Bathurst mill site owners will enter plea in January

Bathurst Redevelopment Inc. will enter a plea Jan. 4 on a charge of failing to clean up an abandoned mill site in the city.

Monday marks the third court date for the company, a Canadian subsidiary of Illinois-based Green Investment Group which bought the former Smurfit-Stone mill property in 2010.

Crown prosecutor Marc Bourgeois told the judge he had been writing a brief to set an ex parte trial, which is a situation where only one party appears before the judge, when he received a phone call from Raymond Stillwell, the president of Green Investment Group.

Stillwell then sent a letter to the court in Bathurst asking for two weeks to enter a plea. The judge pushed the date back almost a month.

Bourgeois also said there were obstacles to serving Green Investment Group with notices to appear in court, due to the cross-border nature of the case.

There was no mention of whether or not a representative would appear in-person for the Jan. 4 plea election.

The Smurfit-Stone paper mill closed suddenly in 2005, leaving 270 people out of work.

When Green Investment Group bought the property, officials promised a "green cleanup," but instead stripped the site of valuable metals and equipment. The site has been described as resembling a "war zone" and remains an eyesore one kilometre from the heart of the city.

Residents and politicians from the area have been asking for a clean-up for years, but close to $1 million in back taxes are owed on the property, so prospective buyers and developers have been unable to make any progress.