A renovated Lutak Dock could serve as an export facility for minerals from the Yukon Territory, Yukon industry representatives told the Haines Borough Port and Harbor Advisory Committee at a March 24 meeting.
Yukon mining companies are looking for an alternative to the Skagway ore terminal, which will be decommissioned in 2023 after the Skagway Borough assumes ownership of it from the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority.
Ships could be loaded at Lutak using a containerized bulk-handling system, which wouldn’t require an ore terminal, said Kells Boland, a logistics consultant at PROLOG Canada and co-chair of the Yukon Chamber of Commerce’s joint transportation and infrastructure advisory committee, at the March 24 meeting.
Discussing potential uses of Lutak Dock with Yukon industry representatives was not listed on the harbor committee’s meeting agenda, violating the Alaska Open Meetings Act, according to borough staff. The lack of public notice sparked pushback from some community members and confusion among borough staff. Following the meeting, committee chair Terry Pardee stepped down as chair but will remain on the committee.
To remedy the violation, the borough is planning another public meeting on the same subject at a yet-to-be-determined date, again inviting Yukon industry representatives as well as other potential dock users. There will be a special planning commission meeting on April 7 to discuss the third phase of the four-phase dock design. The current phase three design would be needed to ship ore, the industry representatives said at the March 24 meeting.
The borough secured $20 million in federal funds last fall to finance phases one and two of the project. The Haines Borough Assembly last June approved the designs only for phases one and two. It passed a resolution in February expressing support for efforts to obtain full funding for the dock renovation but will have a chance to decide specifically on phase three if the issue advances past the planning commission on April 7. The borough already has set aside $2.4 million from the enterprise fund and requested $3.2 million from the state for phase three. Combining phases one through three would save about $2 million — mostly on mobilization of construction equipment — according to the borough’s estimates.
Seven Yukon industry representatives attended the port and harbor meeting and discussed the potential to export ore from Lutak for about an hour.
The harbor committee took no actions and made no recommendations, but said it would like to continue conversations with the Yukon’s transportation and infrastructure committee, which is composed of representatives from the Yukon Chamber of Commerce, Yukon Chamber of Mines and Yukon Producers’ Group.
If Yukon mines were to move ore through Haines, copper, gold and other ore concentrates would be trucked in sealed containers, stored at Lutak, lifted by mobile crane and emptied into ship holds, the representatives said. Boland identified the U.S. Army tank farm at Lutak as a potential container storage site. The industry needs tidewater port access for one mine in the short term and up to three mines within the next 10 to 15 years, Boland said.
A Yukon Producers’ Group representative told the CVN last July that Stewart, British Columbia, would likely get most of the business from Skagway if its ore terminal were decommissioned. But Boland and industry representatives told the harbor committee that Haines would be preferable due to its proximity to the Yukon.
“We’re exploring and communicating with all three communities. It’s not one or the other,” Amanda Leslie, a Yukon Producers’ Group project manager who attended the harbor committee meeting, told the CVN afterward. (The source who spoke to the CVN in July is no longer with the group.) “The most important thing is reestablishing dialogue with both Haines and Skagway, being aware of their needs, their priorities, the wishes of each respective community,” Leslie said.
Leslie said each mining company ultimately will make its own decision about where to export ore. She said she is aware of an upcoming mine in southeastern Yukon that plans to ship out of Stewart.
Mines are spread evenly across the territory, Leslie said, and several in planning stages are closer to Skagway and Haines than Stewart. Executives from three companies with Yukon mining projects — Minto Metals Corp, Fireweed Zinc and Casino Mining — attended the harbor committee meeting. The Casino Project, northwest of Whitehorse, is one of the world’s largest copper-gold deposits. It’s still in the environmental review stage but its mill is expected to process about 120,000 metric tons (or 132,000 U.S. tons) of ore each day for 22 years, according to the company’s website.
Boland said for the arrangement with Haines to work, Lutak Dock would need to be ready within two years to export concentrate from the Minto Mine, which is already in operation and currently uses Skagway as a port. (By comparison to Casino, Minto’s mill is capable of processing about 4,000 metric tons of ore per day, according to its website.)
It would ship 500 containers at a time, drawing three or four vessels each year, between June and November, the representatives said. Minto might continue to ship out of Skagway in winter but likely would need an alternate port in summer due to conflicts with cruise traffic in Skagway. Boland called 2024 “a drop-dead deadline” for having a system in place to ship ore.
Boland said the dock, to serve the Yukon mines, would need the elevated platform that’s currently included in phase three of the borough’s four-phase renovation project.
R&M Consultants in February provided the borough with a tentative phase three design different from the one presented to, but not approved by, the assembly in June 2021. Rather than create an extra acre of uplands, the current design, which is estimated to be about $5 million cheaper than the old one, includes an elevated dock platform as an additional access point to vessels, said harbormaster Shawn Bell, who presented the design to the public at the February port and harbor committee meeting.
Bell said at the March 24 meeting that on the current timeline, phases one and two could be done by the end of 2024. Permitting alone could take as long as 15 months, borough manager Annette Kreitzer told the CVN.
Phase three likely would be sufficient to serve two mines and to load half-full vessels, said Joel Shirriff, a Vancouver-based mining transportation consultant at Ausenco who is working with the Yukon government on increasing the territory’s access to tidewater ports. To serve three mines and to load vessels fully — shipping 2,500 containers at a time — would necessitate additional dock features and construction, but that scenario would be about a decade off, the representatives said.
Harbor committee members voiced excitement at the possibility of increasing commerce and tax revenue in Haines but did not take an official position on the issue.
“Joint ventures are wonderful at spreading costs. It increases employment in Haines. Obviously we can’t hire Canadians in Haines. We have to hire locals,” said committee member Fred Gray. “It’s a win-win for everybody.”
Borough assembly member and harbor committee liaison Gabe Thomas said the development would be a boon to the borough’s budget, which no longer stands to benefit from federal pandemic relief, as it has for the last two years.
Haines Chamber assistant director Andrew Letchworth called the idea to use containerized bulk handling a “game changer” and noted that there was no mention of building an ore terminal at the meeting.
“The reason why I am excited about this situation is because I believe it’s a happy medium,” he said, citing the plan to haul ore in sealed containers.
Shannon Donahue testified against the idea to truck ore through Haines and ship it from Lutak. “Turning our home into an industrial transportation corridor for Canadian ore only serves to undermine the wellbeing of our community,” Donahue said. “It starts with Minto Mine, but it’s a slippery slope to trading our community to serve foreign corporate interests.” (Donahue is employed by Southeast Alaska Conservation Council but said she was testifying only as a Haines resident.)
Environmentalists have expressed concern that trucking ore through the Chilkat Valley and loading it onto ships at Lutak could result in pollution from fugitive dust — small particulates of ore concentrate that can escape into the air while transporting loads.
Shirriff, the mining transportation consultant, said containers coming from the Yukon would be air- and water-tight and that concentrate would be exposed to air only once inside the outbound ship’s hold.
In an email to the CVN after the meeting, Donahue said that while the proposed shipment method “does appear to reduce fugitive dust, it doesn’t eliminate it, and it certainly produces more dust than not shipping ore through Lutak Dock would” because ore would be emptied from the sealed containers while being loaded onto ships.
The subject of Lutak Dock’s future will be discussed and open for public input at various meetings in the coming weeks.
Manager blames lack of transparency on miscommunication
Borough manager Annette Kreitzer said borough staff weren’t aware that the discussion between the harbor committee and Yukon industry representatives was planned until shortly before the meeting. She said the lack of notice resulted from “an unfortunate case of miscommunication.”
The discussion "should’ve been on the agenda,” said borough clerk Alekka Fullerton. “The fact that it wasn’t is troubling, and it violates our process.”
The Alaska Open Meetings Act requires that all government bodies post proper public meeting notices. It applies to entities involved in policy making, like the Haines Borough Assembly, as well as advisory bodies, like the harbor committee.
Per the state’s legal guidelines, a notice “has to provide enough information to let the public know what subjects will be covered in the meeting. If a complete agenda isn’t available at the time of posting, a summary will work until the complete agenda is available.”
“Harbor Parking Lot Vessel Storage” and “Lutak Dock Rebuild” were the only business items listed on the March 24 agenda.
Harbor committee chair Terry Pardee said he received a call late in the afternoon the day before the meeting from a representative from the Yukon who said he wanted, via Zoom, to provide the committee with information pertinent to Lutak Dock. Pardee said he didn’t know that the information would center only around ore exports, and he didn’t know “quite so many” Yukon industry representatives would attend the meeting.
“Had I gotten the information sooner and more timely, prior to the posting of the agenda, I certainly would’ve preferred that, but I did not want this opportunity to go away,” Pardee said. “I thought the information was very important and very good...Any errors on my part were mine alone.”
Pardee said he knew that proceeding with the discussion was “potentially dicey” but that the “gain was worth the risk” given the importance of the subject and the opportunity to discuss regional demand for the port with potential users from the Yukon. “It was an issue where we needed to know what they (in the Yukon) have, and they needed to know what we have,” Pardee said.
After the meeting Pardee spoke with the Mayor and agreed to step down as chair. He will remain on the committee.
Borough manager Annette Kreitzer — in a March 27 email to the Mayor, harbor committee members, Lynn CanalConservation and the Haines Chamber of Commerce — said she was disappointed that the committee continued with the discussion on the “topic of the dock without a more definitive notice to the public that the discussion would be expanded to include testimony regarding potential mining interests.”
“No one from the borough was aware that this presentation was going to be made until shortly before the meeting when the harbormaster was informed. This is an unfortunate case of miscommunication,” she wrote.
Kreitzer stressed that the borough's main focus is to fix the dock for Haines residents, not to accommodate Yukon interests.
The Haines Chamber of Commerce facilitated the discussion, first reaching out to Yukon industry representatives several months ago. Emails shared with the CVN show that the Chamber cc’d various borough staff during correspondence with Yukon industry representatives.
Chamber assistant director Andrew Letchworth apologized for not cc’ing Fullerton or Kreitzer on the official March 9 invitation to the Yukon joint transportation and infrastructure committee.
Kreitzer said she received an email from the Chamber on March 14 “suggesting that Yukon mining interests speak to the Ports and Harbors Advisory Board regarding the Lutak Dock, and I thought the idea had gone no further. It seemed to me to be an idea that put the cart before the horse in terms of the dock replacement.”
“Those involved in setting up the testimony of the Yukon mining interests may have intended to add more to the discussion of how to create more economic development opportunities in Haines, but because of lack of notice a robust discussion really couldn’t be had,” Kreitzer said.
Mayor Douglas Olerud said the borough’s Lutak Dock Design Working Group — comprised of Olerud, harbormaster Bell, public facilities director Ed Coffland, harbor committee member Fred Gray, planning commissioner Don Turner Jr. (who is also a member of the harbor committee) and Jake Eckhardt and Mike Ganey, representatives from Delta Western and Alaska Marine Lines, respectively — will hold a public meeting in the coming weeks at which residents and potential users can discuss their desires and concerns regarding the dock’s renovation and future uses.
The date for that meeting has not been set. The design group is working with borough staff on “small details,” Kreitzer said, and all recommendations it makes will go through the public process by way of the port and harbor committee, planning commission and assembly.
On April 7 the planning commission will discuss plans for phase three of the dock renovation and could make a recommendation for the assembly to take up at its April 12 meeting.
*This article has been updated to reflect that Haines Borough harbormaster Shawn Bell and public facilities director Ed Coffland are on the Lutak Dock Design Working Group.