A University of Wisconsin-Green Bay professor is speculating that more delays might await a controversial proposed iron mine in northern Wisconsin.

Officials with mining company Gogebic Taconite announced on Wednesday they would delay their initial application to mine the Penokee Hills until at least the fall of next year. The announcement came within a week of the news that the company had sent a $700,000 contribution to the Wisconsin Club for Growth in 2011, a contribution that was discovered after the release of John Doe probe documents last Friday.

The donation's size and the timing has made some question the role it might have played in legislation passed in 2012 that eases the process of approving mines like Gogebic Taconite's project.

"It creates at least some doubt that this process of passing the initial legislation — which weakened state mining regulations and which sped up the process for approving the mining project — was not somehow related to what many would view as a very unwarranted and very large contribution to the campaign," said Michael Kraft, a UW-Green Bay political science professor.

Kraft said the issue of the mine, which Gov. Scott Walker has pointed to as a potential economic boost for the state that could create hundreds of jobs, has become firmly entangled in the November election. For that reason, he said, it might help the company to put the process on hold until after the election is over.

Kraft said that it’s also possible the company simply needed more time to prepare for state and federal environmental impact assessments of the mine site, which would themselves be lengthy processes.

In July, the state's bands of Ojibwe sent a letter to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency asking it to intervene and evaluate the project before allowing it to continue, citing concerns about potential damage to the Bad River watershed. Kraft said Gogebic Taconite might want to do more preliminary analysis related to water quality in particular to help prepare for a possible EPA investigation.

If the EPA does intervene, as it is currently in the case of an Alaskan copper and gold mine, that intervention could add years of environmental assessments, even if the agency ultimately decides to let the project proceed.

Kraft said none of these potential outcomes would come as a surprise to him, given how much controversy the project has been generating since it was first proposed.

“Frankly, I thought all along, once the legislation cleared the state Legislature ... there would be lawsuits and it would be years before the mine even opened, if it ever did,” he said.