The Mayor of Clearwater says he had a productive meeting with Forests Minister Doug Donaldson this morning in the aftermath of the Vavenby mill closure.

Merlin Blackwell tells NL News the minister was receptive to ideas to keep the community viable moving forward.

“We pitched him quite a few ideas. Some of them he already had through other areas and he was very receptive to what we were saying and was very happy to start working with us on some of these projects to help transition people and to keep people working for the next while,” he said.

As for what those ideas included?

“Additions to our community forest here that generates money from selling logs. The other one that we’re really pushing is wildfire fuel mitigation in Clearwater,” Blackwell added. “We did one about ten years ago when Canfor shutdown for a year or two. So we know how to do this, we can do it again because everything is starting to grow back.

He says they are raring to go on the wildfire mitigation front, a point also brought up by MLA Peter Milobar.

“A lot of the information that we generated and the plans and prescriptions that we created during the last time are still valid. It’s just a matter of accelerating the grant process to get that money back in our hands. That could be up to two years quite easily,” Blackwell said.

“Eventually we’re going to have to start asking to have this kind of stuff done on private land, subsidize it for homeowners hopefully.”

Blackwell says he is looking forward to more discussions with the Minister over the coming weeks and months.