Keith Gordon with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is leaving his position as Project Manager of the Donlin Gold mine draft environmental impact statement, or EIS.
“Nothing changes,” Gordon said when asked how his departure affects the project. “The agency will just continue with the processes.”
Gordon has lead the project for almost three years and is leaving the Army Corps on Friday to work with the Federal Aviation Administration. Sheila Newman is the Special Actions Branch Chief and Gordon’s supervisor. She’ll take over as interim project manager until the Army Corps finds a replacement.
“It’s just a matter of us continuing to work in the process that we have and managing that process,” Newman said.
Newman has been overseeing the project since September 2014 and says the Army Corps has begun recruiting for the manger position.
The change comes as thepublic comment period on the Donlin Gold mine draft EIS comes to a close. Comment deadline is May 31. Gordon says the Army Corps has received about 250 submissions so far, and each submission could contain multiple individual comments.
Newman says the next step is working with the project’s cooperating agencies to address each comment and see if there’s anything the groups have missed as they prepare the project’s final EIS.
