When wind and drought collide with sheer stupidity
By Lethbridge Herald on February 14, 2025.
Dear Editor,
A letter to Premier Danielle Smith:
Here in the extreme upper headwaters of the Crowsnest River, on the downstream, downwind side of Grassy Mountain, the devastating impacts of protracted drought, water shortages, hurricane-force winds, sandblasting dust storms, and dry lake beds dominate discussion.
The mid-winter dust storms, widespread, are most apparent here within the stark expanse of blowing dirt that defines the dry, cracked, wind-whipped footprint of the Oldman Reservoir.
This basin of windblown silt holds the drought-stricken remnants of the Castle, Crowsnest, and Upper Oldman rivers.
The bony remains of these streams snake their way through collapsing walls of mud to converge in a treacherous expanse of boot-grabbing, leg-sucking muck. Within it are the bones of cattle and deer that, mired in the mud, have died there.
Last year the Municipal District of Pincher Creek, responding to residents’ critical need for drinking water, created a makeshift roadway onto this bed of windblown silt. At the road’s unstable “quicksandy” end, a platform was constructed, and from it a well was drilled. Water was subsequently pumped and trucked—at great expense—to area residents.
The same costly, herculean effort may be required again this year. The reservoir’s water level, falling, is critically low.
The Government of Alberta, aware of this year’s dire water supply crisis, has issued a “water shortage advisory” for the Crowsnest and Upper Oldman rivers. This was done at the same time the same government—incongruously!—exposed the same critical headwaters of these rivers to new and needless coal exploration, i.e., additional roads and other forms of intense, widespread, irreversible watershed destruction.
It appears the government’s focus is defined by a singular, shortsighted, short-term, myopic vision: mining mountains for thin seams of coal. Nothing else matters. Rendered meaningless and expendable are the land’s internationally acclaimed beauty, its ecological worth, and its ability to provide life-sustaining water to hundreds of thousands of Albertans living downstream.
Here in Alberta, where wind and drought now collide with what I see as wholesale land-use mismanagement, severe negligence, and sheer stupidity, a bleak “water shortage advisory” report is on the table. It demands immediate attention. But, instead of being addressed, it just sits there.
More important is the government’s absurd commitment to intensify industrialized large-scale headwaters annihilation in a blind quest to mine coal.
I see this as declaration of war against water—a covenant to kill it at its source.
What are you going to do, today, to save the spectacular headwaters of southwestern Alberta and the people of southern Alberta from the government you’ve been elected to lead?
What are you going to do to save the wounded Crowsnest River and the bleeding Oldman?
David McIntyre
Crowsnest Pass
18-17
Yes, what we have here is UCP stupidity. Can stupid be fixed? Or is it sheer bloodymindedness in catering to big coal mining and their lawsuit threats? As has been said, if, Grassy Mountain open pit coal mining goes ahead and all hell breaks loose with lack of water, damaged water quality, huge damages to the environment, damages to human health, let alone damages to the $multibillion ag sector….would the UCP government wish to deal with even more $billions in legal action for these damages?
What will it take for this UCP government to be tripped up? This? The AHS-gate scandal? Are we all just going to sit back and let this happen? The UCP incompetence here along with believing they can toxically do as they please, is stunning. Many of us, knew, that if this UCP government got in with a majority that it would be ‘bad’, and as it turns out, ‘really bad.’ And the sad thing is, we have another 3 years of this, just sitting back and watching the UCP take a wrecking ball to this province? What’s next?
Great comments David. Isn’t too bad that mindless Albertans, mostly seniors, aren’t smart enough to understand that these aren’t true conservatives, they are Reformers hellbent on destroying everything our conservative heroes created for us. Even their pal Pierre Poilievre is promising to carry on destroying what conservatives have created for the good of the people like the Carbon Tax, and the CBC and he doesn’t give a damn about who gets hurt in the process. It’s great to see that his popularity is fading as Mark Carney comes on the stage, yet who are the fools still supporting Poilievre the prairie provinces of course, why are we so stupid?
I’m originally from a very large farm in eastern Alberta. Without water, crops can’t grow, livestock can’t drink, and we won’t eat. We have been seeing drought conditions that are worse than what happened in the 1930s. My dad, who is 95, this year, and his siblings were around in the 1930s and the 1940s, when farmers had issues with drought. So was my (late) mother and her older siblings. Don’t be surprised if our water is going to be given away, by these Conservatives, who aren’t even Conservatives at all. How foolish can these people be? We never saw this under Peter Lougheed, did we?
I certainly remember what my parents and grandparents said about the dirty 30s and what it did to them. My mother lived on a farm near Balzac and one winter when they finally did get some moisture they had a major snowfall and their cattle and all their neighbors cattle walked over the fences and it took weeks to find all of them and to sort them out.
By ignoring the protection Lougheed put on they have created a horrible mess for us and still can’t believe how ignorant these farmers are after living in Rural Alberta for 24 years in10different towns. Several have told me they only vote Conservative, but are apparently too dumb to understand that these aren’t conservatives they are Reformers and are nothing like the conservatives that we proudly supported under Lougheed and Getty. Oddly enough it was ignorant American from the prairies who gave Trump the biggest support also.
Now that Mark Carney has come on board the polls are showing the only people dumb enough to support Reformer Poilievre are from the Prairies and you have to wonder why they are that dumb, don’t you?
My dad didn’t support Ralph Klein either. He knew how bad he was.
When Klein was trying to become premier his mother Flo told my mother that she didn’t think that he was capable of running the province properly. Mum told her no one in her family was going to support him and mum said she wasn’t surprised. We had known the Klein family since 1960 and we certainly knew what a jerk Ralph was and he certainly proved it.
Look at the utter fiction that gets written here.
https://edmontonsun.com/opinion/letters/letters-feb-16-premier-smith-has-done-nothing-wrong
That’s how stupid they are. All the Conservatives I know have dumped their newspaper subscriptions in Calgary and Edmonton because of the stupid comments from some of reporters and I know you know who they are. They show absolutely no respect for our children or grandchildren’s future and what Global Warming is going to do to them.
Those people are mistaken if they think that that Danielle Smith did nothing wrong.
https://www.abresistance.ca/the_breakdown_ucp_corruption_map
https://www.scribd.com/document/827797277/Statement-of-Claim-Mentzelopoulos
Have you noticed that our debt increased by another $8 billion recently while they continue to help the rich steal our oil and corporate tax wealth. I follow it on Alberta Debt Clock.
That isn’t a surprise.
Pure poetry Mr. McIntyre on par with that of Elliot’s Waste Land.
“ Oed’ und leer das Meer”
Empty and desolate is the sea. (Resevoir)
It’s pure insanity and disregard for the people that chose her to govern. She plants coal mines into the only source of the water that nourishes this province. After this one, there will be more. It’s not like she didn’t have a lesson of poisoned water to learn from in BC.