As the Daily Caller reports, the House Committee on Oversight & Government Reform is stepping up the pressure on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in the context of the agency’s controversial negative review of a potential mining project in Alaska’s Bristol Bay area.

Reiterating a request made in May of 2012, when the EPA first released a preliminary assessment of the project, a letter to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson by House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) and fellow committee member Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) demands that the agency release more of the requested documentation and threatens the use of the committee’s subpoena powers in the case of non-compliance.

According to the Daily Caller, the EPA has disclosed that it has compiled thousands of documents relating to the Bristol Bay review, but has only submitted fewer than a thousand to the committee.

The EPA’s Bristol Bay Watershed assessment has drawn fire as it represents an unprecedented move to preemptively derail a hypothetical mining project even before any permit requests were filed or specific plans were submitted.

As we have previously pointed out, “the unilateral expansion of EPA powers under section 404(c) of the Clean Water Act would effectively give the agency ultimate authority to derail any project in the United States that touches on water — with potential impact for projects in every sector of the US economy, from mining to farming, manufacturing, building, energy, and water treatment.”