

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