Rick Van Nieuwenhuyse, president of mining company NovaGold Resources Inc., said he expects new litigation once the permit is issued again.

Wilson declined to say just when the revised permit will be issued, but said it would be soon. A local group that filed a lawsuit against the Corps over the its approval of the mine will be given 10 days to review the revised permit, Wilson said.

“We made a mistake. We didn't do a proper job in preparing the decision document, and I made the decision to suspend the permit. It wasn't an easy thing to do,” Wilson said in a briefing on Corps activities at the Resource Development Council's weekly meeting.

The decision to review the evaluation and decision documents for the Section 404 dredge and fill permit, made in early December, has caused Alaska Gold Co. to suspend some construction at the mine. The Corps allowed other work to continue, however, according to a statement by NovaGold Resources, parent company of Alaska Gold.

Wilson said the information to support the Corps' decision was in the decision document, but it was not organized or presented as well as it should have been. “Under the circumstances, the best thing to do was to pull it back,” he told the RDC.

“If I issue a permit, I don't want it overturned in court. That doesn't do anyone any favors,” Wilson said.

Van Nieuwenhuyse said the Corps' review of the permit could affect the project schedule, but the company could still make up lost time if the courts uphold the permit and weather is good. The original schedule was for a mechanical start of mill operations in July, Van Nieuwenhuyse said. That will most likely be delayed a month now, he said. The mine was to be in commercial production in the fourth quarter of the year and it is still possible to meet that goal, he said.

Meanwhile, Van Nieuwenhuyse said work has continued at the plant site, where foundations for the shop and mill have now been poured. An air quality permit has also been issued for the project, an important milestone. There are about 42 contractor workers and 10 company employees on the job, he said.

“The company has prepared the plant site for construction of the mill facilities and has cleared a significant portion of the wetlands covered by the permit in the areas of the tailings facility and waste dump areas,” NovaGold said in a statement on its Web site.

“We are fully committed to working with the Corps in this matter. If the Corps review indicates that the public process was sufficient, which NovaGold believes to be the case, the permit can be reissued with only a minor disruption in schedule,” the statement said.

Rock Creek would be a medium-sized gold mine seven miles north of Nome. Alaska Gold is building an ore process mill at the mine site which will support mining at Rock Creek and Big Hurrah, a gold deposit east of Nome that will also be mined as part of the project.

NovaGold said the mine will produce about 100,000 ounces of gold per year. The mill will process about 7,000 tons per day.

The mine is on 14,000 acres of private lands owned by NovaGold and an additional 20,000 acres owned by Sitnasuak Native Corp., the Nome village corporation, and Bering Straits Native Corp., the regional Alaska Native corporation for the Seward Peninsula area.

NovaGold has a mining lease for lode gold mining with Bering Straits, which owns subsurface rights on the 20,000 acres, and a surface-use agreement with Sitnasuak, which owns the surface lands.

The lawsuit filed by a group of Nome residents argues that the Corps erred in basing its permit decision on an environmental assessment rather than a more involved environmental impact statement.

Van Nieuwenhuyse said he is disappointed by the litigation, and believes that an objective of environmental groups working with the Nome residents is to require any Alaska project needing a Corps Section 404 dredge and fill permit to get a full-blown federal environmental impact statement, a two-year process.

“That will cause paralysis across Alaska because so much of our state is wetlands,” Van Nieuwenhuyse said.