North America’s second-largest lime stone supplier is working with the Environmental Assessment Office and people of PG on a potential quarry and lime plant near Giscome.
A 45-day public input period kicked into gear with an open house on Thursday afternoon, though Project Assessment Manager Gerry Hamblin says there hasn’t been much feedback at this point.
“It’s still early on, some of the people who came today are interested in birds, I was speaking to someone who was a neighbour to the area, he said about 4 kilometres away, so he’s interested in the project.”
One nearby resident told MyPGNow she has concerns about noise and dust stemming from the project, while several mine engineers gave a nod to environmental improvements on the project plan.
One change involved moving from a horizontal kiln to a vertical kiln in an effort to conserve energy.
It looks like it’s been a long road up to this point, with the completion of a project description to the Environmental Assessment Office, a scope and process review, and application evaluations… But according to Project Manager David Chamberlain, this goes much further back.
“We staked the claims for that stone back in 1993, and then just sat on them and didn’t do anything until 2005/6. Then we started developing and looking at the project like ‘Okay, there’s potential here to actually put in a lime plant’. We got involved with the Environmental Assessment Office in ’07, and then we hit the recession in ’08. We kind of forecasted demand, and say ‘Okay, this is still a good project, but not right now’. So we had to put it on hold.”
The 45-day public consultation period will end on January 15th, when an assessment report will be completed.
If all goes smoothly, Chamberlain says the plant could be running by late 2018.
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