Northern Dynasty to appeal Army Corp’s Pebble decision

3rd December 2020 By: Mariaan Webb - Creamer Media Senior Deputy Editor Online

Northern Dynasty to appeal Army Corp’s Pebble decision

Canadian firm Northern Dynasty on Thursday announced that its US-based subsidiary, Pebble Limited Partnership, would appeal the US Army Corps of Engineers’ (USACE's) issuance last week of a negative record of decision (RoD) for the proposed Pebble mine in south-west Alaska.

The RoD issued by the lead federal regulator for Alaska’s Pebble project on November 25, denied the project a ‘dredge and fill’ permit under the Clean Water Act on the grounds that its ‘compensatory mitigation plan’ is non-compliant and the project is not in the ‘public interest.’

The Pebble Partnership has 60 days to submit its application for administrative appeal to the USACE’s Pacific Ocean Division Engineer headquartered in Hawaii.

“We will take a significant proportion of the time allotted to us to complete an exhaustive review of the administrative record pertinent to the Pebble project environmental impact statement (EIS) and RoD, to prepare a comprehensive and substantive appeal and submit an RFA to the division engineer,” said Northern Dynasty president and CEO Ron Thiessen.

“It is our view that this decision, the process by which it was reached and the facts upon which it is based stand as a significant outlier from standard USACE precedent and practice. We believe there is a sound basis for this permitting decision to be overturned.”

Thiessen confirmed that Northern Dynasty and the Pebble Partnership intend to challenge the USACE’s permitting decision on procedural, substantive and legal grounds.