People of Alberta never invited coal speculators
By Lethbridge Herald on February 28, 2025.
Monica Field & David McIntyre
Albertans are scared. For many, access to life-essential water is at grave risk.
Throughout southern Alberta, where drought and a lack of water are threatening crops and frightening residents, access to the land’s limited sources of water becomes critical, crucial to life.
Is anything more precious than an intact watershed? When coal was first discovered in Crowsnest Pass, it was seen as black gold. What thought was given to water?
Today, people in the know respect the fact that ecologically functioning landscapes and watersheds are necessary for survival. They’re priceless. They’re worth far more than coal, far more than short-term, short-sighted profit for a select few.
Coal exploration and mining, if approved on Alberta’s Eastern Slopes, are guaranteed to further reduce and degrade the land’s meagre supply of water. This water, already seriously over-allocated and impacted by drought, is essential to the prosperity of the prairies and existing agricultural demands.
The people of Alberta never invited coal speculators to dig up Alberta’s revered and treasured mountains. They never agreed to the prospect of having bulldozers excavate cherished heritage rangelands in a brutal, destructive quest for coal. They didn’t envision, even a few short years ago, a day when they’d suffer from coal mining’s devastating impact on their iconic Rocky Mountain headwaters, the water tower for southern Alberta.
Recently, an independent polling firm, Leger, was asked (by Livingstone Landowners Group and Save the Mountains) to contact Albertans and obtain their opinion with respect to coal mining on Alberta’s Eastern Slopes. The poll, mirroring previous polls, revealed that three-quarters of Albertans oppose coal mining in Alberta’s Rocky Mountain headwaters—results virtually identical to an earlier report the province’s Coal Policy Committee submitted to the Government of Alberta in response to its request for issue-defining data.
Today, in the wake of the government’s recent decision—surprising and shocking!—to reopen Alberta’s headwaters to coal mining exploration and potential coal mining, pubic outrage manifests itself in the form of protests, phone campaigns, benefit concerts, and countless letters and phone calls to politicians.
The Government of Alberta appears uninterested in the expressed core needs and values of Albertans, and uncaring and unmoved, too, by the disturbing findings of scientists who have spoken and written to formally document the negative impacts of coal exploration and mining on the environment and human health.
The government appears oblivious to the ever-increasing impact of headwaters landscape destruction, and degradation of the land’s ability to capture, hold, and slowly release water amid lingering drought and climate change chaos.
When an irrational government fails to protect life-essential water, ignores science-based findings of respected scientists and health care professionals, and disregards the clear and decisive will of the people, we hear voices in the street and the sound of running feet.
Monica Field and David McIntyre live in the storied headwaters of the Oldman River in the shadow of the Livingstone Range. Monica is an educator specializing in diverse cultural resources and natural history disciplines. David, with a MSc from the University of Washington (College of the Environment), has, for decades, led multi-day study tours through the US West and the Canadian Rockies for the Smithsonian Institution.
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Excellent comment. Much thanks. UCP ignorance is letting foreign profiteers threaten the health and water source of Albertan people.