The Crowsnest Pass is rich in history and unsurpassed beauty, with a mountain full of activities available from fly-fishing to skiing in the winter. There’s horseback riding, swimming, guided tours of historical landmarks and even challenging activities like mountain bike riding. You can spend the afternoon on a scenic golf course, or explore trails on off-highway vehicles. There’s always lots to do.

One certainly doesn’t want to miss The Frank Slide Interpretive Centre or explore an underground mine. It was the worst rockslide Canada has ever had. Over 90 people from the town of Frank were in the path of the mountain as it came down. Some bodies have never been recovered. Unfortunately this isn’t the only record setting tragedy in the area.

The Hillcrest mine disaster was the worst coal mining disaster in Canadian history, in June 1914. Only 48 of the 237 men were rescued. There are other coal mines in the vicinity where explosions killed men but this was the largest. Alberta has opened up this area to mining again, so the story of coal mine fatalities hasn’t ended for Alberta yet. There will be more to come.

There will be other victims besides miners. Besides the towns that suffer from the blasting noise and dust, some ranches depend on the Mount Livingstone Range like John Smith and Laura Laing do. Their story was featured in Canadian Cattlemen in July 2020. The Mount Livingstone Range supports many ranches that will be devastated as coal mining continues. The type of mining Benga Mining will do is called mountain top removal that opens the area up to open pit mining.

The run-off tailings from these mines get held in ponds, treated to some and released back into the environment. This contains various heavy metals mixed with selenium. Selenium is toxic to birds, fish and humans in large quantities. Releasing this type of chemical into the environment will eventually leech into the waterways. There have been a lot of attempts by various companies employing different methods to filter and extract the selenium, and regardless of the success they claim to have achieved, they have all failed.

According to Yale University, “in humans, chronic exposure to high selenium concentrations can cause nausea, fatigue, skin lesions, and neurological disorders. In other animals, high levels of the element have been shown to cause liver damage, paralysis, and even death. In the waterways it leeches into, it bioaccumulates in fish and plants, meaning the concentration keeps becoming more toxic to its host. It will kill the fish and deplete the resources altogether. Larger animals like cattle have become infected and gotten sick so it’s very important to monitor any water supply where animals or birds will have access to.

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 are facing 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.

A. Dennis Lemly who authored the report, said:

It’s not that there is a lack of regulations promulgated under the statutory authority of government, there is a lack of enforcement of those statutory laws by government. Today, with the large body of scientific information and case study evidence available demonstrating the selenium threat from coal mining in Alberta and elsewhere, there is no longer plausible deniability. There is no legitimate basis for the claim “we didn’t know better”, either on the part of the mining industry or the regulatory community in which it operates.

Minister of the Environment and Climate Change, Jonathan Wilkinson, will do a federal impact assessment. The federal government was prepared to let this slide. They are aware of the environmental impact this project will have on the area and that the selenium being released into the waterways will continue to contaminate the area for decades after the mine has closed. But this has never stopped the approval of a coal mine so it isn’t likely this time.

Selenium leeching into the Oldman River may be a concern as it supplies 40% of the irrigated land in Alberta and the entire water supply for Lethbridge. It isn’t likely to cause any trouble in the near future but bioaccumulation means it could be a problem in the future and one that will be very hard to deal with. In Sparwood, BC selenium from Tech Resources has poisoned one of their wells. There were other private wells with much higher (13.5 micrograms per liter) than safe limits as well.

There isn’t a lot of safety information about how the mine and government will contain this toxic environment. Perhaps they will continue to turn their heads. You know, if you don’t see it, then it isn’t a problem.