Crowsnest Pass can’t survive on tourism
By Letter to the Editor on August 5, 2021.
Editor:
I am writing in support of the clean coal initiative for Alberta, specifically the Riversdale Grassy Mountain project in the Crowsnest Pass, Alberta. Alberta is a resource province and this area of Alberta is a great source of metallurgical coal needed in the production of steel. The world needs steel.
Wouldn’t it be better to source that coal from an environmentally and ethically responsible company that will also reclaim the land from an existing coal mine?
The Crowsnest Pass needs industry! We cannot survive on tourism like Banff and Canmore.
We need our young people to move back here to revitalize our community. We need more higher paying jobs for them to come back to. We do not need mayors from other towns and cities in Southern Alberta determining what is best for us. Riversdale Resources has contributed a huge amount of dollars in this community.
They have donated to many user groups and reinvented our local golf course.
Since they are a Category 4 mine, we trusted the process that Riversdale has gone through the past several years to get this project up and running.
Little did we know that we would be sacrificed and used as a political football to satisfy a bunch of environmentalists who have no ties or investment in our community.
I am imploring you to show both sides of this issue and report the actual facts regarding selenium mitigation being practised in the Alberta and B.C. coal mining industry.
June Vastenhout
Crowsnest Pass
-1
Scientific studies could explain why so many of us are opposed to open-pit coal mining in the eastern slopes.
“Study Concludes Coal Mining in the Headwaters Should Not Proceed”
http://www.livingstonelandowners.net/water-study-results
“Uncertainly about the industry’s ability to manage risk is high,” in reality, and weighs heavily. And, we certainly cannot trust a thing that the Kenney UCP, et al, has to say about open-pit coal mining. What they’ve done, is hand out open-pit land leases for pennies on the dollar, offered toilet royalty rates, offered low regulation standards and produced a disgusting display of politicians cooperating with these Aussie dubious operators….let alone the negative environmental impact. The industry has proven to be wrong re: managing toxicities and damages, no matter what they say. They are not to be trusted with a ten foot pole.
I challenge this to be read in whole:
“Aussie Coal Mines Pose Big Threat to Southern Alberta’s Water: Study”
http://www.thetyee.ca/Analysis/2021/06/15/Aussie-Coal-Mines-Pose-Big-Threat-Southern-Alberta-Water
whatever the pass needs to survive, it has no right expecting its survival to be based on something that is harmful for others.
Probably since the invention of coal mines, the operator at one point or another has said “with our new cutting edge technology we will put your fears to rest regarding destroying everything around us”. Well, the only thing they all had in common is, they were wrong. But here it is again.. Even if it is true, why would any thinking person believe it ? I do know who, the people who will benefit financially, or the people who so desperately want to believe it’s true because potential jobs (or in particular , their potential job) hangs in the balance. So yeah, let’s risk all the surrounding environment, the health of everybody down stream (that’s pretty much everybody by the way) and let’s risk all the agriculture downstream, all so a few people can have a few jobs for a few years. Makes perfect sense.
Alberta’s motto for decades now, short term gain for long term pain, which is now coming home to roost I see, casting my eyes out the window at the fretful, apocalyptic grey tinge.
nice…
be that smoke or coal dust that has got into the letter writer’s eyes
“A bunch of environmentalists?” So people actively interested in protecting the environment we ALL live in (including the writer) are somehow trifling meddlers, but this coal mining corporation wins your trust by simply focusing on the exact same thing, i.e. claiming to be “environmentally and ethically responsible?”
For the love of money is the root of all evil….over and over and over again.