The Kenney government has fined an Alberta hunter $600 for making an anti-coal video, but the young man says he’s laughing.
Last October, Levi Williams-Whitney went for a gambol up Grassy Mountain just north of the town of Blairmore in Alberta’s historic Crowsnest Pass.
Much of the mountain is now owned by Benga Mining (Riversdale Resources), a firm purchased by Australian billionaire Gina Rinehart in 2019 for $700 million.
With the Kenney government’s blessings, Rinehart, an iron-ore magnate and Australia’s wealthiest woman, has proposed to reduce what is now the habitat of mountain sheep, trout and elk into a giant open-pit coal mine. (The mountain top removal project is under a joint federal-provincial review.)
Mountaintop-removal coal mines in the Southern Eastern slopes of Alberta's Rocky Mountains will worsen climate change, contaminate water and destroy fish and wildlife habitat. The proposed Grassy Mountain Coal Project and a number of proposed coal projects in Southwest Alberta pose a serious threat to the environment and character of the region. They must not be allowed to proceed.
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Teck corporation open pit mine in Canada. | People’s Voice
Australian mining corporations are already preparing to open-pit mine in the Bighorn area of the Rocky Mountains. Since 1976 Alberta’s Coal Development Policy has guided land use over many aspects of coal development, including open-pit coal mining and coal exploration in some of Alberta’s most environmentally sensitive areas. This policy was developed with extensive public consultation, to create a fair balance between environmental protection, economic development, and the social needs of all Albertans.
But on June 5, Jason Kenney’s United Conservative government rescinded the Coal Development Policy. Recent documents show that at least seven months before announcing the cancellation, the provincial Minister of Environment and the Minister of Economic Development, Tourism, and Trade held conversations with coal companies that supported development in these sensitive areas. The lack of public consultation in parks and lands use runs counter to the UCP election commitments to increase consultation in parks and land use decisions and to increase tourism in Alberta.
The area involved provides water for downstream communities, which also flows into Saskatchewan and Manitoba. It provides habitat for species at risk including bull and cutthroat trout, grizzly bear, bighorn sheep, and mountain goat. It is a high-value recreation area and supports local communities and economies, including ranching and agriculture. Kate Morrison from Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society (CPAWS) gave a description of what this open-pit mining entails, in a webinar organized with the Council of Canadians. Trees will be clear cut and explosives and massive machinery will be used to remove earth so that coal seams can be accessed from the top down. Mining waste, or spoil, will be dumped into valleys. The resulting landscape changes, such as mountain top removal and mining and valley fills, increase the risk of flash flooding, Native species are slow to recolonize the reclaimed land and planted trees may perform poorly in the compromised soil.
One of the major impacts is decreased water quantity and quality. Southern Alberta is already a dry region that has drought years, and it is unclear how water will be allocated. A number of toxic chemicals are involved in the mining process, but perhaps most concerning is the release of selenium which can cause reproductive failure in fish and elk. These effects have already been observed in British Columbia, near Teck corporation’s Elk Valley coal mining operations. Municipal water supplies near the site have already been contaminated.
This leaching of selenium can continue for hundreds of years, and Morrison predicted a 90 percent collapse in the population of cutthroat trout.
There are also significant health effects for humans. Studies from the Appalachia region of the U.S., an area which is practically synonymous with coal mining, show that the dust has high levels of silica. The surrounding area had higher rates of cancer, heart and lung disease, kidney disease, and birth defects. This did not just affect the miners.
Those arguing that the economic advantages may outweigh some of these disadvantages should take a lesson from the experience with oil and gas. Prices can be volatile with natural resources, and the companies can leave huge liabilities in environmental and health costs. Rose Marie Sackela told the CPAWS/CoC webinar that Alberta is on the hook for $260 billion in costs for orphaned and abandoned wells. The companies should be cleaning up this mess, but it may be the taxpayers who end up with the job. Sackela also pointed out that the radium mines in the north, where she has done some research, have a similarly bad record.
The oil and gas experience also undermines the argument that mining will provide royalties. The conservatives collected hardly any royalties, and Municipal Affairs Minister Tracey Allard is presently giving 3-year tax holidays for new wells, new pipelines, and more. The pattern is not good.
Jobs? Sackela said that open-pit mining would create only a few jobs because as in the tar sands, the industry makes extensive use of robotics.
An obvious question is how this move to coal mining will affect targets for reducing carbon emissions. The coal here is for metallurgic, not thermal, use — meaning it will be used in steel production — and is destined for export rather than Canadian consumption. While government and industry can argue that this arrangement means greenhouse gas emissions in Canada will not increase significantly, there will still be a huge impact in the destination countries and, therefore, globally.
The UCP’s whole approach to this issue has sneaky and aggressive. For example, of the 164 provincial parks the government delisted from protective status during the summer, sixty are in areas slated for coal mining. In another example, the government announced $120 million to the David Thompson highway for a twinning project [constructing a parallel road], which Sakela and others believe will actually be a regional support road for mining exploitation.
Another issue is how the Kenney government is streamlining approvals. The Alberta Energy Regulator is completely funded and operated by industry and is able to receive and approve an application in one day. This makes it enormously difficult for opponents to file an objection, especially average people who may not know how to do so.
Grassy Mountain is part of the range known as Crowsnest Pass in southern Alberta. Riversdale Resources photo
There are a number of related matters, but one that stands out is that Canada needs a federal water policy. So far, Ottawa has consistently avoided this issue.
There is some urgency to this fight — hearings into the Grassy Mountain Coal Project are underway now, in which a panel including the Alberta Energy Regulator and the Impact Assessment Agency of Canada will gather information to determine the environmental impacts of the project and recommend whether it should be approved and on what conditions. It is important to stop Grassy Mountain because it will start a domino effect.
So, how can we stop Kenney? Morrison and Sackela recommend people “write, write, write and call” their federal MP [Member of Parliament] and provincial MLA [Member of the Legislative Assembly]. Morrison specifically suggested appealing to the federal government to overrule Kenney. Sackela identified the issue of water as another avenue for opposition — since Alberta has an agreement with Saskatchewan and Manitoba to guarantee a certain amount of water reaches them, they might have legal rights. She suggested appealing to those provincial governments as well as to the Prairie Provinces Water Board.
A key area of concern in all of this is the effect on Indigenous communities and their consent to the development. Latasha Calf Robe of the Káínawa Blood Tribe said, “consultation has taken place, however that does not translate to community support or community level consultation. Our leadership has chosen not to include that, so there have been no community level referendums. There has not been an opportunity for the community to address all of our concerns and have them inputted in these agreements and addressed in a meaningful way.” Wacey Little Light, who is also Káínawa, expressed concern that this has been done behind the scenes.
Clearly, there is a possibility of building a strong alliance between environmental groups and Indigenous peoples, to fight the coal mining agenda.
Selenium leaching has been linked to mass deaths of Westslope cutthroat trout and has sparked disputes with U.S. officials concerned about pollution flowing over the border into Montana and Idaho. Water in the Elk Valley has been tested to show it has levels of contamination at 50-70 percent higher than safety levels. As expected, people have raised concerns about the impact it will have on wildlife, air and water quality, as well as the landscape.
The People’s World is a voice for progressive change and socialism in the United States. Their article, “Mutated fish highlight the danger of selenium” is a real eye-opener. It talks about deformed fish in southern Idaho, where they have selenium leaking into the water from mining activities.
See this short video on polluting our waterways with coal
They say, “The metal causes significant damage to animal life; the deformity it causes to birds – missing eyes, twisted feet, and protruding brains – is significantly worse than what has been done to the trout. But it’s dangerous to humans as well; it can cause hair and fingernail loss, and numbness in fingers and toes.”
Much of southern Alberta depends on the Oldman Watershed. It supplies 90 percent of the drinking water for Lethbridge and the surrounding area. If this is poisoned, the the Oldman Watershed Council said they’re out of options.
“Southern Alberta does not have alternative rivers or lakes to draw water from,” the council said in its submission to the hearing. “The Oldman River is the only option for us and so we are particularly vulnerable to upstream contamination.”
Cam Gardner, councillor for the Municipal District of Ranchland, told the CBC said those who work in the hills learned long ago that you don’t “put your outhouse next to your spring,” and says he hopes Albertans haven’t forgotten that lesson.
“I would just ask Albertans whether in a closed water basin in a drought-prone region, this
is what they want their water to be used for — is to wash coal to send to China,” he said.
One of the biggest selenium contamination issues in the world is taking place in the Elk River’s tributaries to waters downstream that cross into the United States. Tech Resources has a number of metallurgical coal mines operating just inside the border of British Columbia in roughly the same area as the Grassy Mountain mine will be. The issues they face with international lawsuits and million-dollar fines will be echoed by Alberta’s Coal mine. See the environmental hazard assessment of Benga Mining’s proposed Grassy Mountain Coal Project.
If this toxic mixture of selenium and heavy metals can travel into the United States, it’s easy to see how quickly it will reach Lethbridge and Calgary. There is a lot of development and work towards finding a solution to deal with this contamination, but putting hope and optimism aside, nothing has worked.
The Oldman River flows roughly west to east from the Rocky Mountains, through the communities of Fort Macleod, Lethbridge, and on to Grassy Lake, where it joins Bow River to form the South Saskatchewan River, which eventually drains into the Hudson Bay. There are a lot of cities and towns that depend on it.
Several coal mining projects are lining up to use up Alberta’s resources. These include Riversdale/Benga’s Grassy Mountain Project, Montem’s Tent Mountain Mine, Atrum’s Elan, Isolation Mines, and the Cabin Ridge Coal Project Ltd. These mines all need water for coal production. It was determined years ago there is a limited supply. It isn’t endless as some might believe. Still, the government has put two-thousand hectares of land on the eastern slopes up for bidding, and will change rules and regulations to make sure these new mines get the water they need to operate. They will eliminate current categories of water allocations to open up the Old Man, making almost double the amount available.
This might heat up into quite a competition. The Elan hard-coking coal project determine there was more coal there than initial testing. Perhaps enough to extend the mine for another 6 years. It’s doubtful the extra availability of water has been considered. They found a way to reduce costs and increase their returns by 25-28 percent.
Montem Resources has finished their exploratory drilling and hit black gold. All their drilling tests show thick coal seams and it’s close to the surface for easier and less expensive costs. These are all very encouraging signs for the drillers. They’ll make a fortune.
This may result in a lot of water shortages. What little is left, will be poisoned. Gardner’s comment that you “don’t put your outhouse next to your spring,” is exactly what the Alberta government will do. How smart is that?
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