I experienced a similar event in Wisconsin, on the Crandon copper/zinc deposit.
A leftist academic had computer simulation written on the mining project. He convinced the legislature to impose a heafty severance tax on the proposed mine. The mining company gave up and did not develop it.
I wrote (with a colleague, who did tremendous work), a much larger, more sophisticated simulation for my masters thesis.
Afterward, I could read Fortran fluently. I read the academic’s program. It had one character reversed, counting as a profit an item that should have been a cost. It completely changed the outcome of the program.
Yet legislation was passed based on the flawed simulation.
A real travesty of justice.
It would seem there’s some money to be made there now :-)