STEPHENSON — Aquila Resources Inc. announced that an administrative law judge for the Michigan Office of Administrative Hearings and Rules on Monday issued a decision denying the prior issuance of a wetland/stream/floodplain permit for its Back Forty Project along the Menominee River.

Petitioners earlier filed an administrative contested case challenge to the issuance of the wetlands permit by the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy. The permit was issued by EGLE on June 4, 2018 following years of environmental baseline work and a thorough review process including comment periods and public hearings. The judge convened an evidentiary hearing in June 2019, which ended in January 2020, according to Aquila, which is based in Toronto.

In Monday’s decision, the judge determined that Aquila’s groundwater model does not provide a reliable identification of wetland impacts and therefore found the permit application to be administratively incomplete. The judge also determined that Aquila did not provide a complete assessment of potential alternatives to its proposed plan.

In a news release, Aquila said it “strongly disagrees” with the judge’s decision, which is based in significant part on what the company believes is a misunderstanding of the information concerning the potential for indirect wetlands impacts associated with the Back Forty Project.

The decision establishes a permitting approach that markedly departs from wetland permits issued for other mining projects in the Great Lakes region, the company said.

Aquila worked for several years with EGLE staff during the permitting process to address the complex technical issues associated with estimating potential indirect wetland impacts, landing on an approach that complied with federal U.S. Army Corps guidelines for estimating and permitting such impacts for mining projects.

The wetlands permit was issued with specific conditions that must be satisfied prior to the commencement of construction and operations, including a condition that required EGLE to accept an updated groundwater model.

During the 31 months since the wetlands permit was issued, Aquila said it has been working constructively with EGLE to satisfy the conditions, and the company planned to complete the updated groundwater model this year.

Aquila said it will continue to work with EGLE and believes it will successfully resolve the issues cited in the judge’s decision.

The Coalition to Save the Menominee River Inc. said in a Tuesday Facebook post that it was pleased with Judge Daniel Pulter’s decision in its contested case to deny Aquila’s wetlands permit.

“One of our big arguments was that the application should never have been considered administratively complete by EGLE because the wetland impacts were not reliably identified, which deprived the public of its right to review and comment,” the post reads.

Aquila’s flagship Back Forty Project is an open pit volcanogenic massive sulfide deposit with underground potential located along the mineral rich Penokean Volcanic Belt in the Upper Peninsula. Back Forty contains approximately 1.1 million ounces of gold and 1.2 billion pounds of zinc in the Measured and Indicated Mineral Resource classifications, with additional upside potential.