The First Nations communities of Anaham, Redstone, Stone, and Toosey have purchased the Sigurdson Brothers Sawmill near Hanceville for $780,000.

Tl’etinqox-t’in (Anaham) Chief Joe Alphonse says the purchase of the mill, which previously had gone bankrupt, was made final Monday.

“It’s a done deal,” Alphonse says. “We’re the sole owners. The keys were delivered into our hands on Monday.”

Alphonse says the new owners will wait until the economy improves before re-opening the mill.

“We want to ensure the market shifts before we turn the key and bring everyone back to work,” Alphonse says. “We don’t want to bring people in and then a month later have to shut down again.”

Alphonse says he hopes community members will be back working at the mill by next summer.

“We want to create employment, but it is a business venture and we’ve got to look at the bottom line and see if we can make a profit doing it,” he says. “We’ve been critical of the logging industry in Williams Lake area in the past, but you know what? Now we’ve got nothing to complain about. It’s our mill. If we want to overpay our workers and go broke, we have nobody to blame but ourselves.”

Alphonse couldn’t give a specific number of how many workers the mill would likely employ, but he says the mill used to run a double shift, employing 60 Chilcotin members alone. There may also be three to four logging operations with six to eight workers each and about 15 trucks running once the mill reopens, he estimates.

“There’s going to be a lot of spin-off work and jobs,” he says.

Alphonse also hopes to get approval for the $260 million bio-energy plant, a 50/50 partnership between the Tsilhqot’in National Government and Western Biomass Power Corp.

Both parties are waiting to hear back from BC Hydro whether their proposal under phase two of the second call for power is approved. If the power plant is built, the mill could assist its operations, since beetle-killed wood would be used to create the power that would be sold to BC Hydro.

“Sigurdson sawmill is geared to deal with beetle-killed wood, and we do have a big epidemic in the Chilcotin, and it’s not the first epidemic, and it won’t be the last,” Alphonse says.

“We need to do our part in keeping our trees green out here, and part of that is cleaning up what’s up there, and that’s getting rid of the red trees.”