Mayor Keith Hobbs remains optimistic he can help convince Cliffs Natural Resources Inc. to locate a ferrochrome processing plant in Thunder Bay.
Hobbs will venture next month to company headquarters in Cleveland, along with a Northwestern Ontario contingent, in a last-ditch effort to convince Cliffs officials to choose Thunder Bay over Sudbury. A working group readying for the delegation is in place, and includes officials from the city, Community Economic Development Corporation, the port authority, Fort William First Nation and Thunder Bay Hydro.
Hobbs said the traveling group will be pared down before the November departure, but will be fully prepared to defend Thunder Bay’s claim to the plant, needed to process the estimated $30-billion Ring of Fire chromite deposit.
Cliffs has already labeled the Nickel City as its best case location in laying out its plans for the Ring of Fire deposit, a fact Hobbs acknowledges but said doesn’t discourage him.
“We’ve always known that Sudbury was probably always the front-runner in this. We have a lot of strengths and we have some weaknesses, as does Sudbury,” Hobbs said.
Sudbury officials traveled to Cleveland last month to meet with Cliffs executives.
Exton, Ont., located about 350 kilometres northwest of Thunder Bay near Greenstone, could also in the running, according to a report authored by former Liberal deputy premier George Smitherman, a consultant hired by the community of Greenstone.
The Smitherman report, co-authored by Don Huff of Environmental Communications Options, deemed the community a feasible site.
Hobbs said if Thunder Bay isn’t chosen, then he’d favour the Exton location, which he said would provide spinoff economic benefits to Thunder Bay.
He added the two communities might have an ace up their sleeve.
“You have to remember that First Nations support Greenstone or Thunder Bay, from what I’m hearing. I’ve also heard that the chromite is not coming out of the ground unless First Nations have a say. So that’s a huge piece of it that a lot of people aren’t getting,” Hobbs said.
“The government, I don’t even think, has got that yet.”
Without revealing his entire game plan, Hobbs said there are plenty of reasons for Cliffs to choose Thunder Bay as its preferred location.
“We do have a lot advantages. If you’re talking about shipping chromite, we are the largest port on the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Seaway (in this area), so that’s a piece in our favour. The transportation piece is a concern, obviously, and hydro,” Hobbs said.
“But we have a hydro plant here that’s underutilized, so there are lots of things that are in our favour that we’re going to take down there as well.”
Hobbs also listed the university and college as positives, and the fact that 25,000 First Nations people call Thunder Bay home.
“That mine site is 500 kilometres north, so we’re wondering why Sudbury?” he said.
The project is in the midst of an environmental assessment, being conducted by the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency.
The federal government will first look at the Black Thor deposit, one of three the company has in the Ring of Fire region.
An agency spokeswoman in Ottawa told the Sudbury Star on Wednesday the assessment could take up to a year or more, the timeline depending heavily on how long it takes Cliffs to put together its own environmental impact study.
"We are calling it the Cliffs Chromite Project," Celine Legault told the newspaper. "It will involve the construction, operation and commissioning of one open pit operation with a projected 30-year mine life."
According to the Star, once the EIS is completed, a second consultation will then be held, with a third to follows after the final report is released by the agency. Final approval must come from the environment minister.
The mine, should all approvals be met, could be operational by 2015.
