Open pit coal mining should be a dead issue in the province
By Lethbridge Herald on February 28, 2024.
Editor:
You know, Igor’s got a lot to answer for. He’s the one who keeps going out, digging up the bodies, hauling them up to the top of the castle, hooking up the electrodes…then… after the monster has gone lurching through the village, goes back out, gathering up spare parts for the Monster Mark II, Sort of like Brian Jean and coal mines when you come right down to it. There are five operating coal mines in this province at the moment and at least half of them are close to flat=lining. As far as any new ones are concerned the Grassy Mountain play, out there in the Crowsnest Pass, has been killed off so often the silver plate is wearing off the stake through its heart. Yet, just this past week, Jean has made the papers, telling anyone who will listen, that it doesn’t matter that reopening the coal mine north of Blairmore has been rejected by both federal and provincial review panels and that pretty much everyone downstream of the mine site has come out against it a a really, really, bad idea. Nope. Here comes Igor, staggering up the road to the castle with the monster in a firemans’ carry, shouting:”It’s not dead Master. It’s just sleeping.” “Once a project, always a project.”
That’s what Brian Jean told the energy regulator. Doesn’t matter it’s so dead it’s no longer even drawing flies.
Igor doesn’t know the meaning to the word ”dead.” Though I’d suggest he go to Google Earth and dial up the Elk Valley. Those grey, lepopous scabs running up the B.C. side of the Continental Divide from Highway 3 to just over the mountains from the Baar U Ranch.
Them’s open pit mines and that’s a dead landscape. Brian Jean country if there ever was one.
Ken Sears
Lethbridge
8-7
Why open Grassy Mountain as coal is clearly being phased out?
Why approve discretionary water licenses for coal mining in a basin without enough water to meet present demands?
Why pollute the water we still do get with contaminants like Selenium? (Pollution that cannot be removed, as illustrated in BC.)
Obviously there is a demand for coal. Many homes and businesses in the crowsnest pass display signs supporting a coal mine. It’s not all doom and gloom. The reclamation is also remarkable.
Wonder what the reply would be if lithium, nickel and cobalt was discovered in the CNP. Also with the drought has the Castle Resort considered ending the syphoning of water out of the Haig creek into a reservoir for snow making?? As do may other resorts in the Province. Let’s just find out how concerned the resort crowd is at conservation.
I think that any mining technique that blows off the top of a mountain, dumps the overburden into the valleys and streams below, where it will leach toxic elements into our main source of water would meet with the same response. This is particularly egregious for a product like coal with rapidly declining market demand.
Environmentalism is the preserve of the wealthy. A lithium mine would go ahead in the CNO as it would be classified as saving the planet in production of EV batteries. Only if they imported the kids of the Congo to mine it. Hypocrites.
The Par3 in Lethbridge sucks the Elizabeth Hall wetlands of a great deal of water every summer and stresses the wildlife there,it seems.
Once again we see these two ignorant fools trying to pretend they are conservatives yet show Lougheed no respect for what he did for Albertans in protecting on water supply, proving there is nothing conservative about them.
Foreign owners are not known for their reclamation. Especially in a province like ours that collects little or no money to ensure it.
As for the coal market, there is only demand for ‘cheap’ coal that can be mined by bypassing basic social and environmental standards in locations governed by people disconnected from the ling-term public interest.
local owners are not known for reclamation, either. at least not in alberta, where the oil/gas robber barons have left us hundreds of billions worth of clean up, and further left off the hook by our caring ucp.
haha! yeah, they just pile up the waste into a pile such that we get another “majestic” mountain. just like sparwood. and, let us not forget how great spent coal is for the air…and what does not get burnt can be used for awesome art sketches, right?
A typical response from someone with their head in the sand. Where exactly is this “remarkable” reclamation process? It certainly isn’t the open pit mess languishing on top of Adanac Ridge south of Hillcrest or a myriad other places where such mines operated. They are relics of a by-gone age where little or no attempts were made to protect the area surrounding or downstream of the operation. That was then , we should know better in the 21st century and yet Brian Jean , he of Wildrose fame, is hinting at more development. The coal moratorium seems to be rising from the dead. We have learned diddly squat!
I wonder if Ken ever did a letter to the editor discussing the fracking operation that was right in our backyard for many years?
why, do you think he would have supported that poisoning of our water, and further destabilising the land?
Once again we see a Reformer deliberately trying to destroy something our hero Peter Lougheed created for us, just like they have done with everything else with the help of ignorant Albertans who aren’t smart enough to realize it.
Lougheed knew our water supply would be endanger of pollution if Coal mining wasn’t properly controlled so he put the controls on. Now Reformer Brian Jean shows no respect for Lougheed’s decision and wants to put us at risk, like they are doing by helping the rich steal our oil and tax wealth and dumping a orphan well cleanup mess in our laps with no concern for what it will do to our children and grandchildren’s future.
Apparently Jean doesn’t care that Coal Tech was fined by our federal government for the pollution of rivers and streams in B.C. and Montana for $60 million. But as we have seen by these Reformers and their ignorant supporters wasting money is no concern of theirs, is it?
The Take Back Alberta stupidity is nothing more than a scheme to destroy everything conservatives have created for us, and create a dictatorship for Smith refusing any help from Ottawa including our Canada Pension Plan.
She wants complete control over the people and you can bet if her pal Reformer Pierre Poilievre is elected at the Federal level you will see American Style privatization of healthcare.
It’s a well known fact in the true conservative world that privatization of health care and education systems has been their number mandate since day one. It’s the reason why Canadians refused to elect Preston Manning as Prime Minister they knew what he stood for and it certainly wasn’t about looking after the well-being of the people it was about making the rich a lot richer, look what they are doing in Alberta, thats exactly what they are doing isn’t it?
open pit mining for lithium, nickel and cobalt should be a dead issue world wide or this is just a NIMBY.