The process for the proposed aggregate mine and loading facility near McNab Creek to the east of Port Mellon is creeping forward as the Sunshine Coast Regional District (SCRD) passed a series of resolutions in anticipation of rezoning requests.
The SCRD planning and development committee received a referral from the Integrated Land Management Bureau (ILMB) after BURNCO Rock Products, the company that intends to mine the area, submitted an application for a barge-loading facility on the south end of the property on Howe Sound.
Directors voted on Thursday, July 15, to inform ILMB that BURNCO will have to apply to rezone the upland portion of the property where BURNCO intends to build a sorting facility as well as create new zoning for the waterfront area, which is currently not zoned at all.
The committee voted to forward a staff report on the BURNCO application to all members of the Howe Sound Community Forum, a group of governments with jurisdiction around Howe Sound.
The committee also resolved to inform ILMB that the SCRD wants to reserve final comment on the project for both provincial and federal agencies that will conduct environmental reviews before the project can go ahead, as well as inform residents who live near McNab Creek and the north side of Gambier Island who are likely to have comments on the project before it starts up.
Directors expressed some concern about the location of the barge-loading facility being too close to the McNab Creek estuary.
Derek Holmes, operations manager for the project, said the SCRD's resolutions were expected and the company is still doing environmental research for its early application reports.
"We're in the pre-application phase right now, so we are gathering background information and doing studies," he said. "We're just carrying on with the studies like we always have out there. We're doing groundwater and surface water analysis and marine and aquatic habitat surveys and carrying on."
Holmes said the mine itself will be far enough removed from the creek that it should not affect fish stocks and that the company must satisfy the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency, the provincial Environmental Assessment Office and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans that the loading facility will not harm fish stocks.
Holmes said if all goes well with the environmental assessments and SCRD rezoning, construction would begin in 2011 and extraction would begin in 2012. He said the mine would create 12 jobs directly, and several more spin-off jobs would be added.
The mine, if approved, is expected to extract between 1 and 1.6 million tonnes of gravel per year.
