The potential for environmental harm keeps the Alberta NDP unequivocal in its opposition to mining the Eastern Slopes, party leader Naheed Nenshi said recently.
“The simple answer is no,” Nenshi told The Macleod Gazette. “Some things are too precious. The drinking water downstream is too precious. Maintaining fragile ecosystems on the Eastern Slopes is too precious.”
Nenshi’s comments come as Northback Holdings Corporation reignites the Grassy Mountain project in an historic coal mining belt through southwestern Alberta and southeastern B.C. The subsidiary of Australia’s Hancock Prospecting Pty Ltd faces renewed regulatory scrutiny and a legal challenge in its quest to mine metallurgical coal from an Eastern Slopes site.
And the neighbouring Municipality of Crowsnest Pass has decided to gauge residents’ positions on the project through a Nov. 25 plebiscite.
Opponents of Grassy Mountain identify the potential for elevated levels of watershed selenium as among reasons that Grassy Mountain should not go ahead. Elevated selenium can contaminate drinking water, along with the habitat of fish and other fauna and flora.
Nenshi said farmers, ranchers and people like musician Corb Lund “have done an incredible job” in raising awareness about the risks of mining the Eastern Slopes. “So thank you to them. I'm deeply grateful. And our party position remains that just because you can (mine the slopes) doesn't mean you should.”
But supporters point to job creation and other economic benefits like spinoff business, plus an opportunity to properly reclaim an abandoned site last mined six decades ago.
Rina Blacklaws, communications manager for Northback, said a progressive reclamation program starting early in the project would serve the community and the environment. The company is working closely with nearby Piikani Nation, for example, to make sure that its traditional land uses would be respected, she said.
The site is “incapable of supporting recreation, wildlife habitat, the vegetation that should be there, because it’s been formerly mined and just left like that,” Blacklaws said. “There’s old equipment and debris still scattered throughout the site. So in reclaiming it, we can return the land to a state that can be used once again to support diverse ecosystems and be used by future generations.”
Blacklaws said concerns about elevated selenium are understandable because of what coal mining used to be like. But Northback’s technology and processes would build upon learnings from past industry practices.
Mining began in neighbouring Elk Valley in 1898, when sending water through broken rocks into waterways was considered a good filtering system. But by doing so, mining companies were unwittingly increasing the release of selenium and creating a buildup in the watershed that wasn’t discovered until a century later.
Newer mines are “extremely effective in managing selenium” through systems like active water treatment plants, saturated backfill zones and phytoremediation on wetlands, Blacklaws said from her office in the Crowsnest Pass community of Blairmore, about seven kilometres south of the Grassy Mountain site.
Phytoremediation is a decontamination process using soil microbes and plants to reduce contaminant concentration. A saturated backfill zone involves storing water-saturated rock and feeding it carbon to create a chemical reaction that its supporters say reduces selenium in water.
Northback has filed applications with the Alberta Energy Regulator to explore for coal, as well as divert water and drill in the process. Added to the mix is a legal challenge of AER’s acceptance of the applications as part of an “advanced project.”
The Alberta Court of Appeal granted leave to appeal in August to the Municipal District of Ranchland against AER’s acceptance of the new applications. The appeal challenges the advanced designation, given that an original version of the proposal in 2015 failed to earn federal and provincial approval. But AER is following the usual practice of regulatory bodies to proceed unless they’re ordered to stop, setting hearing dates in December and January.
A joint review panel of AER and the Federal Impact Assessment Agency found in June 2021 that the proposal was not in the public interest. Benga Mining Ltd., as the Hancock proponent was then called, had applied for an open-pit mine to produce up to 4.5 million tonnes of metallurgical coal over about 23 years.
Although Ranchland has come out against the proposal, Crowsnest Pass residents appear to be split. The southern municipality has even approved a Nov. 25 plebiscite asking residents: “Do you support the development and operations of the metallurgical coal mine at Grassy Mountain?”
Nenshi called it “sort of odd” that a municipality that does not have the mine within its boundaries is holding a vote.
But Troy Linderman of Citizens Supportive of Crowsnest Coal said his home municipality is more impacted than much of Ranchland. Crowsnest has about eight times the number of families as Ranchland has, he said. And water flows towards Crowsnest from the site.
“It’s not a hard argument to look at that and see the impact that a project like this is going to have on the Crowsnest Pass and the minimized impact that it's going to have on the MD of Ranchland,” said Linderman.
The Crowsnest vote, put forward in a motion by Coun. Dean Ward, isn’t binding. A Municipality of Crowsnest Pass news release quotes Ward saying: “In the last 10 years Northback and its predecessors have attempted to develop a coal mine to the north of our community. Many individuals, organizations and levels of government have expressed an opinion on whether the project should move forward or not, and it’s time the residents of the Crowsnest Pass were taken into consideration on this issue.