Anchorage Daily News
By Brian Lynch
September 24th 2024
On July 26, KSM Mining ULC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Seabridge Gold, Inc. received its “substantially started” determination from the British Columbia Environmental Assessment Office for its Kerr-Sulphurets-Mitchell (KSM) project. KSM is a huge proposed open-pit and underground gold-copper-silver mine targeting coastal mountains of northwestern B.C., within the headwaters of both the Nass River, which lies entirely within B.C., and the transboundary Unuk River which flows into Southeast Alaska near Ketchikan.
Why does this matter? According to B.C. regulations, an Environmental Assessment Certificate is the key overarching permit required for a reviewable development project to go forward. With the Certificate comes a stipulation that the project must be “substantially started” within 10 years, with an opportunity for a one-time five-year extension. The rationale behind the 10-year stipulation is that environmental analyses and the studies on which they are based should be relatively current. If a project is not launched in a reasonably timely way, environmental reviews, and the studies on which they are based, should be revisited to consider changing circumstances, new data, evolving environmental concerns, etc.
However, if a project is deemed “substantially started” by the specified deadline, the Environmental Assessment Certificate remains in effect for the life of the project, be it many years or even many decades. Substantially started determinations pose a significant environmental risk to downstream communities by fixing Environmental Assessment Certificates and project approvals in time, regardless of climate change, new scientific information, cumulative impacts, or significant regulatory reforms. For KSM, because of this determination, its certificate now has essentially permanent status.
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