A decision by YESAB has paralyzed the advanced proposal to re-open the Brewery Creek gold mine says a spokeswoman for the Golden Predator Corp.

Janet Lee-Sheriff said today the decision announced last Thursday to put the project through another full-blown assessment will have huge ramifications for the Yukon – locally and internationally.

As a result, Golden Predator announced the layoffs of staff on Friday.

As it stands today, 11 of the 12 full-time employees in the Yukon will be losing their jobs, she told the Star.

Lee-Sheriff said the company has no choice now but to ice its plans for the $35-million investment to bring Brewery Creek back into production, including the creation of 125 construction jobs beginning this fall and going through next winter.

The international investment community, she said, has already flagged the Yukon as a risky place to do business because of the difficulty associated with permitting a mine here.

Lee-Sheriff said the decision by the Yukon Environmental and Socio-economic Board to force Golden Predator through a full assessment of a project that was already screened and approved in the 1990s will only drape the Yukon in more uncertainty.

"This is the stuff that hurts everybody,” said the company's vice-president of communications and First Nations relations. "It does not just hurt us. It hurts everybody. It hurts the community, it hurts the First Nation.

"That is my problem; as a Yukoner, I simply can't understand this.”

The company and Dawson City's Tr'ondek Hwech'in issued a joint press release today expressing extreme disappointment with YESAB's decision.

The First Nation has stated publicly its support for the Brewery Creek project, and the jobs and economic development opportunities it would create for the First Nation.

The Brewery Creek open pit gold mine operated from 1996 to 2002 when it closed because of low gold prices. The site has been reclaimed and all the buildings removed with the exception of a storage shed.

Stephen Mills, the chair of the assessment board, said it stands by the decision that re-starting the Brewery Creek mine is indeed a brand new mining proposal with a daily production forecast legally requiring a screening at the executive committee level. Closure and reclamation of the site have already been completed, he pointed out.

He said the decision by YESAB's Dawson City office to bump up the project application received Jan. 13 to the executive committee was made after gathering input from all the regulatory bodies and participation from central office.

In a letter to Golden Predator last November in advance of receiving the application, Mills pointed out from what he understood of the proposal, the project might have to be assessed at the executive committee level.

He followed up with a Nov. 23 letter indicating there was a chance it could be screened at the local level in Dawson City, but still indicated there were no guarantees until the application could be assessed, he said.

Mills said when the application was received at the Dawson City office, there was a two-pronged approach: the standard review to determine whether more technical information was required; and a second review to determine whether the review could legally occur at the designated office level.

He said it was determined that under the assessment act, the project assessment needed to occur at the executive committee level.

A review at the executive level is more involved and can take anywhere from 18 month to two years or longer, Mills said.

"With us saying this is going to the executive committee, we are saying this site has been closed and reclaimed, and this amounts to the construction of a new mine,” Mills said.

Lee-Sheriff said Golden Predator was proposing to re-activate the mining project started by Viceroy but not completed because of low gold prices in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

This was not a new mining proposal, she emphasized.

Lee-Sheriff said the company was planning to mine the same ore bodies already screened and approved in the 1990s.

It was planning to establish three heap-leach areas already screened and approved in the 1990s, she said.

The vice-president said the mill was going to be built on the exact site of the last mill, using the same footings that are still there but buried.

The Department of Energy, Mines and Resources, she said, even described the proposal as a restart, and not a new mining project.

Lee-Sheriff points to a letter to the YESAB chair from Bob Holmes, the Yukon's director of mineral resources.

The letter concludes: "To reiterate, this is a brownfield site and the Reactivation Plan is for the most part, designed to finish the originally uncompleted work using the same designs and plans as were the subject of the originally assessed and licensed activity.”

Lee-Sheriff said she would sure like to know where the social and economic considerations are in this decision by the Environmental and Socio-Economic Assessment Board.

Jobs and economic development opportunities associated with Brewery Creek project are not going to materialize anytime soon now, she said.

The company, said Lee-Sheriff, was planning a review at the designated office level and then apply for whatever amendments were required in the existing Brewery Creek mining licence and water licence.

It was anticipated the screening process at YESAB's Dawson office would be complete this summer, with construction beginning this fall and going through the winter in anticipation of production re-starting in late 2014, she said.

There is no reason, insisted Lee-Sheriff, why the Brewery Creek proposal can't be handled by the assessment board's Dawson City office as a project that simply needs a bit of dusting off before it gets back into full swing.

She said the decision to put the project through an executive committee screening puts everything on hold.

Golden Predator is looking at all its options now, including the possibility of asking for a judicial review of YESAB's decision to bump the application up to the executive committee level.

But that cost money, and Golden Predator, as a publicly traded company, needs to fulfill its responsibility to its shareholders, Lee-Sheriff added.

She said the company will continue through with the permitting process for Brewery Creek, but at a much slower pace as money becomes available.

"Years,” she said when asked how long before the former Brewery Creek mine might be in production.

The company's stock, she said, has fallen in value by 16 per cent since Monday with news of YESAB's decision.

Lee-Sheriff pointed out the company has already drawn down $10 million from the $35 million in financing it had arranged for the Brewery Creek project.

The next draw down, she point out, was contingent on securing the necessary permitting.

The decision by YESAB highlights the risk associated with the permitting process in the Yukon, and what she believes is an inconsistency in the assessment process, she said.

Lee-Sheriff pointed out the proposal to reprocess tailings at the old Whitehorse Copper mine site didn't go through an executive level screening. Nor did Alexco's plans to restart mining at the Lucky Queen site in Keno City, she said.

She said changes to plans for the Minto Mine didn't have to go through the executive committee.

But here, Golden Predator is proposing to simply finish off a mining plan that was already started and approved, and it gets kicked back to square one, she said.

"We want to be clear,” Lee-Sheriff said. "We believe in the mineral value in the Yukon. We are committed to the community and the First Nations in the long term, but at this time, we have to be realistic about what is happening.”

Lee-Sheriff said the Brewery Creek decision will have a direct impact on Golden Predator's other Yukon interests because Brewery Creek was to the lead project, from which revenue would be used to finance to advance other properties in the territory.

Mills said today it's not possible to compare the Brewery Creek proposal to the other mining projects assessed at the designated office level, because it's a different kettle of fish.