Coal Mining is Polluting our Water and Destroying our Environment

In this global climate crisis, when the world is wanting/needing to reduce its CO2 emissions, it seems counter intuitive to even think about extending a coal mine in the Elk Valley.

Metallurgical coal is a cheap source for producing steel, but it is not the only energy that can be used to produce steel.  Hydrogen is being used in Sweden. In 2018 electric arc furnace (EAF) steelmaking comprises 29% of steel produced globally.  EAF is aiming to be a carbon neutral steel in the future.

Selenium levels in the Upper Fording River resulted in it being closed to anglers.  A couple of years ago, water tests throughout the Elk Valley found selenium levels at 50-70 parts/billion and in some cases higher than 100 parts/billion.  Macroinvertebrates (fish food) are nearly absent.  The cumulative affects of selenium in trout cause facial and spinal deformities and the absence of gill plates mean death for the fish.  Local fishing guides are concerned by catching these frankenfish, so deformed that it’s concerning and off-putting to them and their clients.

The BC government has been relatively silent on this issue, which is not reassuring to area residents or to our neighbours to the south.  Dangerously high levels of selenium in the Elk River to Lake Koocanusa and into Montana are such that it has resulted in an international dispute over transboundary water pollution.  In 2018 two U.S. commissioners on the International Joint Commission released a letter stating Canada’s three representatives on the commission will not endorse a recent report that shows risks to aquatic life and humans from selenium pollution from five Teck Resources Ltd. coal mines.  The Canadian commissioners are accused of seeking to exclude recent data.  Why would that be?  Why would non-partisan representatives not want to look at the recent science and make an informed decision?  This causes me considerable concern that other factors are at play that undermine the science.  Very troubling.

Private wells and Sparwood’s municipal well were closed due to levels of selenium higher than 10 parts/billion (in excess of what is considered safe for human consumption).  What about the impacts on wildlife consuming the toxic waters?  What about the loss of habitat for the big horn sheep in the area?  Who is responsible for protecting all the species that rely on this region’s habitat and safe, clean drinking water and air?

In 2014, A report by A. Dennis Lemly, Ph.D. of a “Review of Environment Canada’s Teck Coal Environmental Assessment and Evaluation of Selenium Toxiciology Tests on Westslope Cutthroat Trout in the Elk and Fording Rivers in Southeast British Columbia” warned that selenium pollution from mining in the Elk Valley was negatively impacting fish and warned of “a total population collapse of sensitive species like the westslope cutthroat trout.”  That was six years ago.  In March 2020 it was discovered that there was a 90% die off of west slope trout in the upper Fording River in just two years.  More than 70% of juvenile fish have disappeared.  Nitrates are also found in the upper Fording River at dangerous levels.  Calcite leaching out of waste rock is solidifying on the bottom of the Fording River and its tributaries, forming a concrete like layer, making it impossible for trout to feed on or lay eggs on the river bottom.

Even if the existing mines are closed selenium will be leaching into our water for years.  There is no plan or funds in escrow to deal with these impending consequences.  As we’ve seen with abandoned or breached mines in BC, it’s left to the taxpayer to deal with the mess left by industry.  In the last six months of 2017 Teck paid three environmental enforcement penalty fines of $78,100 for failing to comply with an effluent discharge permit and then failing to report the problem.  The BC government reduced fines for Teck by $12,000 at the company’s request.  These frequent flyer points for polluters rubs taxpayers the wrong way. In 2020 Teck paid a $28,000 penalty again for failing to comply with permit requirements and report unauthorized discharges, conduct sampling and exceeding water quality limits in June 2018.

The Elk Valley Water Quality Plan is not working.  It has not be able to stem and treat the flow of selenium.

Although the Province of B.C. is conducting an Environmental Assessment, many of us would like to see a federal review under the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act (FR) undertaken as I don’t recall one ever having been done on any of the coal mines in the Elk Valley.

I oppose the Castle Project.