By Joe Schneider

March 19 (Bloomberg) — Barrick Gold Corp.’s expansion of a Nevada mine must be halted until the federal government completes an environmental analysis to comply with an appeals court order, American Indian tribes said today.

An appeals court in San Francisco on Dec. 4 ordered U.S. District Judge Larry Hicks in Reno, Nevada, to limit production from the mine pending a study of the effect of the extraction of ore by the Bureau of Land Management, or BLM. Specifics were left to Hicks.

“There is no question that the Cortez Hills Project will result in irreparable harm to the environment and the Tribes,” the Shoshone Indians said in court documents filed in federal court in Reno today. “An injunction suspending the project is required until BLM complies with the law.”

The tribes claim the company and government failed to analyze the effect of air pollution resulting from the transportation of ore to a processing facility from Cortez Hills, an expansion of Barrick’s Cortez mine.

The tribes urged Hicks, in a response to a proposal from Barrick for a limited injunction, not to let the Toronto-based mining company relitigate the issues. They say the appeals court had upheld their claims, reversing Hicks’s initial approval of the expansion.

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