https://turtletalk.files.wordpress.com/2022/11/ti-committee-pebble-mine-report-and-appendix-1.pdf "In the case of Pebble LP, not only does the evidence suggest bad faith in permitting, but so does the questionable economics as explored in the committee's October 23, 2019, hearing. Though the sham permitting concept was developed in the context of the Clean Air Act, this legal construct could be broadly applicable to other types of permitting. Certainly, there are potential applications within the context of the Clean Water Act which, under Section 404, requires a great deal of specificity in discharge permits for the type of dredged material at issue in the proposed Pebble Mine. Permitting efforts that, in bad faith, inaccurately, or deceptively misrepresent the actual plans of permit applicants, could also fairly be described as sham permits, and could problematically circumvent the regulatory review of the Corps and EPA. Pebble LP's mine permitting effort also raises potential issues in terms of unlawful segmentation under NEPA. 13° Under NEPA, a mine or other project subject to federal environmental impact review must be examined with careful consideration of the cumulative impacts of the entire project, rather than the project's discrete stages. 131 NEPA regulations require that any ElS cover the entire scope of a proposed project, considering all connected, cumulative,
and similar actions in a single, comprehensive document. 3 This prevents segmentation or "piecemealing" which occurs when a project is divided into component parts, each involving less significant environmental effects such that the overall project evades the intended federal scrutiny of
its full environmental impact. 133 When Mr. Thiessen wrote in 2019, "IT|he most important element is that we get through permitting with the Permitting case and then ... we can undertake the alternatives," he signaled an intent to evade federal scrutiny of the environmental impact of the entirety of the Pebble Mine actively under consideration by Pebble LP. 34 By providing the Corps and other reviewing agencies with only the initial stage— the "Permitting case" —of the fully scoped Pebble Mine, it appears Pebble LP thought it could avoid consideration of the full impact of potential environmental harms caused by the mine, in contravention of federal law. 135"