Alberta mining company Sio Silica, whose proposal to remove high-grade sand from a southeastern Manitoba aquifer was rejected by the provincial government early this year, has hired the mayor of a Winnipeg-area municipality to help shepherd through a revised application to extract the critical mineral.
Carla Devlin, who serves as the mayor of East St. Paul and also works as a residential developer, has joined Sio Silica as its vice-president for Manitoba, CEO Faisal Somji said Tuesday.
“She’s our person in Manitoba now. She’s helping us with all aspects and all fronts of communication and planning and hopefully in the future, into operations,” Somji said Tuesday in an interview from Kelowna, B.C.
In February, Manitoba’s NDP government rejected Sio Silica’s proposal to drill up to 7,700 wells south and east of Winnipeg over the next 24 years to extract millions of tonnes of ultra-pure silica sand for use in the production of solar panels, semiconductors and batteries.
The company planned to inject air to bring up a mixture of water and sand from the water table, which extends under a large swath of southeastern Manitoba and serves eight municipalities.
Hundreds of people who rely on that aquifer for their drinking water registered their opposition to this plan, while the provincial Clean Environment Commission expressed concern about the potential risk posed by the mining to both the aquifer and the stability of its subsurface geology.
Somji, who initially considered appealing the provincial decision, now maintains Sio Silica could have done “a much better job” communicating its plans.
“We truly believe in our extraction process. We don’t believe it’s harmful. I just don’t think we explained it well,” he said.
Sio Silica now plans to meet with more communities. In July, it made a presentation to members of Brokenhead First Nation, an Ojibway community northeast of Winnipeg, Somji said.
Devlin, who said she first met Somji several years ago, said she was approached to join Sio Silica in June, after she decided not to run for leader of the Manitoba Progressive Conservatives.
“My objective has always been to grow the Manitoba economy and I do believe Sio has the ability to do that,” she said in an interview from Moose Jaw, Sask.
“I believe in the project and I believe in growing the economy.”
Devlin said Sio Silica owns no property in East St. Paul, conducts no business in the municipality and even if it did, she said she would recuse herself of any decisions relating to the company.
Somji said Sio Silica has a lot of work to do before it submits a new application to the province.
Ryan Stelter, a spokesperson for the NDP government, said it is not aware of any renewed plans for a silica-extraction application.
Premier Wab Kinew, who has accused the former PC government of trying to ram through approval of the Sio Silica proposal following his election victory, has not ruled out consideration of future silica-mining applications.
Tangi Bell, president of the Sio Silica opposition group Our Line In The Sand, said she hopes any future application for silica mining undergoes more rigorous scrutiny.
The Alberta miner, she said, failed to demonstrate the safety of its proposed extraction processes, among many other issues.
“They have to answer a lot of questions,” Bell said in a telephone interview from the R.M. of Springfield on Tuesday. “The entire project was put forward improperly as far as we’re concerned.”