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US Federal Court grants injunction halting EPA process against Alaska’s Pebble

Northern Dynasty Minerals' Pebble project

Northern Dynasty Minerals' Pebble project

25th November 2014

By: Leandi Kolver

Creamer Media Deputy Editor

  

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JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – The US Federal District Court has granted the Pebble Limited Partnership’s (PLP’s) request for a preliminary injunction in its litigation against the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), PLP parent company Northern Dynasty Minerals reported on Tuesday.

The EPA in February announced that it would start a regulatory process under Section 404c of the Clean Water Act to determine whether to preemptively veto the Pebble project, or whether, and how, to establish restrictions on its development.

The decision followed a report in January that found large-scale mining, as would take place at the Pebble copper/gold/molybdenum project, in south-west Alaska, would pose serious risks to salmon and native cultures in the region.

Northern Dynasty at that time condemned the EPA's action, stating that the agency was aiming to preemptively block the project – billed as one of the largest remaining undeveloped base metal and precious metal resources in the world –  without allowing it to go through the established permitting and environmental review process.

PLP CEO Tom Collier explained that while the injunction granted on Tuesday did not resolve the company’s claims that the EPA pursued a biased and predetermined 404c veto initiative against Pebble by not complying with the requirements of the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA), it did block EPA from taking any further steps in the 404c process, until a final decision on the merits of the FACA case had been issued.

“This means that, for first time, EPA's march to preemptively veto Pebble has been halted,” said Collier – a US regulatory lawyer and former chief of staff in the Department of Interior, who was appointed earlier this year to lead the permitting of the project.

He noted that PLP had raised concerns regarding FACA violations — including that the EPA “secretly colluded” with environmental activists to bring about a predetermined result before undertaking any scientific inquiry — based on the select documents that the EPA had disclosed in response to Freedom of Information Act requests.

“We know these are only the tip of the iceberg. We now have the opportunity to conduct discovery regarding all relevant documents and to conduct depositions of the key people involved in the EPA process. The documents we have been able to review thus far disclose more than 500 contacts between the EPA and activists. We fully expect that once we have access to all documents there may be many times that number,” Collier explained.

“We are heartened by this procedural ruling in Pebble's favour, and look forward to the discovery process and the opportunity to fully argue the merits of our case before the court,” said Northern Dynasty president and CEO Ron Thiessen.

He added that Northern Dynasty continued to believe that Pebble was a mineral resource of national importance that deserved to be comprehensively reviewed by federal and state regulatory agencies under the National Environmental Policy Act and Clean Water Act.

Edited by Mariaan Webb
Creamer Media Senior Deputy Editor Online

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