The Fairbanks North Star Borough (FNSB) has been awarded a nearly $2.5 million grant from the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) for compressed natural gas (CNG) buses and vans to replace our current transit buses and vans with more environmentally friendly vehicles.
It’s a step in the right direction in our borough’s efforts to clean up our poor winter air quality; good news that we’re saving 120,000 gallons of diesel annually. But while taking one step forward, we’ll be taking nine steps back in 2024 if the proposed, initial 48 Kinross ore hauling trucks begin rumbling through North Pole and Fairbanks from Tok to Fort Knox. With their ore haul proposal Kinross is going to be adding 1,121,280 gallons of diesel burned per year just in our non-attainment zone. Not good news.
Here’s the math: 32 miles of Interior Alaska highways transit through our EPA Air Quality Standards Non-attainment Zone (NAZ) using the Richardson and Steese highways. Kinross is expecting four deliveries per hour of mine rock from Tetlin. Once dumped at Fort Knox, these trucks return empty creating eight trucks per hour transiting the NAZ, four full, four empties.
Eight trucks x 24 hours = 192 ore hauling 95-foot doubles per day. 192 doubles x 32 miles = 6,144 miles per day transiting through our NAZ. 6,144 miles / 2 MPG = 3,072 gallons burned in the NAZ per day. 3,072 gallons per day x 365 = 1,121,280 gallons burned per year.
The federal $2.5 million grant for gas vehicles and the projected fuel savings pale in comparison to the initial Kinross ore haul fuel usage. Our borough will suffer an initial 48, 160,000-pound, 95-foot-long, double tractor-trailer rigs, burning 1.2 million gallons of fuel annually in the Borough Clean Air non-attainment zone. It is clear that cleaning up a handful of city buses and saving 120,000 gallons of diesel but then turning around and allowing 192 ore trucks to run through town 24/7/365 will not get us where we need to be to clean up our dirty air and avoid the tightening of air quality standards. The savings created by the CNG conversion will be wiped out in less than two months and we will be no closer to cleaner air. The bottom line is that the federal EPA will not only be mandating further boroughwide restrictions and costly sanctions on our residents and businesses, but our federal highway funds may also be in jeopardy.
The Kinross proposal of 48 trucks round-tripping twice a day is merely the opening salvo. Kinross and its partner, Contango, have made it abundantly clear in print (North of 60 Mining News Jan. 14, 2021, and Nov. 16, 2021) their strategy to double production: “ ... while some of new mill feedstock will ... come from deposits on the (Fort Knox) property, the majority is expected to come from smaller but much higher grade projects along Alaska’s road, rail and river systems that can deliver high grade ore to Fort Knox.” The “first 48” is the vanguard for possibly 100s more from anywhere on the Alaska’s road, rail and river systems. The initial 192 transits through the borough might double or more.
The Manh Choh trucking proposal is being used as a shroud for what Kinross and other mining companies really have planned.
In video interviews, (Dec. 9, 2020) Rick Van Nieuwenhuyse, CEO of Contango and partner with Kinross, openly discussed other mines and rich prospects under lease or outright ownership; Shamrock (70 miles from Fairbanks near Birch Lake), Lucky Shot at Hatcher Pass by Wasilla, Triple Z, Eagle-Hona, Dome Creek and many others in “the whole picture.” As these mines come online and expand, just as Fort Knox has, clearly more and more trucks, if allowed, will certainly follow. Given that Alaska ranks 46th in the United States for rural highway fatalities and 47th in urban fatalities, this is critically unsafe.
Simple question: Why would anyone ever agree to go along with a backward, dangerous and self-serving plan like this?
Steve Hovenden lives in Fairbanks.
