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Legal challenges to Pacific NorthWest LNG Project to continue

Nothing has changed say the groups
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The decision by Petronas to pull the plug on the proposed $36 billion Pacific Northwest LNG project, changes nothing says two groups who sought judicial review of the project.

“Legally, nothing has changed,” said Richard Overstall, the lawyer representing Donald Wesley, hereditary chief of the Gitwilgyoots Tribe. “I think everybody is waiting to see is if they [Petronas] will withdraw their application to the federal government. They still have a licence to construct it.”

Greg Knox, executive director of the SkeenaWild Conservation Trust, an environmental group based out of Terrace who also filed a judicial review of the project said their lawsuit will continue as well.

“We are going to go ahead with our legal case because we want to ensure the environmental assessment certificate for Lelu Island is withdrawn,” Knox said. “It’s a terrible site and we want to make sure large scale industrial developments never happen on that site.”

In October 2016, SkeenaWild challenged the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency’s characterization of the LNG terminal’s impact on the environment.

Saying in a press release that despite the agency concluding the project would have no significant impact on fish, it could permanently destroy 35,000 square metres of crucial salmon habitat.