The Hudson Bay Mountain Neighbourhood Group continued to press Thompson Creek Metals/Blue Pearl to change their plans for the Davidson Project on Hudson Bay Mountain at a meeting on Thursday.

Smithers Mayor Jim Davidson has joined the community watchdog group in its opposition to the proposed mine.

Since the project was proposed in 2005, Davidson has advocated building the mine on the back side of the mountain and away from the Town and the Bulkley River.

“I am for mining when it is done right,” Davidson said. “The only meeting we had where we discussed moving the site, they said it would cost $18 million more to have the mine in the back.”

The additional cost would be for additional drilling to get to the deposit and for constructing a bypass to go around the switchbacks.

Davidson held up a letter to investors from Thompson Creek Metals’ CEO Kevin Loughrey that states the deposit could yield 287 million pounds of concentrated molybdenum.

“With the size of that deposit, they could afford to make the changes we need,” Davidson said.

Even with a pricing of $14 per pound of moly — far lower than the price Blue Pearl quoted in their ten-year feasibility study, Blue Pearl stands to make billions on the deposit.

“It would be impossible to estimate the price of molybdenum for the next 30 years, that’s why we priced it lower for the feasibility study,” Randy MacGillivray, vice-president of environmental affairs for Blue Pearl. “From what the EAO [environmental assessment office] said there will be another open house and Blue Pearl would be happy to do that to answer any additional questions.”

The topic dominating discussion was concern for potential pollution of the Bulkley River and the domestic watershed.

“You don’t built a mine in the domestic watershed,” John Knight, of the Glacier Gulch group said. “The thing about the mitigation factors proposed by Blue Pearl are a best case scenario, that doesn’t account for human accident and equipment failure.”

Knight said the company needs to develop an emergency spill program, one that will be mock tested.

During the public consultation period, Rescan said they tested the sediment at Lake Kathlyn and found traces of arsenic. The water treatment facility would get about 90-95 per cent of arsenic out of the water before it is put into the diffuser and diluted with the Bulkley River.

“Arsenic is one of the heaviest, and most dangerous poisons in the history of the world,” Dr. Biz Bastian said. “Prolonged exposure can cause cancer in all the organs that excrete — the lungs, the skin, the kidneys and the colon. It is very hard to filter out and we have no way of getting rid of it once it is here.”

Some closest to the site are also concerned about the increased noise created by trucks on the proposed hauling road.

“The effects of increased noise can cause as many problems as the water pollution,” Bastian said, adding that the proposed noise level of 45 decibels for the hauling trucks is a conservative estimate.

“The research I have done says that trucks and trains have a level of 90 decibels and the increase is logarithmic, so it would be many times that loud, causing stress levels to increase and people to lose sleep. We know what that can do,” she said.

HBMN spokesperson Morgan Hite said the likelihood of residents being able to stop the development were slim to none.

“I think the best we can hope for is enough people write letters to the EAO that forces to put conditions on the certificate and hopefully we have some input in the conditions,” he said.