Hey you kids get off my lawn.
Representatives from Riversdale Resources are tired of having to chase motorcyclists off of Grassy Mountain.
At a council meeting on Aug. 12, Keith Bott, safety and security consultant with Riversdale, said motorcyclists are consistently driving their machines near the company’s worksite on Grassy Mountain despite signs and gates advising them to the contrary.
“We’ve cut down traffic significantly but we still have some issues with motorcycles that are going up there on the weekends,” said Bott.
“We don’t want any accidents up there. We don’t want someone to get hurt,” he added.
On Saturday afternoons six to eight motorcyclists have been using Grassy Mountain as a recreation area, said Bott. Company’s surveillance cameras have been consistently monitoring the trespassers, he said.
Bott said there has been a recent incident where one of the motorcyclists almost collided with a Riversdale vehicle.
Riversdale Operations Manager Peter Murray said there had been another incident last winter that could have resulted in the injury of a trespassing snowmobiler.
“We haven’t had an incident [but] we have a horrible feeling it’ll be someone from the public,” said Murray.
“We have an idea of who they are,” said Murray. “At the end of the day, if they were in different areas than where we’re working it wouldn’t be so bad.”
Councillor Bill Kovach commiserated with the Riversdale representatives and explained Grassy Mountain is “a popular recreation place. Both in summer and winter.”
In December 2013, Riversdale unveiled a safety plan for Grassy Mountain Road in preparation for their winter drilling program.
The company was bringing in heavy equipment to complete the drilling program and asked residents to limit the use of Grassy Mountain Road to reduce the risk of an accident.
Riversdale is undertaking a core-drilling program to obtain coal samples to understand the quality and the viability of the coal.
If the results of ongoing technical studies and permit applications are favourable, Riversdale will proceed with mine development based on an open-cut mine design, initially targeting 2.2 million tonnes per year of metallurgical, or coking coal, over a 28 year mine life.