A federal judge has granted the group behind the proposed Pebble Mine to subpoena Alaska Communications in order to keep specific emails.
The Pebble Limited Partnership made the request in order to guarantee the emails from a former U.S. Environmental Protection Agency employee and an attorney who represented Pebble critics would not be eliminated via routine server maintenance by the internet provider.
U.S. District Court Judge H. Russel Holland ruled that production of the emails wouldn’t be required before the start of pre-trial discovery.
The ongoing litigation stems from Pebble suing the EPA, alleging that the EPA began an environmental study in order to support a veto of the Pebble Project.
The federal agency insists the Partnership was meaningfully involved in the study which concluded that large-scale mining would damage salmon habitat in the Bristol Bay Region. The EPA is asking for the suit to be dismissed.