The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has approved a dredge permit for a proposed mining operation in an estuary east of Nome, a plan that has generated widespread local opposition.
The Corps’ Hawaii-based Pacific Ocean Division announced on Wednesday that it is offering a permit to IPOP LLC, a company seeking to mine for gold by dredging a site called Bonanza Channel that is part of Safety Sound.
The proposed mining site is about 25 miles east of Nome, and permitted activities will include dredging, reclamation of dredged materials and disposal of excess materials within the waters, the Corps said in its statement announcing the decision.
The company’s new plan is an improvement over a plan that resulted in a permit denial in 2022, the Corps said in its statement. The new plan would impact about 33 fewer acres than the earlier plan. A plan submitted previously proposed to impact over 170 acres.
“The Corps is committed to protecting the Nation’s aquatic resources while allowing reasonable development,” Brig. Gen. Kirk Gibbs, division engineer for the Corps, said in the agency’s statement. “Given the facts and information available, I determined that the revised project is permittable and not contrary to the public interest.”
The IPOP mining plan, which has taken different forms over recent years, started as a plan for a reality TV show built around gold-dredging activities.
It has been broadly opposed in Nome and the Bering Strait region, particularly by Native and fishing organizations. The proposed site is considered to hold important habitat for fish, marine mammals and birds, and it is heavily used for subsistence food harvests, opponents have said.
Among the opponents is Kawerak, a nonprofit tribal consortium serving people in the Bering Strait region.
“The entire Bonanza area is a subsistence use area throughout the year. People from Nome use this area year-round to gather eggs, hunt birds, fish for all species throughout the year, hunt for seals, and also for moose and bear hunting in the spring and fall as well as for berry picking and gathering greens in the summer,” Kawerak said in 2021 comments to the Corps.
IPOP and two of its investors, Edward and Elaine Abell of Lafayette, Louisiana, filed multiple lawsuits against the Corps over the dredge permit. The lawsuits were filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana, the investors’ home region.
The first of the complaints was filed on May 20, 2022, before the Corps issued its denial. That lawsuit alleged that the Corps was dragging out its decision on the mine permit. It pointed out that plaintiff Edward Abell was 84 at the time. “He, and many investors in the project, may well die before IPOP ever commences operations, and their abuse at the hands of defendants cries out for a remedy,” the complaint said.
The most recent complaint, filed on Oct. 19. 2023, alleges that the Alaska Native opponents of the mine are conspiring against IPOP and its investors, and that the Corps is illegally collaborating with them. In particular, the lawsuit singled out the Village of Solomon, the tribal government for Inupiat people with ties to a seasonally used community near the proposed mine site, and Solomon’s for-profit Alaska Native corporation.
“Those in control of the Village of Solomon are shareholders in the associated Solomon Native Corporation (an ANC), and are part of a long-term conspiracy with the larger, region-encompassing Bering Straits Native Corporation (BSNC), which plaintiffs have documented through Freedom of Information Act materials, seeking to drive Plaintiffs from Alaska and expropriate their gold and equipment,” the complaint asserts.
Originally published by the Alaska Beacon, an independent, nonpartisan news organization that covers Alaska state government.
