{"id":56685,"date":"2021-02-09T07:50:14","date_gmt":"2021-02-09T12:50:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=56685"},"modified":"2021-02-09T08:13:26","modified_gmt":"2021-02-09T13:13:26","slug":"critics-skeptical-as-alberta-reverses-course-on-open-pit-coal-mines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=56685","title":{"rendered":"Critics Skeptical as Alberta Reverses Course on Open-pit Coal Mines"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Critics Skeptical as Alberta Reverses Course on Open-pit Coal Mines<\/a><\/h3>\n

Five days after Kenney defended the province\u2019s mining push, the government says it was all a big mistake.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n

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Rancher Renie Blades says she\u2019s glad that the Alberta government admitted its mistake in cancelling the Coal Policy, but calls her response \u2018very guarded.\u2019\u00a0Photo by Callum Gunn.<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n
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After months of ignoring a grassroots protest movement opposing plans to allow open-pit coal mining in Alberta\u2019s Rockies, Energy Minister Sonya Savage said today the provincial government made a mistake and is now prepared to fix it.<\/p>\n

In a\u00a0brief news conference<\/a>, Savage said the province would reinstate the 1976 Coal Policy, which prohibited open-pit mining on 1.5 million hectares of \u201cCategory 2\u201d lands in the eastern slopes of the Rockies.<\/p>\n

In addition, Savage said she had instructed the Alberta Energy Regulator that \u201cno mountain top removal will be permitted\u201d in the province and that all future coal exploration on the Category 2 lands will be paused indefinitely until public consultation is held.<\/p>\n

Coal exploration by Australian miners on six existing leases in the foothills will not be paused.<\/p>\n

Savage\u2019s reinstatement of the Coal Policy directly contradicts\u00a0statements<\/a> from Premier Jason Kenney on Wednesday that the Coal Policy was a \u201cdead letter\u201d and obsolete.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0highly unpopular premier<\/a>\u00a0also characterized opponents of coal mining as urban snobs even though the\u00a0majority of the opposition<\/a>\u00a0has come from his party\u2019s angry base: ranchers, farmers, landowners and rural towns and municipalities.<\/p>\n

The government\u2019s abrupt change of course follows weeks of protests from hundreds of thousands of Albertans from all walks of life and all political parties.<\/p>\n

They raised concerns about water security,\u00a0selenium pollution<\/a>\u00a0(a legacy of open-pit coal mines), and the future of the province\u2019s iconic eastern slopes.<\/p>\n

Landowner and conservation groups greeted today\u2019s\u00a0announcement with skepticism<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Critics Skeptical as Alberta Reverses Course on Open-pit Coal Mines Five days after Kenney defended the province\u2019s mining push, the government says it was all a big mistake. Rancher Renie Blades says she\u2019s glad that the Alberta government admitted its mistake in cancelling the Coal Policy, but calls her response \u2018very guarded.\u2019\u00a0Photo by Callum Gunn. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6],"tags":[1082,30921,5549,41,103,147,379,1482,30922,5499],"class_list":["post-56685","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","category-liberty","tag-alberta","tag-alberta-government","tag-andrew-nikiforuk","tag-australia","tag-canada","tag-coal","tag-government","tag-mining","tag-open-pit-mines","tag-the-tyee"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56685","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=56685"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56685\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56686,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56685\/revisions\/56686"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=56685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=56685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=56685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}