(FILE PHOTO / iNFOnews.ca)
March 30, 2017 - 4:36 PM
KAMLOOPS - The proposed Ajax Mine project is no longer suspended.
A temporary suspension issued May 4, 2016, has been lifted, according to documents from the B.C. Environmental Assessment Office, and the official application review restarted. The new timline adds 110 days to the process and a new 30-day public comment period.
In a document posted on the project’s assessment website, Kevin Jardine, the executive director of the office, lifted the suspension as of today, March 29. The original timeline was 180 days starting in January 2016, but it was suspended on day 108 to give KGHM Ajax, the company behind the mine, more time to collect information required by the group reviewing the application. It's been almost 11 months since the suspension began.
In a letter to Robert Novak, the president of KGHM International, the parent company of KGHM Ajax, Jardine writes that the environmental assessment office has receive it’s final information package from the company and that it satisfies the requirements set out in May 2016.
“With the timeline extension, the provincial application review phase is expected to conclude by September 26, 2017,” he says in the letter.
The new public comment period will happen before the application is referred to the provincial ministers in charge of the decision to comment on the joint assessment report.
After the provincial assessment office sends the report to the ministers, they have 45 days to make a decision. A similar process will happen at the federal level.
For more on the Ajax Mine, click here.
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News from © iNFOnews, 2017