Ajax mine comes closer to home

By MEL ROTHENBURGER

NEWS/ AJAX — The Ajax mine came closer to home Thursday night as Knutsford residents got a look at KGHM International’s latest version of the project.

The parking lot at Knutsford Community Hall overflowed with trucks and cars. About 20 anti-Ajax protesters greeted arrivals with placards. The hall itself was like a subway car with about 50 people at a time jammed among tables and displays talking and asking questions of staff; the cacophony made it hard to understand what anyone was saying.

While not everyone there was from Knutsford, many lived in the general area where the mine would be built and their questions to staff reflected it.

Bartosz Bazan, the cost manager for the project, has been in Kamloops for two months since arriving from Poland, where KGHM has its head offices. He’s been assigned to Kamloops for three years and said he’s loving it here.

Many of the questions he was fielding were specific to the Knutsford area, he said, questions about issues “closer to where they live” compared to the open houses held Tuesday and Wednesday nights at the Coast Canadian Hotel and Conference Centre.

“Some of them are against it, some support the project but all of them want to find answers to their questions,” said Bazan, apologizing for his imperfect English.

There were questions about the new plan for a tailings pond, about power lines and the Kinder Morgan pipeline.

Spike Wallace, who owns a cabin and acreage that will be almost on the edge of the open pit if it goes ahead, stood to one side of the hall talking with external affairs manager Yves Lacasse.

He said later he still doesn’t know what’s going to happen. Unlike several other ranch properties near or on the mine site, his hasn’t yet been purchased by KGHM.

Jay Storsley was especially interested in the potential impact on the water table. He owns the Knutsford Camp Ground a kilometre up Highway 5A from the hall and not far from the mine site.

“My concern in being here is our water for the campground,” he said. “My big concern would be something happening to the aquifer.”

Was he getting the reassurances he wanted?

“I’d would like to say so but…” Then he added, “They say it’s (damage to the water supply) not going to happen. It sounds good.”

Still, he was worried that the 40 to 100 people who stay at the camp ground at any one time could suddenly find themselves without water, and he’d be stuck with the bill for hauling it in by tanker.

As he went off to ask some more questions, Maureen Embury, who lives in a mobile home at the campground, said her main issues are air quality and water. She said the open house was helpful.

“It’s useful to see what they’re planning now.”

Twenty minutes later, Storsley was ready to leave, feeling “a little bit better” about assurances from the company. If there was any direct effect on his water supply, and he could prove it was caused by the mine, he would be compensated, KGHM staff told him.

A resident who lives at Iron Mask trailer park on Lac le Jeune Road didn’t want to be identified, but said one of her main concerns was what will happen to Goose Lake Road. Since it announced its new footprint a few weeks ago, KGHM’s maps and 3D model show the road simply ending at either side of the mammoth tailings pond.

The woman — wearing a Stop Ajax Mine button — said the switch from the dry tailings stack that was going to be located between Lac le Jeune Road and the Coquihalla highway is better for her personally but she worries about the loss of Goose Lake — which will disappear under the wet tailings — and of access to that area.

“I don’t want to see Goose Lake destroyed.”

KGHM permitting manager Nicola Banton said socio-economic consultants will interview residents to determine mitigation and whether a connection needs to be built at the south end of the tailings pond to tie the road back together or leave it as a dead-end on either side.

Exactly what sorts of socio-economic factors will come into play aren’t certain right now, she said. “I can’t tell you that.”

Most people seemed to feel better informed when they left than when they arrived. The woman with the Stop Ajax Mine button wasn’t one of them.

“As far as I’m concerned it’s all a bunch of friggin’ hype,” she said, but added that the company’s commitment to “listen” was “nice.”