Roy, over on TOB posted a great post and I will credit him here and repost it.  Thanks, Roy!  Or should I say, Thanks rkeeb?

_____________________________________________________________________________

 The process within the NDEP for their three permits is clearly taking longer than most recently announced. As per their website, they anticipated the notice of intent to issue or deny (presumably issue) around August. In fact, the timings of the three permits will probably vary. It seems that we should expect the Land Reclamation permit first, because in May they were expecting it in July, while they were expecting the Air Pollution one in late August to mid September. Both of these dates have passed, so we might expect notices any time now.

After the initial notices there will be a 30 day public comment period, after which more tweaking might be required. So for these two permits we’re realistically looking at December of January for final approval.

The Water Pollution Control permit isn’t as clear to me because it hasn’t been publicly discussed as much as the other two, but if it’s not directly related to water rights we might expect a notice any time now as well. But, for water I know that there is a water rights hearing in Dec, so the rights issue probably won’t be sorted out until Jan or Feb.

Although the dates are inaccurate, here’s a link to the pamphlet NDEP put out on the permitting process.

https://simplebooklet.com/thackerpassbrochure#page=1