The decision to approve Yukon’s Energy’s new $42 million LNG plant is being challenged by Yukoners Concerned About Oil and Gas Exploration/Development.

The organization is suggesting the review by the Yukon Environmental and Socio-economic Assessment Board did not fulfill legal requirements when the board conducted its review of the LNG proposal.

Therefore, the government’s acceptance of the assessment board’s recommendation that the project should be permitted to proceed is also flawed, the organization contends in a press release issued earlier this month.

“I think we want to point out that they have trespassed on their own legislation,” said Yukoners Concerned spokesman Don Roberts when asked why the matter is being raised now, when the project is already half-built.

“We are calling them on it.”

The statement goes on to suggest that if there was a breach of the legislation during the review of the LNG project, construction should be halted immediately.

Assessment board spokesman Rob Yeomans said the board is confining its response to the press release to a single comment:

“The executive committee continues to be of the view that its recommendation in the screening report for the YEC diesel-LNG conversion project is sound and fulfills the purposes of YESAA (Yukon Environmental and Socio-economic Assessment Act).”

The executive committee conducted the review, which included a public meeting held in Whitehorse and attended by approximately 100 last December.

All who spoke were opposed to the LNG project for a variety of reasons. They spoke of the hydraulic fracturing outside the Yukon to obtain the natural gas Yukon Energy would be burning.

The only member of the audience in favour of the proposal was a member of Yukon Energy’s board of directors.

Central to the critique issued this month by Yukoners Concerned is the assessment board’s interpretation of the assessment act, the legislation that guides its conduct.

Specifically, Yukoners Concerned point out the act requires the board to consider impacts “in and outside Yukon.”

The board’s executive committee maintained during the LNG review that it did not have the jurisdiction to review the source of the liquified natural gas Yukon Energy would be trucking to Whitehorse.

It did not have the authority to review the practice of hydraulic fracking outside the Yukon to obtain the natural gas shipped here, the executive committee insisted.

Former committee chair Stephen Mills explained back then a legal interpretation of the requirement to assess impacts “in and outside Yukon” refers to impacts that may be caused outside the Yukon by projects inside the Yukon.

In the same way the committee would not review the source of lumber for a building project under review, it would not review the source of Yukon Energy’s natural gas, Mills explained back then.

The review by the executive committee, he insisted, was confined to the LNG plant itself, and any issues that may arise from its construction and operation.

Yukoners Concerned suggest the government should not have accepted the board’s recommendation because a review of impacts outside the Yukon was not conducted.

“I think it’s once again pointing out that even though you have legislation and regulations, government tends to ignore them when they want something,” Roberts said.

As he’s done often in the past, Roberts suggested the Yukon government’s approval of the project is linked to the government’s desire to promote a natural gas industry in the Yukon.

He said Yukoners do not want anything to do with fracking, and Yukoners Concerned have gained about 8,000 signatures on a petition stating so.

The Yukon legislative committee examining whether fracking should be permitted in the territory is scheduled to file its report no later than Jan. 13.

Yukon Energy maintains that replacing two old backup diesel generators with generators powered by natural gas will save Yukoners millions of dollars, and will result in cleaner exhaust emissions.