Northern Dynasty Minerals Ltd., owner of the Pebble Partnership, Nov. 25 reported that U.S. federal district court for Alaska Judge H. Russell Holland has granted the company’s request for a preliminary injunction in its litigation against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. This court order requires EPA to temporarily halt its attempt to use Section 404(c) of the U.S. Clean Water Act to pre-emptively restrict or ban the permits need to develop the Pebble copper-gold-molybdenum deposit.

“Although the decision is a procedural victory and does not resolve our claims that EPA pursued a biased and predetermined 404c veto initiative against Pebble by not complying with the requirements of the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA), the decision is important for several reasons,” said Tom Collier, CEO of the Pebble Partnership. “Specifically, the court has granted a preliminary injunction that blocks EPA from taking any further steps in the 404c regulatory process it has initiated at Pebble before Judge Holland is able to issue a final decision on the merits of our FACA case. We expect the case may take several months to complete. This means that, for first time, EPA's march to preemptively veto Pebble has been halted.”

In mid-September, the Pebble Partnership filed a suit alleging that the EPA worked by behind the scenes with lawyers, scientists, non-governmental agencies and other activists opposed to development of the Pebble Mine.

The Pebble Partnership lumps these collaborators into three groups: the “anti-mine coalition”, the “anti-mine scientists” and the “anti-mine assessment team” – each of which represents a FACA, the lawsuit alleges.

“Relying heavily on substantial input, advice, and recommendations from these unlawfully established advisory committees, EPA prepared a patently biased, anti-mine assessment of hypothetical mining activities in the Bristol Bay Watershed and then used that flawed assessment to commence administrative proceedings under the federal Clean Water Act that, if allowed to stand, will effectively put an end to mining before the permitting process ever gets off the ground,” the Pebble Partnership summarizes in its complaint.

Trout Unlimited, a conservation group that has been active in encouraging EPA to use CWA Section 404(c) to veto or restrict the permits to develop Pebble, is disappointed in the delays that will occur from the judge’s decision.

“Out of an abundance of caution, the judge overseeing Pebble’s lawsuit is asking for more time to fully review the case,” said Trout Unlimited Alaska Program Manager Tim Bristol.

“Moving forward, we hope the legal process is quickly and fully resolved so the people of Bristol Bay can get back to living their lives, running their businesses and making investments with an eye on a fish-filled and mine-free future,” he added.

The Pebble Partnership believes the case will results in a flood of additional information that EPA has to-date been unwilling to provide through 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,” explains Collier. “The documents we have been able to review thus far disclose more than 500 contacts between EPA and activists. We fully expect that once we have access to all documents there may be many times that number.”

The Pebble Partnership CEO noted that one criterion that must be met as a prerequisite for a court granting a Preliminary Injunction is that the claimant has a “likelihood of success on the merits.” Although EPA argued strongly that the Pebble Partnership could not meet that test, the court found that it has.