“... all we want is fair market value from before the mill announcement so we can move, even though we don’t want to move away from this beautiful area ,” Iain Collins said on Monday.

“... it will be too dangerous and unliveable to stay …”

Hermal Group senior manager of special projects James Lantry confirmed the company had been asked to buy Mr Collins’ property, near the proposed mill site.

Asked if it would be considered, he said it was “a bit early for us to have a comment on that”.

Mr Collins said the company at a recent public meeting “wouldn’t answer any real questions about buffer zones and the influx of the extra trucks, not to mention the pollution, the run-off from watering the logs, the extra water usage ...”

He reiterated he was not against the mill and the jobs it would create, just the location.

“ … the 200 or so jobs are great for Burnie and its population, but I really don’t think it’s fair that we be disadvantaged because we are just one family that will suffer medically and emotionally from a 24(-hour) mill with 300-plus trucks driving up and down our road and the noise and smoke that will be produced,” he said.

Mr Lantry said the initial meeting was to get community input and give people the chance to raise concerns, issues and questions.

“ … we answered those questions as fully as we could and we outlined fully the process we have to go through with the EPA and the council,” Mr Lantry said.

He said the company had chosen a greenfield site so it could build in closed system water management.

He said initial calculations suggested the mill would not need local groundwater.

The plantation hardwood mill and engineered timber production facility are expected to create more than 200 direct jobs when operational, plus hundreds more indirect jobs.

The Hermal Group wants  production started by 2020.