Niocorp Developments Ltd (NB)

[tedro84]

From the written testimony:

The Army Corp's 408 program office stopped work on the 408 permit for the project in February 2018 on the
basis that a fee agreement with the company was needed to continue working. The fee agreement was never
produced by the Corps, and the Corps did not complete any additional work on the 408 permit. This was a
partial driver in the Company's decision to remove from the project's design those features of the project that
triggered the 408 permit.

I brought up the possibility of issues with this permit in my criticism of the letter from Governor Ricketts last year, and suspected again that it was an issue when the elimination of the waterline was announced. I'm glad the company was able to work around this with another viable solution and hope it does not increase the CAPEX.

It will be interesting to see which, if any, of Jim's suggestions come out of the committee.