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ACWA and local conservation groups continued throughout the year to work with the Chilkat Indian Village of Klukwan in opposing the Palmer Project, the copper-zinc mining development in the upper Chilkat Valley. The exploratory effort…

Three Alaska conservation organizations filed a complaint this week with securities regulators in Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia alleging statements from Constantine Metal Resources Ltd. (CMR) in regard to its Palmer project, located on a tributary of the Chilkat River near Haines, Alaska and the Tlingit village of Klukwan, are not “full, true and plain” and leave out material information, thus violating securities regulations.

For 2,000 years, Jones Hotch’s ancestors have fished Alaska’s Chilkat River for the five species of salmon that spawn in its cold, clean waters… Now Hotch fears a proposed mining project could end that way of life.

For more than a decade, Constantine Metals Resources (CMR) has played a public relations game with the communities of Haines and Klukwan, posing as a caring, controlling interest in the proposed copper-zinc mine known as the Palmer Project. The goal was to convince us that the company’s concern for the Chilkat River Watershed and our rivers, fish, eagles, and our way of life would guide the development of the mine and protect everyone’s interests into the distant future.

Kuiper Report on Palmer Project Economic Analysis

A major win for the Clean Water Act (CWA) at the U.S. Supreme Court for protecting waters in Alaska and the whole nation!  By a 6-3 margin, SCOTUS affirmed a 9th Circuit decision in the “Maui” case, which requires a surface water discharge permit when pollutants released into groundwater are likely to contaminate nearby surface waters.

Alaska’s Department of Environmental Conservation remands the Palmer Project wastewater permit. Read the letter from the DEC to SEACC in regards to the remanding of the permit.

The Environmental Protection Agency has fined Couer Alaska over half a million dollars for wastewater violations at the Kensington mine.

Read SEACC’s comments to the Alaska Department of Natural Resources in regards to the proposed Waste Management Permit for Constantine’s proposed mining operations in the Chilkat Valley.

This letter was written to the Alaska Department of Natural Resources by ACWA in regards to the Constantine mining permit. View the full letter here.

ACWA leads the effort to stop Constantine Metal Resources the DOWA Metals and Minerals Corporation from polluting the waters that flow through Alaska’s Chilkat Bald Eagle Preserve, the greatest gathering place for bald eagles on Earth.

State refuses to fulfill clean water act mandate. A twenty-year battle to force Alaska to follow a fundamental requirement of the Clean Water Act may finally be at hand.

The “Dilution Solution to Pollution” remains the greatest challenge to the goals of the clean water act.

Read this article by Steven Hume posted in the Vancouver Sun regarding the fight to protect the Chilkat Valley from mining operations.

The Chilkat River has impressive runs of five species of wild salmon.  Every year hundreds of thousands of sockeye, coho, king, pink and chum salmon return from the Pacific Ocean and make their way back to the Chilkat and its tributary streams where they were spawned four years before.

Read this article from the National Observer regarding the Constantine exploratory mining operation in the Chilkat River Valley.