A B.C. Supreme Court Justice has extended the life of a court order protecting two miners' placer claims on a Quesnel-area farm.
Bill Tomm, 65, and Clarence Hallett, 69, now have until Oct. 31, 2015 to obtain proper permitting and work out a deal with the farm's owner, Linton Wiebe, 54, without Wiebe taking away any of the gravel in the interim, according to a reasons for judgment issued Tuesday by Justice Ron Tindale.
Tomm and Hallett have been at odds with Wiebe since fall 2011 after the sides were unable to reach an agreement over how the revenue should be split. The miners' claims cover 98.33 hectares alongside the Fraser River and inside Wiebe's 237 hectare spread, of which 162 hectares is dedicated to farming purposes.
According to their notice of claim, filed in March 2012, Tomm and Hallett proposed a deal that would have seen the three equally share the balance of the proceeds after expenses. But when it came to signing an agreement, they said Wiebe delayed and then said he wanted to simply sell the gravel for construction purposes.
Tomm and Hallett alleged Wiebe then removed a "great deal" of gravel from their claim sites and sold it to Gibraltar Mines Ltd. which was in the process of expanding its operation. They also said it was done without obtaining a requisite permit from the Ministry of Energy and Mines, which subsequently issued a stop work order.
In March 2012, a Justice issued a court order prohibiting Wiebe from removing any more gravel and allowing Tomm and Hallett access to inspect their claims. And in October 2013, another Justice issued an order allowing the two to work specific areas in order to keep the claims active in accordance with the Mineral Tenure Act.
In response, Wiebe has said in a filing he is willing to reach a deal but one that would see a relative gain an equal share of the takings, raising the number of parties to four.
Wiebe said he sold nearly 6,500 cubic metres of gravel from a ridge on his property but not before the material was sampled and no precious metals were found. He also said the gravel was removed from land under cultivation and therefore and area Tomm and Hallett did not have legal access to in the first place.
However, Tindale disagreed with Wiebe's definition of "under cultivation," saying it means a "present actual state of being cultivated."
Tindale also found Wiebe removed the gravel without any regard to the miners' claims and obstructed their access to the sites by tilling over some of the access roads on the land.
Tomm and Hallett were seeking a permanent injunction against Wiebe removing gravel until they had processed it, but Tindale said that would not be fair to restrict Wiebe's use of the lands in perpetuity. Instead, he extended the temporary injunction first issued in March 2012.
Tomm and Hallett need a permit to start the actual mining and to do so they must file plans detailing the proposed work and a program to reclaim the sites once the mining is completed. To date, none of that has been done, Tindale noted.
