Eight of Bristol Bay's Native village corporations and two Nondalton residents have asked state regulators to withdraw the exploration permits granted in February to companies exploring the massive copper and gold Pebble prospect in Southwest Alaska.

The administrative appeal, filed last Friday by the Anchorage environmental law firm Trustees for Alaska, claims the state Department of Natural Resources didn’t analyze the environmental impacts of the exploration and didn’t provide adequate public notice before approving the permits.

The appeal asks for a moratorium on permit activities that include the presence of ten to 120 workers on site, drilling, helicopter access, fuel storage, camp structures, water usage, snowmobile traffic construction of monitoring wells and possible road engineering studies.

The companies developing Pebble said Wednesday that they followed all of the state’s permitting rules. Halting exploration would harm their rural Alaska employees, according to Mike Heatwole, the Pebble Partnership spokesman.

The appellants include Nunamta Auluketstai, the coalition of village Native corporations, and Jack Hobson and Rick Delkettie, both of Nondalton.

The villages corporations are in Ekwok, Koliganek, New Stuyahok, Clark's Point, Aleknagik, Togiak, Manakotak and Dillingham.