Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s United Conservative Party Government persists with its wildly unpopular campaign to allow destructive open-pit coal mining in the Eastern Slopes of the Rocky Mountains. Given the fury this arouses among some of the most loyal supporters of the UCP, the ranching community of southern Alberta, this is plain weird. Last week, the UCP informed country music icon Corb Lund that the anti-coal-mining petition he’d launched under the CP’s own “citizen initiative” legislation had been cancelled and he would have to start over again under more stringent regulations. If it still looks as if he might succeed, presumably, the UCP will change the rules again. Mr. Lund vowed to try again just the same, saying: “Albertans want no new coal mines of any kind in the Eastern Slopes of our Rockies. Full stop.” And yet the UCP presses on. In this guest post, Professional Biologist, author and educator Lorne Fitch takes a look at the latest version of the proposed Grassy Mountain mine and concludes that it’s like the worst car on a used-car lot. It may have a new coat of paint, but it’s still a lemon. Mr. Fitch is a frequent contributor to this blog. DJC
Grassy Mountain, ad nauseam …
By Lorne Fitch
Grassy Mountain is a defunct coal strip mine trying, like a phoenix, to rise from the rubble.
The Australian owner of Northback Holdings Corp., Gina Rinehart, knows well the time-tested technique of “heads you win, tails you flip again” for keeping her dream of a mine alive.
This time the project on the Eastern Slopes of the Rockies in southwestern Alberta’s Crowsnest Pass region is being described as a “new, improved” mine. As you might remember, the “old” proposal, which seems very similar to this one, failed the test of a joint federal-provincial review. The reasons for the panel’s rejection were not trivial.
According to Northback, this new flip is the answer to all the issues of selenium contamination, high water use, impacts to a threatened cutthroat trout population, and reclamation of a hole where a mountain once stood. All this with glib promises of economic development.
In an artful effort to distinguish this proposal from the previous one there are some cosmetic changes to alleviate concerns. Allegedly, a smaller footprint, complete control of runoff, a multistage attempt to control selenium, and complete reclamation of all of the footprint of mining, both old scars and new.
Too good to be true you say? A classic attempt to put lipstick on a pig? The promotional hype is laudatory, but the detailed mine plans are still secret.
But to the promoters of a coal mine, facts are not essential – although sometimes they are useful.
The idea that shrinking the mine footprint by 40 per cent and the amount of rock moved by 50 per cent represents a major reduction in environmental impacts on water quality, hydrology, and biodiversity requires more than just basic, back-of-the-envelope math. A smaller footprint does not directly equate to reduced impacts.
Mine footprint reductions are often used as a dodge to avoid federal government involvement. Once approved, then a piecemeal approach is used to expand the mine. If this reduction in mine size is legitimate, wouldn’t that translate into fewer jobs, a less rosy economic picture, shorter mine life, and a reduced appetite for effective reclamation as well as legacy site management?
Mining requires the blasting and dumping of rock overburden. Rocks don’t just levitate, waiting to fall back into the hole created. “Progressive reclamation” sounds positive, but the logistics of filling in a hole as you are digging one justifies skepticism.
If overburden isn’t going to be placed in the Gold Creek watershed, then will it be dumped into Blairmore Creek or into Daisy Creek? Both contain either pure or near-pure cutthroat trout.
The idea of “mixed rock pile reconfiguration” as some kind of selenium reduction seems dubious. In reality this just means the rock overburden and coal waste will be “layered” – the former top will be at the bottom and the former bottom will be at the top. That this would “seal” the selenium from exposure to air and mobilization by water is, at present, theoretical.
This is all predicated on some novel, untested, unproven ways of dealing with the inevitable leaching of selenium and other toxic materials from the rock overburden. No other mines, despite costly attempts to reduce selenium to levels safe for aquatic life, have succeeded and the downstream impacts remain.
It might be well to remember that selenium from legacy mines in the Crowsnest Pass, including Grassy Mountain, already negatively affect fish populations.
Premier Danielle Smith , Energy Minister Brian Jean and Environment Minister Rebecca Schulz have been talking about the Government’s selenium prevention policy and the zero “discharge standard for selenium” for new coal mines since December 2024.
But prevention means zero. It doesn’t mean retaining 95, 98, or 99 per cent of the selenium generated from mining. It doesn’t mean using existing and failing practices in the hopes of getting to zero. It means zero … none, nil, nothing, never, no way to any addition to streams.
It’s not clear from Northback’s promotional materials if the Alberta Energy Regulator has informed the company that its planned application for a new mine at Grassy Mountain must comply with these new standards. These would have to include proven (not speculative) technologies to remove all the selenium (zero addition) before a mine could be approved. This is unlikely to occur!
Hidden in the smoke of promotional hype is runoff management. Northback suggests that somehow any water running off mined areas will be controlled. An image of a gigantic wall surrounding the proposed mine springs to mind. What could go wrong in attempting to manage runoff in topographically challenging terrain with more wicked weather events? Lots!
Northback contends that there will be no water withdrawal from streams and that their entire water requirement will be met from water collected on site. Where does Northback think the water flowing in a stream comes from? If you siphon off the runoff from Grassy Mountain this is a withdrawal from Gold and Blairmore creeks. In effect, it is drying up streams at their source.
Northback’s mine promotion is classic case of over-promise and under-deliver. Like smoke, it seems substantial until you review the promises.
For all intents and purposes, Northback’s latest flip is still the same old derelict car. It just has a shiny new paint job. Don’t buy it!
Lorne Fitch is a Professional Biologist, a retired Fish and Wildlife Biologist and a past Adjunct Professor with the University of Calgary. He is the author of Streams of Consequence, Travels Up the Creek, and Conservation Confidential.
It seems rather ironic that the big corporations that tout the benefits of the “trickle down effect ” , are saying the trickle down effect is not something you have to worry about here.
Also, rock formations that took millions of years to form , develop and transform into an biodiverse ecosystem, can’t just be turned upside down and be expected to remain the same. But hey, d’rump and cohorts all claim it’s clean coal. Someone should put all of them in a room heated by a coal burning stove and see how long they would last, I’m not sure it would help change their minds ; the almighty $$ comes before the serfs , Mother Nature and what’s a few fish? You can just buy canned tuna, right? And if they need more water, they’ll just turn on that big tap that we have here in Canada, no worries! right?
In the preamble: “Given the fury this arouses among the among some of the most loyal supporters”, you have a double among. Perhaps “among some of the loyal supporters”?
This UCP government has to be the worst government there ever was in Alberta. Given the disastrous record of letting oil companies get away with abandoning wells, and letting Christenson Developments get away with stealing millions of seniors money, why could we trust the UCP to protect the environment and people downstream of coal mines? This is simply another disaster in the making.
OA: Thanks. Fixed. DJC
One word to describe UCP: Cutthroat.
And not the trout…
Excuse me, what century are we in?
Oil and gas are becoming obsolete and these greedy twaffs want to revert to {{{checks notes}}} COAL?
Are we building chuggy cargo steamships and adding in new coal shovelling jobs for railway engineers?
What are they trying to do, make developing nations uninhabitable via air pollution to thin the populations?
What is the actual point?
B: The actual point is that a few greedy billionaires, some of them deluded by the fantasy they can live in luxury in space while the rest of us boil on earth, see a profit that can be realized now and may not be accessible in the future. So they are in a rush to exploit the resource while there is still money to be made from it. The Grassy Mountain mine would produce “metallurgical” coal, used in making steel, so it may have a longer time horizon than thermal coal, but since Canada is moving/being forced to move away from steel production and Alberta has no steel plants, there is zero benefit to us beyond the small number of localized jobs that would be created in the Crowsnest Pass region. Given the costs of the pollution from the mine, including the cost in jobs in agriculture, it would be cheaper just to pay the folks in the Pass not to work. This project is so dumb, and so unpopular, that it seems to me that the most likely reason the UCP continues pushing ahead with it so determinedly is that someone has been bribed. I have no idea who or by whom or in what medium of exchange. There are a lot of corporate players, political players, and potential motivations. DJC
I wouldn’t put it past a single one of these UCP MLAs, corrupt, greedy and shortsighted to a person. They’re all doing the same thing these billionaires are doing, realizing as much of a profit in the little time they have as MLAs , burn the candle at both ends and damn the consequences, even if you get caught it’s alberta and someone will come along to say no rules were broken.
@DJC Meanwhile China now builds low-flying electric flying cars. Yeah, you read that right.
They’re living in The Jetsons and we’re living in…Oliver Twist?
Dunno if it’s just me but I get this overwhelming feeling we’re watching the nobles clearing out all their castles of the last farthings before their economic house of cards collapses on top of the rest of us peons.
Of course, due to their overwhelming hubris, we may get to them before they make it to their underground bunkers/moon cabins.
B: I noticed in The New York Times yesterday or the day before that the Chinese Government (or, as we like to say in Canada, the CCP, for the Communist Party of China, which you’d think would be abbreviated as CPC, but whatever …) is emphasizing the development of nuclear fusion as the power of the future. This will, of course, all but destroy the petroleum industry. Your Jetsons/Oliver Twist juxtaposition is on point. DJC
On the other hand, we can’t install wind turbines because they’ll block the view. And luxury lodges in provincial protected lands? No probs! Almost forgot AI ginormous water burners so maybe a handful of Albertans can have jobs.
Yes, a river filled with dead things and silt flumes, beats electric wind farms any day. Go Unbelievable Crap Party!
Smith and the UPC are more than happy to get coal in their stocking this year. I had the privilege of signing the new petition and sending it to everyone I know. http://www.coalpetition.ca
When we see how desperate these Reformers are for getting this coal mining stupidity through don’t you wonder what’s in it for them and what they’ve been promised, don’t you?
Alan K. Spiller: Good question. I believe someone is getting their palms greased, and there is financial kickbacks. No amount of money can fix a degraded environment. Peter Lougheed wasn’t stupid. That’s why he put forth the 1976 Coal Policy. Farmers and ranchers rely on that water, and if it’s full of toxic chemicals, including selenium, which is dangerous in high amounts, what good is that? Also, tourists have said how beautiful the Rocky Mountains are. That’s another thing Peter Lougheed realized. When the beautiful landscape is defaced, who will want look at that? Don’t expect the UCP to care.
Excellent intro Mr Climehenga and good to hear a professional biologist lay out the risks posed by this foreign country. By the time the damage is done, Gina will be gone like a fart in the wind. Sounds to me like selenium mitigation is the new carbon capture. Buys them a little time, before it becomes obvious this was just another resource company con job.