A Reasonable Request to the Government of Alberta On Coal Mining in the Eastern Slopes
The Alberta government and the coal industry know that selenium is a poison and that coal mining in the Eastern Slopes results in it being liberated from rock overburden.
Lorne Fitch, P. Biol.
History can be a good teacher, to provide a perspective on coal mining in the Eastern Slopes. A synoptic review of every open pit coal mine, from 1970 to 2024, showed these operations in mountain and foothill settings, with steep and challenging terrain features were subject to repetitive acute and chronic slope, road and settling pond failures, including failures of coal conveyance systems. None of these were trivial failures and the result has been a litany of environmental issues affecting streams and rivers. Most had no regulatory consequences.¹
When undertaken, mitigation actions to deal with mine failures were ineffective, lackluster, and mostly unsuitable. Lessons were not learned and even recent failures and environmental upsets show mine engineering has not grappled successfully with site characteristics, preventative planning, or the effects of extreme weather events.
The environmental risks of coal mining are consistently understated by mine proponents. However, the evidence is unequivocal that the environmental risks of coal mining cannot be successfully eliminated, reduced, or ameliorated.
Coal mines entirely remove existing, functional ecosystems replacing them with completely foreign and poorly understood states. These altered, unstable states can have long-term effects on ecosystems, water quality, air quality, hydrology, and fish and wildlife populations tens and possibly hundreds of kilometers away from mine sites.
The Alberta government and the coal industry know that selenium is a poison and that coal mining in the Eastern Slopes results in it being liberated from rock overburden. This is particularly prevalent in mountain top-removal, open pit coal mining. They know coal mining has resulted in damaging concentrations of selenium, negatively affecting the aquatic environment and fish populations of many streams and rivers. They also know there is no mine-scale solution to selenium pollution and likely never will be one. The evidence is that selenium pollution may last for generations.
It should be evident, after 20 cumulative effects studies, that the Eastern Slopes of Alberta’s Rockies are not a frontier of unrealized possibilities—instead, they are a busy place where expectations already exceed the ability of the landscape to absorb these dreams. This land-use footprint already impacts the prime directive for the Eastern Slopes—watershed protection. There are no places in the Eastern Slopes where coal development can be safely, effectively, and environmentally accommodated.
As a reasonable request many Albertans ask the Alberta government to believe in its own findings on the issues created by coal mining and do its duty to protect Alberta waters and downstream water users from irrevocable harm. No amount of promotional hype and empty promises from the coal industry will change this, nor will the extensive lobbying effort by the industry result in benefits to Albertans.
This the Alberta government could do by unequivocally ensuring no new mines are approved, by enforcing water quality standards for existing mines, and ensuring all legacy mines do not continue to pollute receiving waters.
What Albertans do not want are short-term, boom and bust economic hustles leading to a gloomy legacy of damaged Eastern Slopes landscapes and watersheds, a burden of taxpayer-funded reclamation, and the loss of clean, unpolluted water. What Albertans expect is a legacy of responsible government with a stewardship ethic.
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.
Excellent. Succinct and written in plain English for ingestion and digestion by all.
Wonderfully written Lorne, unfortunately, it will fall on extremely deaf ears (must be the coal dust). The energy minister is deaf as a stone and we all know what Queen Dani of Mar-a-largo thinks.