Developers are optimistic about the potential for a beach-sand-mining operation in northern Southeast Alaska.
The Alaska Mental Health Trust Land Office claims good results from its second season of exploring Icy Cape, on the Gulf of Alaska between Yakutat and Cordova.
When mountains erode, they shed tiny particles of rock. They’re washed into streams to be deposited in lakes, deltas or the ocean.
In the Gulf of Alaska, strong waves toss them back on shore to help form beaches.
When those mountains contain veins of rare minerals, those sediments may have enough value to be worth mining.
That’s what’s happening at Icy Cape, where crews are drilling into the beach to see what – and how much — is there.
“There is gold, there’s zircon, there’s garnet, there’s epidote, there’s some platinum,” said Wyn Menefee, acting executive director of the land office of the Alaska Mental Health Trust Authority.
Its Icy Cape property includes about 25 miles of beach, plus forested uplands as wide as 2.5 miles. Those forests cover layers of sand and could be developed.
It’s an isolated area, about 75 miles west-northwest of Yakutat and nearly twice that distance east-southeast of Cordova.
“Right now, we’re in the exploration phase, which is determining what the resource is now, the lay of it … and we’re not at the point of identifying how we’re actually going to mine it,” he said.
About a year ago, the trust’s board allocated $2 million toward the project.
Officials said the new source of income could surpass all of its other efforts, bringing in hundreds of millions of dollars annually.
A work crew of about 16 spent last summer drilling cores from the sands, which stretch as far as 100 feet below the surface in some areas. Menefee said those samples are being analyzed.
The results have caught the attention of potential investors.
“We already have international companies that are interested in the project. They’ve already been visiting the site. They’ve already been trying to check out the resource and trying to see what quality it is,” he said. “This is a continual process.”
Land trust officials will discuss their plans for mining Icy Cape at meetings in two nearby communities.
The first is 6:30 p.m. Nov. 1 at Yakutat High School. The second is 6:30 p.m. Nov. 2 at the Cordova Center.
Gold and platinum’s value is obvious.
The other minerals have industrial uses as sand-sized particles.
The Trust Land Office manages its property to support mental health services for Alaskans.
It usually does that by leasing property or selling resources, such as timber, for others to harvest or extract.
But in this case, the agency is putting its own money into exploration and – possibly – development.
“We could potentially lease it out to an entity. We could lease it out to multiple entities. We could potentially go into a joint venture with entities,” he said. “There’s a lot of options that could be on the table.”
Menefee said further exploration is needed to determine whether there’s enough value to develop.
He expects that to take several more years.
Menefee said it will be a placer-mining operation, which sifts through material near the surface, which would impact the environment less than mining into bedrock. It will also take advantage of existing roads, left over from earlier development.
But the potential project still raises concerns, especially about salmon habitat.
“Virtually every river and creek within the proposed area is listed on the anadromous streams catalog,” said Guy Archibald, staff scientist for the Southeast Alaska Conservation Council.
He worries, because a dozen streams and rivers flow through the land that could be mined. Like most nearby waterways, they’re short and their mouths are sometimes protected by sandbars or spits.
Archibald said they’re susceptible to the gulf’s frequent heavy winds and waves.
“I’m just concerned if they start removing these barrier sands, basically strip-mining them, that it’s going to expose the foot of these rivers to massive erosion during the winter storms and create a barrier to fish passage,” he said.
The Mental Health Trust Land Office plans to harvest more than minerals from the site.
It’s sold roughly 50 million board feet of timber to Sealaska Corp., Southeast’s regional Native corporation.
Menefee said he expects Sealaska to begin logging next year.
The property is within the boundaries of the Yakutat Borough. Officials there did not respond to requests for comment by deadline.
A somewhat similar proposal was made by an out-of-state company for mining beach sands in and near Yakutat about six years ago. That effort ended after initial mineral values could not be confirmed.
Editor’s note: KTOO’s building sits on land leased from the Alaska Mental Health Trust Authority. KTOO has also applied for and received occasional grants for special reporting projects from the authority.
