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Resurrected mining project is rankling residents

Concerns were raised at public meetings held this week in Giscome, Willow River and Prince George over plans by Graymont Ltd., the international limestone giant, to open a lime quarry and processing plant.
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Concerns were raised at public meetings held this week in Giscome, Willow River and Prince George over plans by Graymont Ltd., the international limestone giant, to open a lime quarry and processing plant.

The proposal has been in the works for years. They were at the point of public consultations in 2007 when the company suddenly halted plans to establish the Giscome operation. Favourable market conditions turned Graymont's interest back on.

Many concerns were raised but Graymont's environmental health and safety officer Rob Beleutz said the focus was getting answers to questions, not opposition.

Beleutz explained at the outset that the company purchased a lot of the adjacent lands to create a buffer zone between their operations and the community at large. The quarry itself was on Crown land and "as mines go, it will be quite small."

There will also be little road traffic caused by their activities other than ferrying the rock the six kilometres from the quarry to the kiln where the rocks will be cooked at high temperatures to render it into the lime products Graymont sells. The bulk of the transportation would be done by rail since the facilities are located beside a CN Rail spur line.

Most of the lime products would be used for industrial applications. For example, Beleutz said, Prince George's pulp mills already use so much of their lime in the paper-making process that their company has had a storage depot here for many years. Now, the shipping of the product would be greatly reduced.

Residents had questions about particulate pollution caused by the quarrying (a lot of dust in the air from breaking rock and clearing land). There were also questions about potential pollution from the industrial-grade oven the limestone will be baked in.

"I'm really concerned about dust and traffic at this point. The location is certainly close to us," said prospective neighbour Catharine Kendall. "I'm still doing research about what all it entails. I want to know about blasting, crushing, the kilns they plan to install. I need to have an educated opinion and I don't have those questions answered."

"I've been to a lot of mine sites and the dust goes a long way, and I wonder about the prevailing winds, the potential for acid rain," said neighbour Dave Zukewich. "They're also going to be affecting the wildlife, blocking off big tracts of land that the rest of us use right now because it's Crown land but there'll be no trespassing on their operations and that's a big chunk of land."

Trapper Richard Tallman shares a couple of trap lines with his son and a neighbour. The quarry would encroach into their territory, he said, and although this caused him initial concerns, he wasn't outright opposing the company.

"I think we can work around it," he said. "It will create a few jobs and that's a good thing, and the company looks like it has its environmental ducks in a row. They seem willing to work with us, so it sounds like a good thing overall, so far anyway."

"We connected with a number of trappers and guides in 2007 in our first planing stage, and part of our reevaluation now is to look at those stakeholders again, to make sure we have all the people involved in the consultation process," said Beleutz.

He added that the Ministry of Environment has standards for air pollution that they will not exceed, and although industrial activity does create pollution like greenhouse gases at the front end, this new plant would make one of the smallest environmental footprints in the limestone industry.

"We will be fuel-flexible for our kilns," he said, meaning it could burn any combination of coal (available easily by rail), natural gas and woody biomass (anything from sticks and bark to processed pellets). Not only would the emissions be within ministry specifications, it would be state of the art, thanks to large advances in kiln technology in recent years, Beleutz added.

The process of passing government environmental tests is not yet underway, and Graymont is only partially into the conversation with the Lheidli T'enneh First Nation on whose territory the quarry proposal is located.

Should all approvals be granted, Graymont estimates the project will cost about $80 million in construction and set-up costs, a great deal of which would be spent locally. The employment estimate is 40 jobs during the construction phase and about a dozen ongoing jobs for its operations, again emphasizing local investment. That does not include the local suppliers, service providers and other goods that will be purchased as needed as the mine operates.

The quarry and processing plant is estimated by Graymont to have a 50-year life expectancy. The hope, said the company, would be to start construction in 2015 and be producing lime sometime in 2016.