Vancouver-based Taseko Mines Limited says that there’s some $3 billion worth of gold and copper beneath its New Prosperity claim in British Columbia’s Cariboo region, but so far the only people prospering from it are lawyers.

Taseko is suing the Attorney General of Canada and the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency following the February 25, 2014 denial by Cabinet of the necessary permit to proceed. This was the second time the agency had given the New Prosperity Project a thumbs down.

The project’s first proposal was rejected in 2010 over concerns that it would drain Teztan Biny (Fish Lake), a body of water considered culturally significant by the local Tsilhqot’in Nation. Taseko submitted a second proposal for review that, it argued, would protect Fish Lake. That proposal was also rejected, giving rise to the current lawsuit.

Taseko is alleging that between the release of the environmental assessment report and the final Cabinet decision, Ministry of Environment officials held meetings with the project’s opponents and gathered additional information, without giving Taseko an opportunity to reply. It also says that the denial of a permit amounts to unfair expropriation. The company is seeking unspecified general and punitive damages.

Taseko was issued a provincial environmental assessment certificate for the mine in 2010. That permit was given a five-year extension in 2015.

Taseko’s lawyers have worn a threadbare path to the court’s doors over the company’s New Prosperity plans. On January 25, 2016, the Supreme Court of British Columbia dismissed Taseko’s defamation lawsuit against Wilderness Committee for a series of three online articles critical of the project. The articles urged New Prosperity opponents to have their voices heard during the environmental assessment process.

After that action was launched, Wilderness Committee posted two more articles alleging that the defamation lawsuit was intended to silence critics, or a SLAPP (strategic lawsuit against public participation). Taseko then added those two articles to its defamation claim.

The Supreme Court tossed them all out, finding that the lawsuits were, in fact, SLAPPs and awarding special costs to Wilderness Committee. Taseko is now considering whether to appeal.

Earlier, Taseko had filed two separate applications for judicial review of the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency’s second rejection of the New Prosperity Project. Those two applications have been rolled into the new lawsuit.

The federal government has until March 3, 2016 to respond to Taseko’s Notice of Civil Claim.

Read the original article here.

Photo: Fish Lake. Photo by Joe Foy.