Opportunity for Members to Comment by October 7, 2019
The BC Environmental Assessment Office (EAO) has released an intentions paper for a Reviewable Projects Regulation (RPR) that will support the new Environmental Assessment (EA) Act. The Act was passed in November 2018 and is expected to come into force along with the new RPR in late 2019. This is the first substantial revision to the RPR in 15 years.
The RPR sets out the criteria for determining which projects, including mining projects, will be required to undergo a provincial environmental assessment. In the proposed RPR projects will now be reviewed under two criteria: design or production capacity thresholds; and effects thresholds. For mining projects, the production thresholds are the same as the current regulation (75 000 tonnes/year of ore), but the effects thresholds are a new set of criteria under which mining projects will be reviewed. We expect the majority of mining projects will be captured by the production threshold and thus will need to undergo an EA regardless of the new effects thresholds.
A summary of the intentions paper including links and topics that you may wish to comment on can be found here;
New Proposed Reviewable Projects Regulation – AME Summary, September 9, 2019
AME will be submitting a response to the intentions paper by October 7.
For more information or to provide AME with your thoughts and feedback on the intentions paper, please contact Rob Stevens, VP Regulatory and Technical Policy at [email protected].