Mayor and council in the Village of Chase are hoping Interfor’s proposal to buy Canfor’s cutting rights in the North Thompson doesn’t get chopped down.

CAO Joni Heinrich says Interfor asked for council’s support this week. She says council endorsed their bid and also will be writing a letter to the Forest Ministry asking for the $60-million-dollar transaction to be approved.

“Interfor would like to purchase those timber rights in order to ensure the Adams Lake mill can continue to operate sustainably into the future. And of course, Interfor’s Adams Lake mill is actually within the Village of Chase boundaries, and therefore we do receive taxation dollars from them on an annual basis,” Heinrich says.

“They’re acquisition of this timber really actually helps to enhance their operation. So they’re not really looking at this point in time of any slowdowns or anything like that. They do want to acquire these rights so that they can possibly increase some of their operations into the future, by a conservative amount.”

In light of a number of significant mill closures and curtailments in B.C. in recent weeks, Heinrich says staff with the Adams Lake mill say it is “holding its own.”

“They have a very efficient operation. They’re not running two shifts a day, so they don’t run 24 hours a day. For the last few days they’ve run like a one-and-a-half shift-per-day kind of thing, so that they can keep things moving and keep people employed. But they are always trying to source out a portion of their timber.”

The Forest Ministry will decide this summer whether to approve to the transaction.

Some local governments in the North Thompson have expressed concerns on what the sale of the cutting rights could mean to the local economy; the Simpcw First Nation has formally said it wants to be involved in the sale and wants to intervene in the proposed transaction as it stands.