Cominco criticized

IQALUIT — Inuit who live near Alaska’s largest mine are calling on the mine’s owner, Cominco Ltd., to clean up its act.

The Kivalina village council last month passed a resolution demanding an environmental audit of the mine and asking state officials to close a haul road where contamination has occurred.

The council passed the resolution after the U.S. National Park Service issued a report in May showing that levels of lead and zinc near the road exceed those found in “severely polluted” regions of Europe and Russia.

The 40-kilometre haul road links the mine to a port on the Chukchi Sea. Each year trucks carry 1.1 million tons of lead-zinc concentrate over the road. Dust from the concentrate apparently escapes from the trucks, polluting the surrounding land.

About two kilometres north of the port is an area traditionally used by Kivalina’s Inuit.

“They’re picking berries and greens, and along with them, they’re taking metals at toxic levels,” said Colleen Koenig, Kivalina’s tribal administrator, in an interview with the Anchorage Daily News.

In people, lead and zinc cause cancer, kidney damage and developmental retardation.

Located in an Inupiat region of northwestern Alaska, the Red Dog Mine is the largest lead-zinc mine in the world.

Cominco is also the owner of the Polaris lead-zinc mine near Resolute Bay.