The lack of a preliminary air permit by the company’s June goal would not have derailed the Big River Steel project, the manager who helped prepare the permit told a judge Thursday.

Big River Steel plans to build a $1.1 billion mill near Osceola in Mississippi County. The state Legislature approved the issuance of $125 million in bonds last year to help fund construction of the mill.

Nucor Corp., an owner of two steel mills in Mississippi County, filed an air-permit complaint last year with the Arkansas Pollution Control and Ecology Commission over the Big River project. A hearing Thursday concerned that permit, which the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality had issued to Big River.

Steven Frey, a project manager who worked as a consultant for Big River Steel, testified Thursday before Charles Moulton, an administrative law judge for the Pollution Control and Ecology Commission.

Frey said executives with Big River had told the company’s workers last year that they would like to have the preliminary permit in place between June 25 to June 27. Also, Big River had planned a meeting on June 25 in Osceola with the company’s investors, lenders and project participants.

“It was my job to try to get the permit done in a timely manner,” Frey said in response to a question from Moulton. “And respond as quickly as we could to [officials with the Department of Environmental Quality] if they had any comments and get them the information to the best of our ability. And if we didn’t meet [the deadline], we didn’t meet it.”

The department issued a preliminary permit on June 25 and the final permit on Sept. 18.

During last year’s legislative session, Nucor opposed Big River’s efforts to secure the funding for the mill, arguing that the new plant would undermine Arkansas’ steel industry and could lead to a cutback in steel jobs.

Nucor has said the purpose of its complaint with the Pollution Control and Ecology Commission was to seek “a thorough and fair review of the data, assumptions and process used in issuing the permit.”

Nucor believes there was a strategy by Big River Steel to provide selective information to “head off ADEQ from inquiring into certain matters in order to get this permit through the process with a minimum amount of scrutiny,” David Taggart, a Nucor attorney, told Moulton.

But Moulton said, “Maybe the strategy was to prevent confidential information going to ADEQ because your client [Nucor] was at the ADEQ on a weekly basis.” There were reports, he said, that Nucor was making frequent Freedom of Information Act requests to gain information about the project.

The hearing is scheduled to conclude today but may extend into Monday.

Business, Pages 28 on 02/21/2014