The time limit for a suspension on the review of the Davidson Project has been reached, meaning the environmental review of the proposed molybdenum mine has been called off until the company re-applies.
In a letter dated Jan. 10, and posted to the project’s review website on the Environmental Assessment Office’s website, John Mazure, who is an EO executive director, told the company of the decision.
“I have decided to terminate the current [environmental assessment] of the proposed project,” he wrote in the letter.
He later wrote in the same letter, “Should Thompson Creek Metals Company Inc. wish to advance the project, a new project description would need to be submitted to EAO. The proposed project would then be reviewed in accordance with all provisions of the Act and the association regulations. A new application for an EA certificate, containing up-to-date information, would be required.”
The review process was temporarily suspended on Dec. 8, 2008, to allow the company to provide additional information that was required to complete the assessment.
In Jan. 2010, the vice president of Blue Pearl, Randy MacGillivray, told the environmental assessment office that Blue Pearl was, according to Mazure’s latest letter, “undertaking an internal review of various operating alternatives for the proposed project.”
The review was requested to be suspended until that work took place.
Then in June 2011, the company was advised that the time limit for suspending a review, three years, would be on Dec. 8, 2011.
Thompson Creek Metals responded last November that because of the internal work going on that they would not be requesting a re-start of the review. The company told the EAO that a revised project description may be developed and a new application would be submitted at a later date.
That led to the recent decision to terminate the existing review.
A call for comment from Thompson Creek Metals by The Interior News was not immediately returned in time for our press deadlines.
A subsidiary of Thompson Creek Metals, Blue Pearl Mining, was proposing to develop an underground molybdenum mine about nine kilometres northwest of Smithers, on Hudson Bay Mountain.
The mine was expected to last about 10 years and produce 2,000 tonnes a day.