Mr. Ronald Thiessen reports

NORTHERN DYNASTY: FILES MOTION TO MODIFY ITS EPA VETO COMPLAINT BY ADDING NEW CLAIMS AGAINST THE US ARMY CORPS OF ENGINEERS

Northern Dynasty Minerals Ltd. and 100-per-cent-owned, United States-based subsidiary Pebble LP have filed a motion for leave to file an amended complaint in the United States District Court for the District of Alaska to reverse the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) decision to deny the project a permit.

Ron Thiessen, president and chief executive officer of Northern Dynasty, said: "It is important to understand that this is not a new lawsuit. It is simply an amendment of the complaint we filed against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) by adding the USACE as another defendant. We think this substantially strengthens the existing case by focusing directly on the permit denial which was an underlying reason for the EPA veto."

On March 15, 2024, Northern Dynasty and PLP filed an action in federal district court in Alaska seeking to overturn the EPA's veto of the Pebble project. On June 7, 2024, both parties filed a motion to add the USACE as a defendant to that case, and to amend the complaint to claim that the denial of the Pebble permit was unlawful as clearly set out in the USACE remand order. And the EPA pre-emptive veto is based on the fabrications of the permit denial, again, as highlighted in the remand order.

On Nov. 25, 2020, the USACE denied the Pebble partnership's permit application that would have allowed it to move forward with the proposed mine development project. PLP filed an administrative appeal of that denial. In April, 2023, the matter was remanded to the Anchorage office of the USACE requiring that it reconsider the permit denial due to a number of significant errors in the original denial. On April 15, 2024, the USACE refused to reconsider the denial as ordered by the Administrative Appeal Hearing Officer, stating it had done so because the project had been vetoed by EPA.

Mr. Thiessen said: "We believe the EPA veto and the USACE permit denial were both undertaken entirely for political reasons and are contrary to the factual record, especially USACE's own environmental analysis, the final environmental impact statement (FEIS), which only supports granting a permit and does not support issuing a veto. We believe both decisions will be reversed by the court, which relies on the factual record to make decisions."

The Pebble partnership's amended complaint claims that the USACE must complete the reconsideration of its permit denial as ordered by the hearing officer. In addition, the complaint alleges that the permit denial was unlawful because it reached conclusions contrary to the those determined and described in detail in the FEIS, including that the project might damage the Bristol Bay fishery when USACE's scientific review set forth in the FEIS had found just the opposite, and that there was risk of a catastrophic failure of the tailings facility when the FEIS concluded the opposite.

Mr. Thiessen continued: "These are only two examples of more than a dozen conclusions that are contradicted by the record in this matter including, at its core, the FEIS and the environmental analysis that the government itself facilitated. In fact, the hearing officer remanded the permit denial to the Anchorage office because of these exact errors. The real absurdity of the government's position is the closed-loop, circular logic, where the EPA relies on fabrications of the USACE, which have been shown to be erroneous and unsubstantiated, while the veto action of the EPA is now being used as an excuse by the USACE not to go back and fix those factually unsupported assertions. We reiterate that these decisions were politically motivated. We look forward to the litigation putting the permitting process back on course.

"The permitting process (primarily the Environmental Policy Act and related laws and regulations) is designed to help regulators make better decisions by removing politics and emotion, instead considering the findings of the extensive environmental studies and engineering work (science and facts) required in the process. When they choose to ignore these laws, regulations, studies and engineering works, we, as a mining industry, need to use the courts to right those wrongs. Although it is unfortunate that permitting in America too often requires litigation, that's what happens when the government agencies stop being unbiased regulators and instead act as advocates for special-interest groups."

About Northern Dynasty Minerals Ltd.

Northern Dynasty is a mineral exploration and development company based in Vancouver, Canada. Northern Dynasty's principal asset, owned through its wholly owned, Alaska-based U.S. subsidiary, Pebble, is a 100-per-cent interest in a contiguous block of 1,840 mineral claims in southwestern Alaska, including the Pebble deposit, located 200 miles from Anchorage and 125 miles from Bristol Bay. The Pebble partnership is the proponent of the Pebble project.

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