Red Dog

Environmental and Community Issues

Mine and tailings impoundment

The Red Dog zinc lead mine is currently the world's largest producer of zinc. It also produces lead and silver. Kotzebue-based NANA Regional Corporation, one of a dozen regional Alaska Native corporations, owns the Red Dog mine mineral deposit. The mine is operated by Teck Cominco, a Canadian mining company. Teck Cominco is also the operator for Pogo, an underground gold mine, on the Goodpaster River in Interior Alaska.

Location
Red Dog is located 55 miles east of the North Slope Inupiaq Eskimo village of Kivalina along the Chukchi Sea coast and 40 miles from Noatak. The mine complex is in the DeLong Mountains, in a valley in the middle of the western Brooks Range.

Type of Ore and Current Production
The Red Dog deposit is a massive metal sulfide ore hosted in a Mississippian shale and associated with other sulfide-bearing exhalite rocks. Zinc, lead and iron sulfide minerals are the dominant ore minerals, with silica and, to a lesser extent, barite (barium sulfate) constituting the gangue (or waste) minerals. The Middle Fork of Red Dog Creek, now diverted by a series of ditches, flows through the main orebody.

There are four identified ore zones at Red Dog. These are the Main Pit (currently being mined), the Aqqaluk, Qanaiyaq, and Paalaaq. The Aqqaluk is currently undergoing exploratory drilling to delineate the resources and reserves. All mineral reserves and resources at the Aqqaluk deposit are minable by open pit. Paalaaq is a deep underground resource that may not be economically recoverable under present conditions. As of the 2006 annual report, the total proven and probable reserves were 68,700,000 tons of ore at 17.5 % zinc and 4.6 % lead.

In 2006, 3.2 million tonnes of reserves were removed from the main pit. Zinc grade was 20.6% and lead grade was 6.1%. 557,500 tons of zinc concentrate and 123,500 tons of lead concentrate were produced. Concentrate is trucked via a 52-mile long road to the Red Dog port where it is shipped to smelters throughout the world and about 25% of that concentrate goes to Teck Cominco's Trail Smelter in British Columbia.

Operation
Mining is done by open-pit method, averaging 9,800 tons of ore per day. Current stripping ratio is 1:1 (i.e. one ton of waste rock is mined for every one ton of ore). Because Red Dog ore type and grade varies, several benches in the pit are mined simultaneously and layered in ore stockpiles to provide homogenous feed to the mill.

Milling consists of sending the ore through two crushing plants (gyratory crusher and Semi-Autonomous Grinding mills) followed by a final grinding phase before passing on to the separation and concentration phases. This consists of a prefloat process - which removes unwanted elements from the concentrate - followed by a series of froth floatation processes that concentrate and collect first the lead, then the zinc. Resulting tailings are piped to the tailings impoundment, while the concentrates are dewatered prior to storage and transportation to the Red Dog port.

Daily ore throughput is approximately 11,000 tons at 20% zinc and 6% lead - producing zinc concentrate containing 55% zinc with 3.5 ounces/ton of silver, and lead concentrate containing 59% lead with 12 ounces/ton of silver (as of 2003).

Mine Reclamation Plan and Bond
The Red Dog Mine Reclamation Plan (1994) is currently undergoing revisions by Teck Cominco and internal review by the State of Alaska's Large Mine Project Team. This plan revision is being conducted in concert with the company's application for a solid waste permit; a solid waste permit for mine waste and tailings was not required at the time of the original mine permitting process.

As of 2003, the mine was bonded for $11,010,250 as an interim bond until the full costs for reclamation and water treatment are calculated as part of the revised reclamation plan/solid waste permit process. Preliminary estimates for the final bond, which will include costs for water treatment in perpetuity, are closer to $100 million.

Employment
In 2000, Red Dog employed 422 mine-mill workers. Touted as a major breakthrough in Native-hire agreements, the formal operating agreement between NANA and Teck Cominco required the mine to have 100 percent Native workers by 2001. That goal has not been met; currently only about 62% of the workers are NANA shareholders.