AZL General Discussion, page-1759

I’m not quite sure what you are saying, Broken Chair.

An Environmental Assessment is one thing, and a Plan of Operations is another. An EA exists by virtue of the National Environmental Act, and a Plan of Operations exists by virtue of the General Mining Law.

If a party like AZL wants to explore or mine, it must submit a Proposed Plan of Operations. Once that it is submitted, then the BLM must assess the project pursuant to NEPA in order to decide whether or not to approve the Plan of Operations.

During the course of the NEPA-mandated environmental review, an agency like the BLM identifies relevant cultural and environmental issues during the “scoping” process, and once having identified those issues it proceeds to prepare the EA as it did here. (Again, I’m leaving out some nuance.)

The EA has now been prepared, and it’s up to the BLM to make a Finding of No Significant Impact or, alternatively, to proceed to an Environmental Impact Statement.

If you look at those regulatory citations in 1.4, you’ll see that those are regulations implementing the General Mining Law, not NEPA. What the BLM is saying there is that pursuant to the General Mining Law, the scope of its discretion with respect to the Proposed Plan of Opertions is to do (a), (b), or (c). The NEPA process is intended to assist the BLM in making the best decision as to how to proceed under the General Mining Law.

Sorry to take the high road here, but I can provide you with 100% assurances that I understand American environmental law far better than you do. If you don’t care to hear about it, just block me or ignore my posts.