Date: Wednesday, November 4, 2026

Time: 6:30 to 8:30PM, Doors open at 6:20 PM

Location: MDM Centre, Bellevue (2802 222 St)

Registration: Please RSVP here.

Over the last five weeks, the Defenders of the Eastern Slopes have been making progress at delaying and bringing attention to the deforestation that was scheduled for this fall. Save Our Slopes is working now to bring this message to a wider audience, and help win in the court of public opinion.

We need as many people present at this event as possible. If you live in the Pass or in nearby communities, we want to see you there. And please bring a friend!

Can you share this event to your friends and community members? Here is a link with details:

Our Forests, Our Future: Crowsnest Pass Community Meeting, Wednesday, November 4 • 6:30 PM - 8:30 PM

Thank you for your efforts to protect our public forests. We look forward to carrying on this work with you!

All the best,

Colin Smith

Save Our Slopes

Subscribe now

I would encourage you to take 20 minutes to enjoy, as well as learn from this film. It speaks to what is so often taken for granted by our species when it comes to water, albeit, a much larger segment of the population is becoming more and more aware of its vulnerablity, along with its inhabitants including ourselves.

For that very reason it works well in conjunction with our GO FUND ME for “Harley’s Vision”.

https://gofund.me/bc996f279

Here is the link to the short film:

https://youtu.be/9Nf2S0cHWaE?si=KSKcZlgSaOkzTZt0

In an effort to share with a wider audience, The Timberwolf Wilderness Society is pleased to invite you to a showing of their most recent film, War on the Rockies, a documentary produced by Mike Judd and Yvan Lebel. This documentary was accepted into the Calgary Justice Film Festival and will be presented on November 6th, 2026 at 8:00PM.

Following the film, Mike Judd and a member of the Alberta Wilderness Association will be engaging the audience with discussion and a Q & A.

We are facing this ongoing problem in different ways but with a common goal in mind - the survival of the watershed. Thank you.

The Timberwolf Wilderness Society

www.timberwolfwildernesssociety.ca

In hopes that you are able to attend, the venue is:

The Confluence

750 - 9th Ave. SE, Calgary, AB

A link to the trailer is here.

Hi all.

Trevor Bastien, son of Harley Bastien, the late and highly respected Piikani Elder and environmental steward, has taken up a legal action started by his father. “Harley’s Vision”, the name Trevor chose for his commitment to restore the Oldman River system back to clean water and healthy fish, honours his father’s legacy.

Government of Alberta scientists have proven all tested fish in Crowsnest Lake were and continue to be poisoned by coal mine selenium and other contaminants to the point they are unfit for human consumption. This is a result of effluent originating from a mine located on Tent Mountain which was decommissioned 40 years ago but was never “properly” reclaimed and continues to pollute. Despite full disclosure of research documents to the appropriate government ministers and departments along with the current owner of the mine, Evolve Power, nothing has been done to mitigate this travesty.

This is a direct denial of First Nations Treaty and Constitutional Rights to catch and consume wild fish from public waters which are not contaminated.

This legal challenge will be very costly and therefore we are initiating a GO FUND ME in order to carry this case through the courts with the very distinct possibilty of it ending up in the Supreme Court of Canada.

With that in mind, we sincerely hope that you will consider donating to the GO FUND ME by clicking on the link which you will find (here.)

This is a big one but no donation is too small. All are welcome and greatly appreciated. Also, we hope that you will please share this far and wide. Thank you in advance.

Where I am it’s a bit of a dismal day for weather accompanied by any number of other things as we know all too well. Since Andrew needs no introduction I’ll get straight to it.

You’ve all likely thought or said much of it yourselves but here it is in print. The link to his rightfully scathing article is right here folks.

Thanks Andrew.

In a recent Bloomberg Television report for its program Wall Street Week, Northback’s new CEO Bradley Johnson made the following claims:

“As early as 2030, there will be a shortage of steelmaking coal, and by 2040 it could be as much as 100 million tons a year. The whole world very much wants this coal.”

Specifically, Johnson said, Japan and Korea “are very interested in pursuing us a supplier.”

Link to Bloomberg Television report on Northback

Even allowing for the reluctance of courteous Asian interlocutors to ever say “no” to anything, Johnson’s assertions are at best naieve, and otherwise downright disingenuous. Even his predecessor, the unlamented Mike Young had the honesty to admit that Northback’s Grassy Mountain coal was second-rate. “It’s not Waygu”, he said, comparing Grassy Mountain coal to Japan’s highest grade of beef.

The documented truth is that the official forecasts for Japan and Korea say that demand for metallurgical coal has peaked and is now in permanent decline. Japan currently accounts for 10 percent of metallurgical coal imports and South Korea 9 percent.

The global authority on energy markets is the International Energy Agency. Here is what it said in its Coal 2025 report (page 18) on metallurgical coal:

Looking ahead, global met coal demand is forecast to decline gradually to 1 061 Mt (million tonnes) by 2030. This trajectory reflects structural changes in steelmaking and slower growth in industrial activity. The most pronounced reductions are expected in China, where demand could fall by 77 Mt, offsetting gains in India (up 26 Mt) and Indonesia (up 12 Mt). Consumption in the European Union, Japan and Korea is projected to contract by a combined 21 Mt, while the rest of the world sees only marginal growth. Overall, global met coal demand is set to decline by 53 Mt between 2025 and 2030, underscoring the gradual transition in steelmaking technologies and regional economic dynamics.

Clearly, the only thing Northback mines from Grassy Mountain is bullshit.

Subscribe now

Video of Harley’s Fish Rescue 2026.

Subscribe now

In response to our request of September 8, 2026, Alberta environment minister Grant Hunter entirely evaded the issue with irrelevant blather about the government’s testing of selenium levels in surface water.

We know from the government’s own study of fish tissue in Crowsnest Lake that bioaccumulation pushes selenium tissue in fish well above levels in the water itself.

Recklessly, the Alberta government is ignoring recent science that shows one-third of food fish downstream of Piikani Nation are toxic for humans.

Disloyally, the Alberta government is again placing the greed of a foreign coal speculator above the health and well-being of Albertans. The Smith government is well-aware that revealing the truth about selenium toxicity in the Oldman River would kill any prospect for Australia’s Northback of re-mining Grassy Mountain.

Grassy Mountain’s own CEO Brad Johnson recently told Bloomberg News’ Wall Street Week that a selenium treatment plant at Grassy Mountain would have to run for a minimum of 50 years — twice its estimate of the mine’s life.

Here is Hunter’s dismissive response:

My department recognizes the importance of watershed health, protection of aquatic ecosystems, and the interests of Indigenous communities and other watershed residents. EPA undertakes monitoring activities based on departmental priorities, available resources, and information needs across the province.

EPA staff conduct monthly selenium monitoring at specific locations within the Oldman River watershed. This includes three locations on the mainstem river and 14 locations across nine other waterways feeding into the Oldman River. Targeted studies in the Crowsnest River headwaters demonstrated certain areas where water quality and fish tissue samples exceeded provincial selenium guidelines for the protection of aquatic life. These studies are publicly available and have informed follow-up actions from appropriate regulators and government departments.

Additional studies from regional stakeholders build on this provincial monitoring work and help further our collective understanding of conditions across the basin.

At this time, the department has no plans to initiate further fish health studies in the Crowsnest River and Oldman River Reservoir; however, EPA continues to review information from a variety of sources to help inform future monitoring and management decisions. We will consider this information through established planning and priority-setting processes to determine future monitoring activities.

And here is Crowsnest Headwaters’ response delivered October 13:

Dear Minister Hunter,

Thank you for the illuminating response on how your department is neglecting the issue of selenium contamination of food fish that are routinely caught and consumed by members of the Piikani Nation.

It is troubling the response did not deal with the critical need for targeted, timely monitoring of selenium levels in fish tissue in the Crowsnest and Oldman watersheds to determine the downstream effects of legacy coal mines, especially in light of our report on the apparent downstream movement of selenium through the Piikani Nation Reserve.

Your response did not address the key query from our original letter dated September 8, 2026:

“When will your department undertake comprehensive, systematic monitoring of selenium concentrations in fish through the length of the Crowsnest River, the Oldman Reservoir, and the Oldman River downstream of the dam, with appropriate natural baseline sampling of the Castle and Upper Oldman rivers?”

We note that in your answer on monthly selenium monitoring you neglected to point out that none of the “long term river monitoring sites” include the Crowsnest River watershed. We would also point out there are no monitoring stations on the Castle River, which would prove important to provide baseline and comparative information on water quality from an unaffected watershed. Does your department anticipate adding these two watersheds to long term water quality monitoring?

It is also evident, and your knowledgeable staff can brief you on this, that water quality monitoring is only one facet of understanding issues of selenium contamination. Even when water quality sampling does not detect an issue, fish may still be affected, through the process of bioaccumulation from biofilm and aquatic invertebrates. Waiting until selenium concentrations are exceeded in fish flesh precludes reasonable, timely action before consuming the fish becomes toxic to humans, as has happened with Crowsnest Lake and the Oldman River where it exits the Piikani Nation Reserve.

Since your Department has already identified issues with selenium in the headwaters, in Crowsnest Lake, it would seem evident that comprehensive monitoring of selenium concentrations in fish flesh throughout the Crowsnest watershed and downstream would be an important next step. When do you anticipate this to happen?

We note that water quality monitoring of selenium in the Oldman River, downstream of the Oldman reservoir (site AB05AA1595), show signs of reaching the Alberta Alert Concentration for the protection of aquatic life. Is this of concern to your department and what is the strategy for dealing with this issue?

You note in your response that studies “have informed follow-up actions from appropriate regulators and government departments.” Could you please elaborate on what, specifically, these “follow-up actions” have entailed?

It would seem evident that addressing the issues of selenium contamination from legacy coal mines, the impacts of selenium on fish populations and the aquatic environment, on water quality concerns, and on the health of downstream water users would be a priority for your department and the Alberta government. We hope you share this perspective.

Sincerely yours,

David Thomas

Crowsnest Headwaters

Crowsnest Headwaters is a purely volunteer group of citizens committed to the protection and recovery of the Crowsnest/Oldman watershed from decades of coal mining and clear cutting. We rely on your donations to continue our work in the field, in the laboratory and in the courts. Please donate what you can by Interac eTransfer to funding@crowsnestheadwaters.ca

Subscribe now

Event commences at 1:00 pm

Google Map location

See last year’s clear-cutting catastrophe by West Fraser Timber in the Blairmore Creek drainage of the Crowsnest Watershed. Video by Crowsnest Headwaters.

Link to Lethbridge Herald report . . .

Subscribe now

Without explanation from the Australian-owned company, Mike Young has departed the executive suite of Northback. Bradly Johnson is now CEO.

This is three strikes in a row for Young, who departed two previous Australian CEO positions before completing his mission.

In 2021, he was fired as CEO of Vimy Resources, a penny-stock uranium speculator. He then joined solar energy promoter Frontier Energy and eight months later he was out again.

He was recycled from the career slag heap by Australian Gina Rinehart who tasked him with recovering the $600 million she spent buying Grassy Mountain from already notorious Australian coal mine flippers. (Her stake in the clapped out coal mine is reported to now be $1 billion.)

So who is Bradley Johnson? The most pertinent answer is that he was CEO of another Australian-controlled speculator, Cabin Ridge, which is suing Alberta taxpayers for $3.4 billion, claiming the province unlawfully stripped the coal promoter of its future profits in Danielle Smith’s chaotic reversals and re-reversals of coal mining policy. (In out-of-court settlements, Alberta paid out $142.8 million to Atrum Coal and $95 million to Evolve Power).

In a separate action pending before the World Bank, Gina Rinehart is claiming $2 billion from all Canadian taxpayers under an investor-state resolution treaty, claiming she was unfairly denied approval for her Grassy Mountain folly. A joint federal-provincial review panel rejected it because of the liklihood of poisoning surface water and fish with selenium.

Here is Northback’s website bio of Bradley Johnston:

Mr. Johnston is a mine engineering and logistics professional with a 39-year career in the mining and resources industry, including senior roles for Teck Coal Ltd, NYCO Minerals Inc and Cabin Ridge Project Ltd.

As General Manager at Teck Coal Ltd, Mr. Johnston oversaw the logistics chain for six operating mines, from bulk rail delivery to port operations, vessels and through to customers, and developed the logistics strategies to support those efforts. As General Manager and VP at NYCO Minerals Inc, Mr. Johnston was responsible for leading a team of 350 people across three operating sites, directing all site operating and maintenance activities as well as marketing and distribution. Most recently, Mr. Johnston was CEO with Cabin Ridge Project Ltd.

Mr. Johnston has participated on numerous boards and committees, including as Chair of the Board and Chair of the Environmental Health and Safety Committee for Neptune Bulk Terminals (Vancouver). He has served as a subject matter expert for international M&A projects and business development assignments. Mr. Johnston holds a Bachelor of Science (BSc), Mining Engineering from the University of Alberta and attended advanced management training at the University of Chicago.

Subscribe now

Mesabi Metallics will announce today construction of the biggest steelmaking plant in North America, shunning the use of metallurgical coal in favour of “direct reduction” technology that uses “reformed” natural gas instead of coke to separate iron from oxygen.

Mesabi’s Iowa plan will cost $15 billion and produce 7.5 million tons of steel annually, according to today’s Wall Street Journal.

The new greener steel will compete directly with global production based on the now clearly obsolete blast furnace technology fuelled by metallurgical coal. The plant will be “hydrogen-ready” for a future when sufficient green hydrogen is available. At that point, the direct reduction process will emit only pure water.

Subscribe now

Corb Lund has called for an immediate freeze on all coal-related decisions pending a judicial review of Elections Alberta’s suspect verification of signatures on his rejected Coal Not Water petition.

Link to Water Not Coal news release

Elections Alberta previously conducted an extensive, intrusive and unlawful investigation of Crowsnest Headwaters funding and spending in the 2024 referendum on Grassy Mountain. No financial violations were found, and Elections Alberta refused to apologize for its very clearly illegal investigation of a small citizens group, which included a threat of jail time.

It is curious that the accusations against Elections Alberta specifically involve pro-water initiatives. Its incompetence is fully established. Now in question is its political autonomy from the separatist Smith government’s coal agenda which weirdly puts the interests of far-right foreign speculators ahead of Alberta water consumers.

Subscribe now

Some bugs for their ears

Unless you’re a vetted card carrying, deep-pocketed UCP member you have little to no opportunity to be heard by our current government. Subsequent to the finagling of the Water Not Coal petition, after diligently gathering 3,114 signatures by members of the Chinook Water*Shed Crew, a delegation of three Crew members requested a meeting with our MLA.

Our mission was simply stated: “Receiving information directly from our MLA rather than speculative opinions that surround several initiatives and plans of your government would be appreciated.” We offered to provide her with a short list of questions prior to the meeting.

The request was emailed and hand-delivered. Five weeks later, a succinct response was received: “MLA Petrovic is unable to accommodate your request for a meeting. Thank you for your understanding.”

Yup, understood! Now it’s time that they understand. The UCP is not the only game in town. If we want to be heard we must seek out any and all politicians and gain their ear. Attending a rally, talking with someone from the Progressive Tories, the Liberals or the NDP does not mean we subscribe or support all their beliefs and initiatives. It simply opens a door to another point of entry for protecting Our Water.

Unacceptable levels of selenium in fish, detrimental to human health, have been scientifically proven in Crownest Lake. Contaminants are also both upstream and downstream of the Old Man dam. This flows from the decommissioned, 40 plus years ago, of the Tent coal mine.

Trevor Bastien, son of the late respected Piikani Elder and environmentalist Harley Bastien, has taken up the torch to protect Our Water, our mountains and their fish, a sustainable food source, guaranteed by Treaty Seven and the Canadian Constitution. This legacy project is named “Harley’s Vision”.

Taking advantage of any and all opportunities generating political relationship is an important building block to the success for definitive and legislated protection of Our Water.

All are welcome to mix and mingle at an NDP Rally in Amundsen Park, Claresholm on Saturday, September 19 th , 1-3 pm. Leader of the Opposition Naheed Nenshi, MLA Kathleen Ganley, municipal politicians and media will be in attendance.

Donations to Trevor Bastien’s legal fund can be made by Interac eTransfer to trevorstrust@thewatershedcrew.org. Donated funds will be transferred to Trevor Bastien’s retainer account with Ackroyd LLP.

Subscribe now

The government of Australia today announced the failure to revive Whyalla’s last blast furnace. Some 500 jobs are being lost, not counting workforce reductions in associated coal mining, coke making, and transportation.

Australia now has just one conventional blast furnace as coal and ore country accelerates transition to green steel production. This is yet more evidence that claims about future global demand for second-rate metallurgical coal are mere fabulations.

The Whyalla blast furnace once produced 1,200,000 of iron annually, requiring 2 million tonnes of coking coal. The Whyalla plant provided 75 percent of Australia’s structural steel consumption, primarily for rail replacement and construction products.

Sources:

The Guardian

Australian government intention to transition Whyalla to green steel

Global Energy Monitor current report on Whyalla steel plant

World Steel Association

Wikipedia

Subscribe now

Crowsnest Headwaters is a purely volunteer group of citizens committed to the protection and recovery of the Crowsnest/Oldman watershed from decades of coal mining and clear cutting. We rely on your donations to continue our work in the field, in the laboratory and in the courts. Please donate what you can by Interac eTransfer to funding@crowsnestheadwaters.ca

I’m not an economist and I suspect those making decisions on development proposals with broader implications aren’t either. One can question whether the proponents of development avail themselves of objective economic advice, but maybe they have other ulterior motives. However, it doesn’t take much of an understanding of economic theory to develop a highly tuned BS detector on some of the promotional hype for coal mines.

There are reasonable assumptions to be made on royalties, taxes, employment, spinoff benefits, and the like that are necessary metrics to assess the benefits to the public. But there are also costs—social, health, and environmental— that are just as real and often more lingering. Unfortunately current economic analyses do an imperfect and poor job of helping us understand the balance between development benefits and costs.

Northback, the Australian company with designs on a coal mine on Grassy Mountain, has just released some economic assessments of their mine proposal to Crowsnest Pass council. A synopsis of this presentation included a rosy projection for direct, full time jobs, indirect employment, startup spending and over 10 billion dollars in gross domestic product, including federal, provincial, and municipal revenues.

Before you go rushing off to buy company stock it would be good to recognize these are projections, not employment commitments, or realized economic activity.

The study was prepared by Ernst & Young LLP for Northback and the company says its modelling relied on unaudited financial information supplied by Northback, public data, and its own economic model. The report apparently did not factor in environmental effects and costs. Like dating sites where people portray themselves as taller, thinner, more attractive, and richer than they are, one should entertain some skepticism about coal company economics.

This is a typical one-sided story, tarted up with enthusiastic assumptions, self- affirming figures, and back-of-the-envelope calculations. It is a technique used to put a thumb on the scales of decision-making, to over-emphasize economic benefits and influence how a regulator would weigh a project in the public interest. Like in math class, if you can’t show how you got to an answer, you can’t get full marks.

If history is a guide, the answers provided by mining proponents create more questions and less certainty about the economic benefits of their developments in the public interest. Just because it appears good for a corporate entity does not necessarily hold relevance to Albertans .

Several scholarly articles provide clarity and a dose of reality to the promotional hype of the economic projections of mining companies.

In a 2024 FACETS article, the authors audited 27 BC mines (Does regulation delay mines? A timeline and economic benefit audit of British Columbia mines). For many mines there was a lack of data and transparency to compare forecasted versus actual economic benefits (production, employment, and taxes).

Mines for which data was available were underperforming across production (only 23 per cent of predictions), employment (only 18 per cent of predictions), and tax revenue (zero per cent of predictions).

Similarly, in the journal Environmental Impact Assessment (Volume 100, 2023) an article, Years Late and millions short: A predictive audit of economic impacts for coal mines in British Columbia, Canada, related economic impacts were significantly overestimated. Only 59 per cent of forecasted employment and 34 percent of forecasted tax revenue materialized.

A paper written by Cornelis Kolijn, an independent mining engineer, (Crowsnest Coal Area Reserves’ Inflated Value and Unlikely Economic Benefits- July, 2025) provides insights on coal quality and market values for the proposed Grassy Mountain mine. Crowsnest Pass coal mines (including Grassy Mountain) ceased operations due to inadequate coal quality and low market value of coal produced. Coal quality requirements for steel making have since increased and his assessment was it is unlikely any proposed mines will be economically feasible due to their low quality coal compared to BC’s Elk Valley, with the added issues of thin coal seams and challenging geological conditions.

Kolijn warns that if approved, Alberta could be faced with failing mines, mine closures, and inadequate funds for reclamation and selenium management.

From the Report of the Joint Panel: Benga Mining Limited Grassy Mountain Coal Project (2021 ABAER 010, CEAA Reference no. 80101), the panel found that Benga’s socioeconomic impact assessment did not include the reliability of its project benefit estimates, and had insufficient details about the methodology used. The company overstated the economic impacts including royalties generated and understated the potential for economic risks.

The School of Public Policy at University of Calgary published A Multiple Account Benefit-Cost Analysis of Coal Mining in Alberta (Publication 14:32, 2021). This method was developed to retain many of the strengths of traditional benefit-cost analysis while recognizing that not all costs and consequences can be monetized and that assessing the public interest cannot be reduced to a single monetary value. This provides a transparent distribution of costs and benefits, allowing the public and policy makers to better determine if the trade-offs are in the public interest.

When this was applied to the Benga Grassy Mountain coal mine proposed to start in 2019 the authors concluded there was no scenario where the mine developer earns a positive return on investment in present value terms and there are more costs than benefits to the development scenario. Furthermore, the analysis suggested the mine would not break even, exclusive of payments to government, until 2039, at or near the anticipated mine’s life span.

Added to this is the acknowledgement of reclamation liability. The authors note that coal mining results in substantial changes to topography, soils, vegetation, and water courses, and can leave behind pit lakes, waste rock dumps, and sources of water quality contamination that have proven challenging to remediate. The review suggested post-operation reclamation may not be fully covered for the costs of addressing liabilities at the mine site. Or, in other words, there is a risk of additional cost to Albertans from a new mine.

The study suggested the qualitative evidence was sufficient to conclude that adverse effects are likely to be large and negative. Overall, the authors concluded the minor economic benefits were insufficient to justify large and potentially irreversible harms.

The analysis by the School of Public Policy comes close to a full or true cost accounting approach. This approach allocates all costs, including direct, fixed, and variable overhead, to the production of goods or services. This measures and values the hidden and rarely assessed impacts of economic activities on the environment (natural capital), society (human capital), health, and produced capital. This moves beyond narrow economic thinking with the aim of improving decision-making in commercial organizations and in public policy.

In the spirit of engaging in due diligence and governance accountability, all levels of government should undertake full cost accounting for project reviews instead of simply drinking the purple economic Kool-Aid of a proponent. Part of full cost accounting might well include the following for the proposed Grassy Mountain mine:

• What if Albertans, fed up with seeing pollution, biodiversity loss, health impacts, and failure of reclamation, especially if they are expected to backstop the costs, demand punitive financial penalties that have a real economic bite?

• What if the life span of the mine is shorter than anticipated, like the Gregg River and Cheviot mines have exhibited? What then are the economic implications?

• How would the displacement of other economic activity by coal mining be dealt with in an economic analysis?

• What happens when an industrial pall falls over the Crowsnest Pass, as it did when the tipple in Coleman was processing coal from Tent Mountain? Will blind community support for a coal mine remain with fugitive coal dust?

• What if pollution abatement lasts for a 100 years, or more? How is that cost factored into economic projections?

• What if downstream water users suffer economic impacts from mine-related pollution and water shortages and they sue for compensation?

The other historical perspective is that environmental costs are consistently understated by proponents yet the reality of mining includes significant pollution, human health impacts, and biodiversity losses. A 2016 report by the BC Auditor General (An Audit of Compliance and Enforcement of the Mining Sector) concluded that”…the lifespan of mines and mining companies is finite, creating a risk that taxpayers may bear the costs. So, while the benefit from mining occurs for a limited time, the costs, including government’s obligation to monitor these sites, may continue for a very long time.”

One might only look at the unresolved reclamation deficit created by the oil and gas industry in Alberta for reference. Mitigation has been proven to be ineffectual at compensating, even moderating the impacts, even when monitoring is rigorous (which it often isn’t).

Independent, objective, and evidence-based reviews raise questions about the accuracy, reliability, scope, and uncertainty of economic predictions from the coal mining sector. Yet, decision makers often reason that the (often inflated) economic benefits outweigh the potential adverse effects to environmental and societally valued components. The result leads to project approvals in the “public interest.”

Northback’s economic promises may well be a castle built on sand, not coal. Let’s not be fooled by self-serving and empty promises! The Alberta government needs to step away from tacit support for coal mining in the Eastern Slopes. In particular, this government needs to accept evidence that coal mining isn’t in the interests of Albertans, or, at least, undertake the necessary homework to weigh the benefits versus the costs of coal mining using transparent, full cost accounting.

Lorne Fitch is a Professional Biologist, a retired Fish and Wildlife Biologist and a former Adjunct Professor with the University of Calgary. He is the author of Streams of Consequence, Travels Up the Creek, and Conservation Confidential.

Letters have been sent to six Alberta ministries responsible for public health, water quality, irrigation requesting immediate action to advise Albertans, including Piikani First Nation, against consuming selenium-poisoned fish from the Crowsnest and Oldman River systems.

The alarming degree of selenium toxicity among trout and whitefish was revealed in the report Analysis of Selenium Tissue Concentrations in Multiple Fish Species of the Oldman River by aquatic biologist Lorne Fitch and Mount Royal University Biology Chair Jon Mee.

This report published in August follows the Alberta government’s own 2025 analysis showing all tested fish from Crowsnest Lake were unfit for human consumption. The cause was specifically identified as the continuing selenium runoff from the Tent Mountain coal mine owned by the Australian company Evolve Power.

Following is the full text of the letter delivered September 8 2026.

From Crowsnest Headwaters

To:

Hon. Grant Hunter, Minister of Environment, Epa.minister@gov.ab.ca

Hon. Todd Loewen, Minister of Forestry and Parks, Fp.minister@gov.ab.ca

Hon. Brian Jean, Minister of Energy and Minerals, Minister.energy@gov.ab.ca

Hon. Tara Sawyer, Minister of Agriculture and Irrigation, AGRIC.minister@gov.ab.ca

CC:

Hon. Justin Wright, Minister of Primary and Preventative Health Services, PPHS.minister@gov.ab.ca

Hon. Rajan Sawhney, Minister of Indigenous Relations, ir.ministeroffice@gov.ab.ca

Hon. Mandy Gull-Masty, Minister of Indigenous Services, mandy.gull-masty@parl.gc.ca

Hon. Joanne Thompson, Minister of Fisheries, DFO.Minister-Ministre.MPO@dfo-mpo.gc.ca

Crowsnest Headwaters is taking the opportunity to collectively contact you and your Ministries since all share responsibility and accountability on the issue of selenium in the Oldman watershed from legacy coal mines.

Crowsnest Headwaters unites forward-looking local residents in defending the source waters of the Saskatchewan River System, which nourishes the Canadian Prairies with a resource vital to families, farms, and food processors from the Rocky Mountains to Hudson Bay.

Crowsnest Headwaters has undertaken to identify the movement of selenium from legacy coal mines in the Crowsnest Pass downstream through the Oldman River and below the Oldman Dam. The results are documented in the attached report, Analysis of Selenium Tissue Concentrations In Multiple Fish Species of the Oldman River.

A brief summary of the report contents is that:

Thirty-eight fish, from five species and representative of the fish assemblage of the Oldman River downstream of the Oldman dam, were analyzed for selenium concentrations in muscle tissue. Of the sport fish species (rainbow trout, brown trout, and mountain whitefish), 33 per cent of the fish exceeded Alberta’s threshold for the protection of aquatic life. This also has implications for people who consume these fish. Compared with fish in Alberta waterbodies not impacted by coal mining, the mean selenium species concentrations for Oldman River fish suggests a broader selenium problem for the Oldman ecosystem, both upstream and downstream of the Oldman dam.

We trust you all agree that this information is concerning. Therefore, here are questions to each of your respective Ministries:

Environment and Protected Areas

It is obvious from your own department’s research that selenium from the Tent Mountain legacy coal mine has compromised trout in Crowsnest Lake. In addition, information contained in the Grassy Mountain environmental impact assessment tendered by Benga identifies similar problems in Gold and Blairmore creeks from the Grassy Mountain legacy coal mine.

In the light of that science, why hasn’t your department undertaken a comprehensive selenium sampling program for the entire watershed? When can we see some timely movement on this urgent matter of health and indigenous rights?

When will your department undertake comprehensive, systematic monitoring of selenium concentrations in fish through the length of the Crowsnest River, the Oldman Reservoir, and the Oldman River downstream of the dam, with appropriate natural baseline sampling of the Castle and Upper Oldman rivers?

Forestry and Parks

Why hasn’t there been an appropriate warning in the “Alberta Guide to Sportfishing Regulations” on the risks of selenium in fish and appropriate advice on consumption. Clearly, this is a human health issue and also one that affects residents of the Piikani Nation who routinely harvest food from this ancestral source of nutrition.

For people resident of the Piikani Nation what efforts has your department taken, or could take, to advise them of the health risks of consuming fish from Crowsnest Lake and the Oldman River downstream of the dam, both now scientifically showing levels of toxic selenium to fish and humans?

Energy and Minerals

We would hope these alarming results of selenium contamination that now extend into the Oldman River from upstream legacy coal mines would provide a pause on the enthusiasm for new coal mines, especially in the Crowsnest Pass. Crowsnest Headwaters makes note that there are no triggers or limits in the South Saskatchewan Regional Plan for contaminants related to coal mining. In addition your department’s Coal Mine Wastewater Guidelines make no mention of selenium. When will your department introduce a discharge standard, a binding regulation for selenium that matches the empirically derived limits for the protection of aquatic life? Lastly, when will your department, in concert with other responsible agencies begin to deal with selenium pollution from legacy coal mines in the Crowsnest Pass?

Agriculture and Irrigation

Now that your department recognizes the movement of selenium from legacy coal mines into the Oldman River and Lethbridge Northern Irrigation District diversion, what is your perspective on the risks to food production and the impacts to southern Alberta’s food processing industry? Does the prospect of new coal mines in the Crowsnest Pass, coupled with selenium pollution from legacy mines indicate that these risks are too great for new developments to be endorsed by your department?

Crowsnest Headwaters looks forward to a timely, fulsome response to our concerns and questions.

Sincerely yours,

David Thomas

Crowsnest Headwaters

Subscribe now

Who asked you?

Does a mountain miss its creeks? The question just hung there as Carl Hunt and I, retired provincial biologists, toured coal mines in the Coal Branch. Carl, the former regional fisheries biologist based in Edson, has seen most of the era of coal strip mining, the blasting apart of mountains, and the loss of streams from mining since the early 1970s in the McLeod River watershed.

Creaky of joints but clear of memory, he was initially reluctant to view the ravaged landscapes. It’s like the title from one of Thomas Wolfe’s novels, “You Can’t Go Home Again.” You cannot physically or emotionally return to the past, how things used to be, because time moves on and everything changes. Returning to view what has become of intact watersheds is emotionally challenging. It is one of many scars biologists bear, based on long histories of watching landscapes and watersheds unravel with industrial brutality.

Very little of the workings of the Luscar/Gregg River mines and the Cheviot Mine are visible from either Highway 40 or the Grave Flats Road. Liberal use of no trespassing signs under the provisions of the mineral surface leases means you cannot access and see much of what they have done to your land.

It takes a flight on Goggle Earth, or maybe the use of a chartered helicopter, or a drone to see the extent of these mines. Even the tiny glimpses one gets from the road is enough to form questions about the scale and impacts of coal mining.

Breathtaking is the best neutral expression of the scale of these mines and their disturbance footprint. The combined Gregg River and Luscar mines extend over 20 kilometres of extreme topography where coal has been blasted and clawed out of at least 18 pits of variable size. Steep topography is typical over the ten kilometers of the Cheviot Mine, with at least eight discernible mine pits. For both mines, some of the excavations have been partially or fully backfilled with overburden, but many of the bigger, deeper pits will remain as a visible legacy of coal extraction.

Every tonne of recoverable coal took the removal of eight to ten tonnes of overburden. It was estimated that around ten million tonnes of rock overburden were blasted, excavated, and moved for every year of mine operations. Only a fraction found its eventual way back to the original excavations.

As a result, drainage courses, streams, and rivers were either diverted, truncated, channelized, or buried beneath overburden, irrevocably changing the drainage patterns of the watershed.

Based on the hydrographic layer of the Alberta Energy Regulator’s coal mine map viewer, the Luscar/Gregg River mines impacted an estimated 40 streams, stream tributaries, and seasonal drainages. For the Cheviot Mine at least 20 watercourses were similarly affected. As Carl observed, many of the named streams have ceased to exist, in part or in whole, as ecologically functional systems, capable of sustaining aquatic life and fish.

Eventually, often sooner than later, the coal runs out, or the price drops, and it becomes uneconomical to mine. But first comes the hype, the breathless enthusiasm for economic development, and the venal sin of over-promotion. Then, swirling Coriolis forces lead to mine approvals.

When reality sinks in, after the mountains have been razed, the valleys filled with overburden, and the streams, the ones left, are devoid of fish, it’s too late to reassess the decision. The bold prospects, the inflated returns, and the exaggerated claims of environmental protection are seen in the clear light of lost landscapes and watersheds.

The unseen, although measurable legacy of these mines is the toxic stew of chemicals that contaminate the waters pouring off the mine slopes. Heavy sediment loads are often the carriers of other contaminants. Extensive monitoring of the McLeod River and its tributaries provide unequivocal evidence that aquatic life is being negatively impacted by selenium of mine origins. All that shattered rock, thousands of tonnes, will continue to leach selenium and other pollutants into the watershed for the foreseeable and perhaps the unforeseeable future.

These mines are now in the “reclamation” phase. For all the promises of mitigation, returning the land to an “equivalent, productive” state, the work has most of the hubris of attempting to glue a smashed egg back together. It’s prohibitively expensive to move overburden more than once, so reclamation is smoothing out some of the bumps, turning rubble green with imported agronomic species, and adding some cosmetic erosion control features.

Reclamation will never, in human time, restore the wild to a mined landscape. At best it might, sometime, resemble something trying to remember what it once was before the brutal removal of the essential system of ecological and hydrological pieces.

Weighing the future costs and liabilities against 15 to 20 years of production with minimal royalties to the province seems an uneven bargain. At the Mountain Park cemetery is a one-way rotary phone which supposedly connects the living with the dead through the wind. Using the phone to get answers to why turning mountains upside down for such a fleeting economic return provided the same response as trying to communicate with the dead.

Even the provincial regulators sometimes see the light. Carl recalled a field trip of the Energy Resources Conservation Board (the precursor to the Alberta Energy Regulator) to the Luscar mine. One board member who had fished in the Coal Branch as a child, was emotionally overwhelmed upon seeing the destruction of Cabin Creek, a trout stream tributary to the Gregg River. He left the group and sat in the truck the rest of the tour. I wonder what the result would be if trout sat on some of these regulatory bodies, or at least people who spoke for trout instead of the glittering economic tinsel of development.

Our Coal Branch drive had us see-sawing from seemingly intact landscapes and streams to the Mordor-like mine sites. It was sobering to try and reconcile these irreconcilable differences. It was a reminder that mined mountains cannot be glued back together, impacted watersheds cannot be reconnected, pollution cannot be stemmed, and lost native trout populations cannot be revived. All we could do was mourn for the mountains.

For those without conscience, without a stewardship ethic, who would turn mountains upside down, hack down forests with trees older than Canada, plus bury and contaminate streams under waste rock and mud, the sentiment of asking whether a mountain misses its creeks has no currency.

Lorne Fitch is a Professional Biologist, a retired Fish and Wildlife Biologist and a former Adjunct Professor with the University of Calgary. He is the author of Streams of Consequence, Travels Up the Creek, and Conservation Confidential.

Subscribe now

Crowsnest Headwaters is a purely volunteer group of citizens committed to the protection and recovery of the Crowsnest/Oldman watershed from decades of coal mining and clear cutting. We rely on your donations to continue our work in the field, in the laboratory and in the courts. Please donate what you can by Interac eTransfer to funding@crowsnestheadwaters.ca

Kennedy Halvorson

Northback says 2.5 million tonnes of steelmaking coal will be produced each year by reopening operations at old mines on Grassy Mountain. This would be a technical miracle, not observed in five decades of coal mining data from the Alberta Energy Regulator.

So far, Grassy Mountain has produced only crap coal and Australian bullshit

---

Luscar, the largest metallurgical coal mine in size and production in Alberta’s history, produced on average 500,000 tonnes less annually than Northback publicly claims Grassy will yield, at a mine nearly three times the size of what Northback proposes.

Of course, the surface area mined doesn’t tell the full story — mines can dig deeper and go underground. Alberta’s largest subsurface venture was a room-and-pillar style operation near Grande Cache, but even with 2.6 times the mining footprint of Grassy, it averaged less than a million tonnes of raw, unprocessed coal per year. If Northback’s improbable production figures don’t make you skeptical, consider the next miracle; it will extract and process more coal with less water than any other coal mine in Alberta.

Before it was rejected, the first proposal to mine Grassy Mountain needed just under 560 million litres annually. Northback has reportedly since negotiated access to the Municipality of Crowsnest’s allocations, and recently — controversially — applied for its own water licence. Controversial, because where Grassy is located hasn’t been allowed to issue new water licences for almost two decades, as existing allocations exceeded levels safe and sustainable for the Oldman River’s health and function.

While the application is under review, in sum, Northback needs at least more than 300 million litres per year, with total requirements likely higher considering the first application. Compared to other mines that have operated or are operating in the province, this volume is peanuts.

To run Alberta’s only active metallurgical mine, CST Canada Coal consumes 10 times more water to produce one-fifth of what Northback projects. The old owners of the Tent Mountain and Vicary Creek mines nearby Grassy needed 15 times more water to achieve a third of Grassy’s planned output. Collectively, Cheviot, Gregg and Luscar had more than 11.3 billion litres for their operations, two-thirds of which is still used for reclaiming the sites.

How Northback will outperform all these mines with a fraction of the land and water seems improbable — impossible even.

But why does it matter if Northback’s projections are off? Well, less coal to sell means lower revenues. It means reduced budgets to employ people and run the mine, less money available to eventually clean up the site, increasing the risk Grassy becomes even more of a liability in the Oldman’s headwaters.

Overestimating marketable coal production now means less royalties and taxes later, decreasing all those socioeconomic benefits Northback purports. It’s fewer dollars back to the public purse, and less in return for polluting the atmosphere, destroying the landscape and degrading the watersheds we rely on.

Coal companies promising more but failing to deliver is not uncommon. Studies in B.C. have found coal mines significantly underperforming in terms of the production, employment and tax revenue originally promised.

It seems evident that Northback is overestimating and even inflating the worth of the Grassy Mountain mine, and that’s problematic, because those projections will ultimately factor into whether the Alberta Energy Regulator decides to approve the mine and risk our air, land, water and wildlife to its downwind and downstream effects.

Alberta has been audience and victim to this story many times before — resource development companies make big promises to get approvals and permits, extract their profits and then leave when expenses mount. The polluters fail to pay and the public is left in the wake of their wreckage.

The only miracle evident is we allow this to happen, time and time again.

Kennedy Halvorson is a conservation specialist with Alberta Wilderness Association.

---

Subscribe now

Crowsnest Headwaters is a purely volunteer group of citizens committed to the protection and recovery of the Crowsnest/Oldman watershed from decades of coal mining and clear cutting. We rely on your donations to continue our work in the field, in the laboratory and in the courts. Please donate what you can by Interac eTransfer to funding@crowsnestheadwaters.ca

---