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Approving the Grassy Mountain Coal Project could enable industrializing Alberta’s sensitive and vital eastern slopes.

Ranching on the eastern slopes of the Canadian Rockies in southern Alberta near the proposed Grassy Mountain Coal Project. Locals told a joint panel they fear the mine will harm their way of life, tourism and key water sources. Photo: Callum Gunn.

Next month, a provincial-federal joint review panel on the massive Grassy Mountain Coal Project in the southern Canadian Rockies will table a decision that could determine the fate of Alberta’s famed eastern slopes.

If the panel gives the contentious metallurgical coal mine a green light, the doors could open for other existing proposals that could industrialize nearly 1,000 square kilometres of the Rockies and threaten the region’s scarce water supplies.

Or the panel could rule against it, reflecting what it heard from writer and local resident Sid Marty in a public hearing last fall. Mountain top removal in the Rockies, said Marty, is “the wrong development, in the wrong location, in the wrong century.”

Much hinges on the panel’s report and recommendations that will be submitted to federal Minister of Environment and Climate Change Jonathan Wilkinson next month.

For starters, the Alberta government of Jason Kenney has strongly championed Australian metallurgical coal developers as an important new source of jobs and revenue that could replace shrinking oilsands developments in the province.

All the steel-making coal would be shipped to Vancouver-area terminals for export to China or India.

In addition, the province and the Coal Association of Canada, directed by former Alberta Tory environment minister Colin Campbell, have tried to sell open-pit coal mining as a form of “reconciliation” that can enrich First Nations.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Months Before Albertans Were Told, Australian Miners Knew Plans to Axe Coal Policy

January 31, 2021

Months Before Albertans Were Told, Australian Miners Knew Plans to Axe Coal Policy

Investor presentations signalled the Kenney government aimed to open protected lands to open-pit mining.

Documents show Australian firms seeking open-pit coal mining leases in Alberta got signals protections to sensitive lands would be lifted, clearing the way. The public only found out months later, the day the Coal Policy was rescinded. Photo: Shutterstock.

Australian mining firms seeking to strip-mine metallurgical coal in Alberta’s eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains knew well ahead of Albertans that the government was planning to rescind a law that stood in the way.

The 44-year-old Coal Policy, the result of extensive public consultation in the 1970s, kept 1.5 million hectares of Category 2 lands in the eastern slopes off limits from open-pit mining until the Jason Kenney government abruptly axed it in May of last year with no public consultation.

Alberta’s environment minister has denied that doing away with the Coal Policy “has opened up the eastern slopes for strip-mining.”

But a presentation prepared some time in 2019 by Capital Investment Partners, a firm that owns four private coal companies with extensive leases in the central Rockies, told investors: “Alberta government [is] in the process of changing the coal policy to allow more open-pit mining.”

This statement raises serious questions, said Katie Morrison, the conservation director of the Southern Alberta arm of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, who found the presentation online.

“The CIP presentation really implies that long before Albertans heard about the cancellation of the Coal Policy, the government was consulting with coal companies at the request of coal companies and for the benefit of coal companies,” Morrison told The Tyee.

She added that the presentation “is very clear that the Australians understood the cancellation as a lifting of restrictions that allowed them to mine in areas they couldn’t access before.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Threatened by Coal, Ranchers Take the Kenney Government to Court

December 8, 2020

Threatened by Coal, Ranchers Take the Kenney Government to Court

Alberta is poised to let miners destroy mountaintops and vital watersheds grazed for a century.

Mac Blades (foreground) carries on his family’s 100-year ranching tradition on the slopes of Alberta’s Rockies. He and his wife Renie joined a lawsuit to stop open-pit coal mining in the area after restrictions were lifted. Photo by Callum Gunn.

When Jason Kenney’s government quietly abolished the province’s visionary Coal Policy last May to appease Australian coal miners, a shock wave travelled through cowboy country along the scenic slopes of the southern Rockies.

One of those waves arrived at the doorstep of the Rocking P Ranch owned by Mac and Renie Blades.

Another hit the nearby Plateau Cattle Co. owned by John Smith and Laura Laing.

Both families graze their cattle at the base of a fir-topped mountain called Cabin Ridge during the summer months.

Under the province’s 44-year-old Coal Policy the picturesque mountain lay within a landscape known as Category 2. That classification forbade open-pit mining and thereby conserved a precious watershed in arid Alberta.

But in one fell swoop the Kenney government ended that protection by killing the policy and most of its land classification system.

As a consequence the province abruptly opened up 1.5 million hectares of the southern Rockies to mountaintop removal in the middle of the Oldman River watershed, which supplies drinking water to more than a million Canadians. The government is now taking bids for some of that area until Dec. 15.

Australian leaders of coal mining corporations, who had lobbied for the abolishment of the Coal Policy, openly praised the government when their wish was granted.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Alberta’s Environment Minister Cheered on Coal Mining in New Areas before Restrictions Were Dropped

August 13, 2020

Alberta’s Environment Minister Cheered on Coal Mining in New Areas before Restrictions Were Dropped

Months before ending the Coal Policy, the Kenney government issued letters of support for open-pit projects.

Coal mining along Alberta’s Rockies. Months before a large zone along the eastern slopes was opened to coal strip mining, two Alberta ministers endorsed an Australian firm’s plans for the protected lands. Photo via Shutterstock.

Half a year before the Alberta government abruptly rescinded a 44-year-old policy protecting its Rocky Mountain flanks from coal open-pit mining, its ministers were already sending “letters of support” to a new Australian coal mining corporation trying to raise capital on the open market.

Valory Resources Inc. is just one of several Australian firms planning to excavate open-pit coal mines along the Rockies’ eastern slopes, a key source of fresh water previously off limits to surface mining until last June.

That’s when the Kenney government cancelled the protective Coal Policy established in 1976. Under the cover of the pandemic, it did so with no public consultation.

The letters of support — one from Alberta’s minister of tourism and the other from the minister of environment — indicate Valory’s plans were already understood and favoured by the Kenney government well before it changed regulations to make them possible.

Valory, a private company now trying to raise capital for the project, displays the letters in its promotional materials (see page 24 in this pdf).

In a presentation to the town of Rocky Mountain House in central Alberta last month, Valory Resources boasted that it had “recently met with key members of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta and received strong statements of support… which indicates that the Alberta provincial government are ‘pro-development and open for business.’”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

As The Great Barrier Reef Bleaches White, Queensland Government Approves Australia’s Biggest Coal Mine

April 6, 2016

As The Great Barrier Reef Bleaches White, Queensland Government Approves Australia’s Biggest Coal Mine

The Queensland government’s approach to protecting the Great Barrier Reef seems a bit like that of a hypocritical anti-drugs campaigner who preaches the evils of heroin and cocaine while running a meth lab and bong factory in their basement.

The state’s left-wing Labor Government has been simultaneously regretting the lack of global action to cut greenhouse gas emissions that damage the reef while granting approvals for the biggest coal mine in Australia’s history.

As oxymoronic statements go, some of the political rhetoric coming out of the Australian state of Queensland in recent days takes some beating.

Mining minister Anthony Lynham said the approvals for Indian-owned miner Adani’s Carmichael mine were “tangible evidence” of his government’s “commitment to the sustainable development” of the massive but as-yet-untapped coal reserves in the state’s Galilee Basin.

But as the government was drafting its statements, there was some “tangible evidence” elsewhere of the damage the fossil fuel industry is causing to the state’s iconic reef.

The approvals for Adani’s mine came as large sections of the 2300 kilometre (1430 miles) reef, mainly in the northern sections, were turning white.
Mass bleaching

The reef is currently suffering what is likely to be its worst mass coral-bleaching event since the phenomenon was first reported in 1998 by scientists on reefs around the world.

Bleaching happens when the algae that gives corals their colour and much of their nutrients separates from the white skeleton beneath. Corals do not always die from bleaching, but those that survive can take years to recover and are weakened as a result.

Coral scientists say record-high sea surface temperatures in the Great Barrier Reef region have driven the current bleaching event.

This long-term trend of warming ocean temperatures, mirrored globally, is clearly linked to rising levels of greenhouse gases.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Indonesian Coal Mining Boom Is Leaving Trail of Destruction

December 18, 2015

Indonesian Coal Mining Boom Is Leaving Trail of Destruction

Since 2000, Indonesian coal production has increased five-fold to meet growing domestic demand for electricity and feed export markets in Asia. The intensive mining is leading to the clearing of rainforest and the pollution of rivers and rice paddies.

Standing on a hilltop in Kerta Buena, an Indonesian village on the island of Borneo, local farmers look out over a blackened moonscape. In the 1980s the land was forested, but now it is pockmarked with craters where miners have clawed coal from the earth. On a recent November afternoon, trucks crisscrossed the site on their way to and from riverside coal barges in the nearby provincial capital of Samarinda. The sound of their engines reverberated across the barren landscape.

Dadang Tri/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Excavators work in an open pit coal mine at the PT Exploitasi Energi site in South Kalimantan, Indonesia.

Kerta Buena lies in northeastern Borneo, an island larger than France that is primarily split between Indonesia and Malaysia. ITM, the Indonesian company that owns the mine, says it produces 29 million tons of coal per year on sites across Indonesian Borneo that cover nearly 200,000 acres — half of them on land the government designates as “production” forest. Although an ITM spokesman said the company’s mining sites have five-year reclamation plans in accordance with Indonesian law, some Kerta Buena farmers complain that wastewater from coal mining activities is leaking into rice paddies and damaging their harvests. Acid mine drainage across Borneo has killed fish in aquaculture operations, and farming communities — often located next to coal mines — must contend with coal dust that routinely coats crops and seeps into their homes.

“I don’t have a voice to express my concerns,” said one farmer, Made Sari. The reduced harvest costs her hundreds of dollars per year, she said, and pollution from coal mining may force her to return to her ancestral village in the Indonesian island of Bali.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Not on This Land: A Western Tribe Takes a Stand and Says No to Big Coal

November 18, 2015

Not on This Land: A Western Tribe Takes a Stand and Says No to Big Coal

The Northern Cheyenne are opposing a proposed railroad that would cut through their ancestral lands to haul Montana coal to the Pacific coast for export. An e360 video reports on the Cheyenne’s fight against the railroad and the extraordinary coalition of tribal people and ranchers who have joined together to stop the project.

With coal development on three sides of their Montana reservation, the Northern Cheyenne know the changes that coal can bring to the landscape. So when a rail line was proposed that would carry coal from yet another huge open-pit mine planned near their border, the Northern Cheyenne decided to oppose it.This e360 video, produced by The Story Group, tells the story of an unlikely alliance between the Cheyenne and local ranchers who are seeking to block the

Tongue River Railroad, which would run alongside the reservation and carry coal from the planned Otter Creek mine to rail lines that connect to Pacific ports. The tribe’s long fight against the railroad is coming to a head, with a decision by the federal Surface Transportation Board expected in the spring.

“This is our homeland,” tribal councilman Conrad Fisher tells the filmmakers. “It’s the cultural landscape, it’s the social landscape, it’s the spiritual landscape. Essentially, it’s the fabric of who we are as Cheyenne people.”

Watch the video.

A Bad Week For Coal Mining Industry, Even Worse for Peabody Energy

July 3, 2015

A Bad Week For Coal Mining Industry, Even Worse for Peabody Energy

It’s been a really bad week for major U.S. coal companies as we head into the July 4th holiday weekend.

St. Louis-based Peabody Energy (NYSE: BTU) closed today at $1.87 a share, down from a high of $84 per share in mid-2008. The company’s chief financial officer Michael C. Crews resigned abruptly on June 28 amidst the freefall.

Another major U.S. coal company, Alpha Natural Resources (NYSE: ANR) hit a new all-time low yesterday at just 27 cents per share, and sank as low as 24 cents that morning.

Arch Coal (NYSE: ACI) also hit its all-time low of 33 cents per share as well, down from its all-time high of $73.42 in 2008.

All three companies’ stock values are down roughly 80% from the beginning of 2015.

2015 year-to-date stock performance on the NYSE for Peabody (BTU), Arch (ACI) and Alpha (ANR). Source: Google Finance.

Arch has received a delisting notice from the New York Stock Exchange for falling below $1 per share, and has only a few months to regain its footing or lose its spot on the NYSE. Alpha received its own delisting notice a month prior.

Given the global nature of the coal industry and the generally complicated world of commodity trading, there are a myriad of influences at play here. But one cannot ignore the fact that these historic lows are coming at a time of historic commitments to renewable energy and carbon reductions by major coal-consuming and producing countries like the United States and China.

According to energy analysts at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA), the Stowe Global Coal Index has lost 71% of its value since 2010:

stowe global coal index

IEEFA‘s director of finance, Tom Sanzillo, recently told reporters that, “the coal industry is arguably the poorest-performing sector in today’s global economy and is in a state of structural decline. It is a shrinking industry with little upside potential.”

That’s bad news for coal investors, but frankly it’s a welcome development for anyone concerned about the carbon

The senility of elites: coal mining must continue, no matter what the human costs

May 31, 2015

The senility of elites: coal mining must continue, no matter what the human costs

The coal mine of Bihar, India. Photo by Nitin Kirloskar

This post was inspired by a recent article about coal mining in India by David Rose in the Guardian about coal mining. In India, people are dying in the streets because of excessive heat caused by global warming, but Rose reports that “…across a broad range of Delhi politicians and policymakers there is near unanimity. There is, they say, simply no possibility that at this stage in its development India will agree to any form of emissions cap, let alone a cut.” In other words, coal mining must continue in the name of economic growth, no matter what the human costs.

I think it is hard to see a more evident example of the senility of the world’s elites. It is, unfortunately, not something that pertains only to India. Elites all over the world seem to be nearly totally blind to the desperate situation in which we all are.

On this matter, I have a post written on my “Chimeras” blog that describes how the blindness of the elites is not just typical of our times, but was the same at the time of the Roman Empire. It is a discussion of how one of the members of the Roman elite, Rutilius Namatianus, completely misunderstood the situation of the last years of the Empire. It is our plea of human being that we don’t understand collapse, not even when we live it.

The return home of Rutilius Namatianus

The 5th century saw the last gasps of the Western Roman Empire. Of those troubled times, we have only a few documents and images. Above, we can see one of the few surviving portraits of someone who lived in those times; Emperor Honorius, ruler of what was left of the Western Roman Empire from 395 to 423. His expression seems to be one of surprise, as if startled at seeing the disasters taking place during his reign.

At some moment during the first decades of the 5th century C.E., probably in 416, Rutilius Namatianus, a Roman patrician, left Rome – by then a shadow of its former glory – to take refuge in his possessions in Southern France. He left to us a report of his travel titled “De Reditu suo“, meaning “of his return” that we can still read today, almost complete.

Fifteen centuries after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, we have in this document a precious source of information about a world that was ceasing to exist and that left so little to us. It is a report that can only make us wonder at how could it be that Namatianus got everything so badly wrong about what was happening to him and to the Roman Empire.

Continue reading on “Chimeras”

Environmentalists Win Federal Lawsuit Over Colorado Coal Mines

May 19, 2015

Environmentalists Win Federal Lawsuit Over Colorado Coal Mines

Environmentalists won big May 8 in a lawsuit brought against the federal government over two coal mines near the northern Colorado town of Craig.

The nonprofit environmental group WildEarth Guardians sued the U.S. Office of Surface Mining, Reclamation and Enforcement (OSM), a bureau within the U.S.Department of the Interior, over permits granted in 2007 to expand the coal mines, saying OSM failed to seek public input or consider impacts on the environment when it approved expanding the mines. The mines are operated by Colowyo Coal Company and Trapper Mining, Inc.

In his May 8, 2015 ruling, Federal District Judge R. Brooke Jackson agreed with WildEarth Guardians that OSMcited outdated documents from the 1970s in its Finding of No Significant Impact for the mine expansions, and found the agency “did not comply with its most basic NEPA [National Environmental Policy Act] duty of providing public notice” of the mining plan revisions.

The judge awarded WildEarth Guardians reasonable attorney’s fees and expenses incurred in bringing the lawsuit, and gave the two mining companies 120 days to “take a hard look at the direct and indirect environmental effects of the Colowyo mining plan revision,” and “provide public notice and an opportunity for public involvement before reaching its decisions.”

If the companies fail to complete these remedial tasks within the assigned 120-day window, they face closure of the mines.

The ruling follows a similar one in U.S. District Court in June of 2014 in which the Court found the Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service wrongly approved expansion of the West Elk coal mine in Somerset, Colorado, because the company operating the mine, Arch Coal, failed to consider the social and economic impacts of greenhouse gas emissions from the mining.

Lord Ridley: Make Mine A Large One!

January 5, 2015

Lord Ridley: Make Mine A Large One!

Lord Ridley, the landed aristocrat and prominent climate denier, will start work this year on two new profitable opencast coal mines close to his Grade I listed stately home and acres of beautiful national park that make up his 8,500-acre estate.

The Ridley-White family has owned the stunning Blagdon Estate in Northumbria since 1700, where they have mined coal and fireclay to amass a considerable fortune while fuelling the Industrial Revolution and British Empire.

READ RIDLEY‘S FULL REPLY

The peer’s property, held by a family trust, today covers a significant part of the open mines at Shotton and Brenkley Lane, north of Newcastle, which together contain 8.3m tonnes of coal, worth an estimated £607m on the spot market.

Banks Mining, which operates Ridley’s mines, has won planning permission to open two further opencast mines, with the Shotton Triangle Extension yielding 300,000 tonnes worth about £22m and Shotton South West providing 250,000 tonnes and £18m by 2017. Had permission not been given last year, the coal would have been ‘stranded’ and never mined.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

A Scourge for Coal Miners Stages a Brutal Comeback by Ken Ward Jr.: Yale Environment 360

November 11, 2014

A Scourge for Coal Miners Stages a Brutal Comeback by Ken Ward Jr.: Yale Environment 360.

Black lung — a debilitating disease caused by inhaling coal dust — was supposed to be wiped out by a landmark 1969 U.S. mine safety law. But a recent study shows that the worst form of the disease now affects a larger share of Appalachian coal miners than at any time since the early 1970s.

by ken ward jr.

In August, when former GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney visited West Virginia to campaign for Republican U.S. Senate candidate Shelley Moore Capito, the Democrat in the race was quick to remind voters what Romney had said a decade earlier about the coal industry.

“I will not create jobs or hold jobs that kill people, and that plant — that plant kills people,” Romney had said in 2003, standing outside a Massachusetts coal-fired power plant that was facing new environmental controls. The Democratic candidate’s campaign jumped on this, criticizing Capito for aligning herself with “someone who believes coal ‘kills people’” — a deeply unpopular sentiment in a state where coal has long been king.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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Black lung — a debilitating disease caused by inhaling coal dust — was supposed to be wiped out by a landmark 1969 U.S. mine safety law. But a recent study shows that the worst form of the disease now affects a larger share of Appalachian coal miners than at any time since the early 1970s.

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