Canada: Alberta’s open-pit coal mining plan must be stopped!

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  1. Steve Post author

    Alberta is planning new mountaintop-removal coal mines. Here’s what that looks like

    Elk Valley Preview

    Debate has swirled as Alberta opens up a large swath of the Rocky Mountains’ eastern slopes to new coal mining. B.C.’s Elk Valley offers a preview of what may come next

    We looked west to B.C., where an industry to churn out steel-making coal has been operating for years.

    In B.C.’s Elk Valley, just over the Alberta border, the coal industry has been at the centre of an ongoing debate pitting economic benefits against a growing environmental crisis.

    Although mining has occurred in the area for more than 100 years, the use of mountaintop-removal mining in recent decades has dramatically changed the scale of the region’s mining operations. Entire mountains are carved up, with valuable metallurgical coal processed out. The remaining waste rock, which contains selenium, arsenic and nitrates, among other pollutants, is piled high in adjacent valleys where it is exposed to the elements.

    These mines, among the biggest in B.C., operate 24 hours a day, every day of the year.

    Now, more mines like these are poised to open up the eastern slopes in Alberta.

    Here’s a closer look.

    Photo Essay by the Narwhal

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