Protesting over the Eastern Slopes is not ‘eco-terrorism’
By Lethbridge Herald on April 30, 2025.
Editor,
I am a regular participant, along with several other local constituents who peacefully protest at the lights in Claresholm. We are against the destruction of our Rocky Mountains shouldered by the Eastern Slopes, Alberta’s primary water shed. A continual battle has waged between the government elected to serve all citizens, and the majority of Albertans. We, as the majority, do not want any coal mining, no matter how it is couched, in our priceless water shed. This isn’t about right vs left, it is about right vs wrong.
The government to this point has been deaf to our scientific, verifiable, nightmare-like outcomes of coal mining we have provided to them through innumerable letters and phone calls. Our view scapes will be destroyed and irreclaimable. The bio-diversity of our wilderness will be decimated. Particulates blown in from Elk Valley, B.C. have virtually killed Window Mountain Lake in the Castle region as researched and shared in a paper by two senior scientists in Alberta Environment and Protected Areas. If mining is approved in the eastern slopes, particulates will be much closer to populated areas and undoubtedly transported on our prevailing winds.
It is a given that our water will be contaminated. Despite hollow promises by Minister Brian Jean to bring protections for water and environment to the highest on the planet, it is an impossibility for coal mining development. When water monitoring indicates contamination by some 45 pollutants, specifically selenium, it’s too late to mitigate. It’s like closing the barn door after the horse is out. Bluntly, suggesting controlling this contamination is possible is an insult to Albertans’ intelligence.
Downstream, impact of water pollution on agri-business to irrigation, feedlots and food processing has the potential to impact thousands of jobs and puts a $14 billion/year industry at risk.
Perhaps our efforts have been tacitly affirmed by our MLA, Chelsae Petrovic. Recently, in the Legislature, she accused folks like us of being eco-terrorists. Do tell. Wanting clean drinking water and air makes us eco-terrorists, yet proposing to destroy our water and air with chemical warfare doesn’t make a coal company and our government eco-terrorists?
This is not about politics. This is about our health, sustainability and economic survival.
Jacqueline L. Chalmers
Claresholm Alberta
10-9
Of course, this little bird ‘Take Back Alberta-backed’ MLA peeps the way the big UCP birds sing. The voting folks in the Livingstone-Macleod riding had an awesome chance to elect NDP candidate Kevin Van Tighem in the 2023 provincial election who would have been a wonderful advocate for our environment and waters. What would they all be waiting for? Until the damage is done? Sadly, this MLA and the rest of the UCP clowns do not listen to the 77%, or more, Albertans who oppose open pit coal mining.
Keep up the fight to protect our environment and water supply. The ultimate protection would be to vote out Smith and her minions to put a stop to their destruction of our province.
So while Albertans were so dumb in the federal election that they told these Reformers to go right ahead and do whatever they like to us, like allowing the Coal Industry to pollute our water supply and the oil industry to pollute our air, privatizing our healthcare and education systems is no problem, Easterners prove how much smarter they are and kick out this Reform Party Clown Pierre Poilievre. While his pal Danielle Smith has them trained like seals believing every lie she feeds them.
As a lawyer pointed out a few years. Albertans are so proud of being stupid that they just keep on re-electing these Reformers and allowing themselves to be treated like morons, but guess who is paying the highest power bills in Canada, the highest property taxes, the highest vehicle registration fees, the highest long term healthcare fees and the highest vehicle insurance premiums while they watch these Reformers fill their own pockets and those of the rich with their money and get nothing in return but massive debts, that’s how stupid they are. Sadly the stupid ones out number the smart ones two to one and we can’t do anything about it. Just like happen in Germany with Hitler as German citizens have told us.
They certainly don’t show any respect for their children and grandchildren and the financial nightmare they will face and they global warming disasters, do they? They aren’t smart enough to even care.
Can you imagine farmers and ranchers being so stupid they would vote to have their land destroyed by abandon oil wells that will make it virtually worthless when they want to sell it and retire?
One farmer said to me a few years ago “I can’t believe how stupid my friends and relatives are? It doesn’t matter what Ralph Klein does to us they still support him. I’ve got fence posts that are smarter than them”.
Well guess what these stupid farmers are still doing it and the Federal Election proved it, that’s how stupid they are?
Now watch the stupid ones attack me for not being as stupid as them and allowing these Reformers to treat them like morons.
Well Jacquline why did all these Rural Albertans prove they don’t agree with you and are more than willing to allow these Reformers pretending they are conservatives to treat them like morons and do whatever they want to this Province?
It doesn’t matter what we think, and we agree with you these fools hold the balance of power and we can do nothing about it.
It’s how dictators become so powerful and why dictatorships usually end in bloodshed, as a former German university professor taught me and I think he was right.
After talking to the people in Germany they said that’s exactly how it was with the stupid ones they wouldn’t let them vote him out.
given how low the run-off has been, and that we have yet another with little to no pooling in the fields where we usually see pools this time of year, migrating water fowl are not the only things imperiled right now. coal mining now is a disaster beyond even selenium.