Mining fears addressed by science, research
By Lethbridge Herald on April 22, 2025.
Editor,
To have a complaint is to have a purpose. Many individuals in our society crave for meaning and purpose in an otherwise boring and meaningless existence. Our society is saturated with secular humanist rhetoric centred on the establishment of a group movement such as an environmental movement advocating for a Utopian future which ignores reality. We see this movement in Germany where the green dream has increased the cost of electricity to 4 times that of costs in America and the German industrial nation is on the road to being de-industrialized back to an agrarian society. Environmentalism, like unions, must be checked. Their initial usefulness, required because of genuine abuses of nature and workers, helps society, then begins to act as an anchor to a progressive workforce and sustainable development. An anchor justified on the basis of belief that, the universe is sacred and divine. It is the worship of the created rather than the creator.
To gain power and influence our environmental neighbours must create fear to influence the public. For example, with the Grassy Mountain mine proposal we are told that “Access to life sustaining water is at grave risk”. Is this true? Southern Alberta is over allocated and guided by a “first in time, first in right” policy and the Grassy Mountain proposal has a ‘first in water allocation’. Coal mines affect a minuscule portion of an ecosystem and their water use can be as low as what it takes to irrigate a quarter section in southern Alberta, minimal. Also, let’s not be deceived by maps showing exploration areas which are always much larger than the actual disturbed site. Science and technology have advanced and we are not left as pawns quivering in fear. A greater issue regarding water quantity is related to timber harvest protectionism. Basically, older forests and expanding forest edges affects water production and reduce grazing opportunities.
How so, you ask? Well, the trees capture the snow and it evaporates into the air rather than accumulating on the ground to allow for water runoff in spring. Look under any conifer forest in winter and you will find reduced snow and poorer grass. Dr. John Pomeroy, University of Saskatchewan wrote an article for the Calgary Herald some years ago regarding the forest canopy as the “smoking gun” of low water levels in the Bow River where the headwaters are protected by parks. Southern Alberta has the Castle Park allowing expanding forests and canopy’s. Also, science has revealed that we can affect water quantity delivered. Harvesting timber with creative design patterns on north facing slopes can increase the number of days of high-water runoff without increasing the maximum high-water level. Only the number of days of high water increases. This is good news! The Southern Alberta Watershed study can reveal more details on this possibility.
Alberta has world class legislation and monitoring procedures and I will venture a guess that creditable individuals within the Crowsnest watershed will be able to take part in environmental monitoring of mining development and operations, overseeing the mining company, just as we see in British Columbia. All the issues that I have seen raised to instil fear in the general population are being addressed through science and research. We can have both a healthy ecosystem and high paying jobs in Southern Alberta with the Northback Grassy Mountain Mine opportunity.
Tim Juhlin
Coleman
-6
Says Tim Juhlin, who in a single flourish of rhetoric dismisses Dr. Pomeroy’s decades of scientific observation and analysis, and the many other dedicated scientists he calls the ‘environmental movement’.
Perhaps it’s time to acknowledge limits and learn to live within them. We don’t need to sacrifice our eastern slopes and risk our agrifood industry for the the last gasp of the coal industry.
It is interesting that the letter writer would support environmental monitoring from ‘creditable’ people rather than credible people. But, I guess, he had already made clear that science need not apply.
Tim Juhlin (an individual who lives in the immediate area of the Crowsnest Watershed area) speaks positively and credibly to this topic of coal mining.
He is totally correct in his assessment of the “checks and balances” set in place by the Provincial Government to ensure mitigation of pollution from the mining development.
His (Juhlin) report is certainly accurate and not the rhetoric we are hearing from fear mongers who would have inundated us with lies and messages of doom, all directly in retaliation to our Provincial Government.
Once again, HP has demonstrated stated a complete misunderstanding of the environmental impacts of open pit mining. He has the audacity to suggest the current government has “checks and balances” in place. Completely (or conveniently) forgetting that this same government, quietly lifted a long standing coal moratorium in 2020 , only to reinstate it when it became publicly known in 2022. Now that “champion” of all things environmental, Brian Jean , has once again lifted it bowing and genuflecting at the altar of an overseas coal company.
The checks and balances of this UCP govt are a joke. The orphan well debacle and unpaid taxes by the oil industry are a clear example that this govt gives priority to corporations not the residents. Also, ignoring or down playing the selenium contamination from strip mining in the Rockies is not in the best interests of the environment.
It’s going to become a $500 billion nightmare for our children to face and these Reformers and their stupid supporters don’t care.
Tim: do you mean “creditable”, like in Social Creditable (the party)?
The process by which a solid (snow) changes to a gas is sublimation not evaporation. And the reason grass doesn’t grow under coniferous trees is due to the acidity of the soil under conifers. And this letter writer’s conception of the science on the environmental impacts of coal mining is the one we should hang our collective hats on? What could possibly go wrong?