Dispatch from Alberta’s Coal War

The latest skirmish in Alberta’s new coal wars took place on Nov. 19 as young and old filled the Polish Hall in Coleman, Alberta.

People came to say no to the political clout of Australian billionaire Gina Rinehart, and to raise funds for a local group called Crowsnest Headwaters.

They are fighting her controversial proposal to build an open-pit mine on Grassy Mountain in the headwaters of the Old Man River basin.

The locals also came to hear Corb Lund, the cowboy troubadour, sing about life in southern Alberta as well as the destructive folly of planting coal mines on the eastern slopes of the Rockies.

The symbolism of the historic Polish Hall was not lost on most congregants. In an act of community independence Polish miners erected the sturdy hall in 1927. They did so at a time when an American company, the International Coal and Coke Company, owned everything and everybody in town: utilities, homes and the grocery store.

In those days Coleman and four other towns that make up the mountainous splendor of the Crowsnest Pass all belonged to King Coal and its largely foreign owners.

History has a way of recycling itself, and on Tuesday nearly 200 people packed the Polish Hall to express their opposition to the global mining baron’s effort to bring back coal and along with it: one company rule.

In the days leading up, pro-coal protestors threatened on social media to surround the hall and prevent entry to it. In the end, two backers of the mine showed up in trucks, and they eventually departed.

Maneuvering towards a referendum

In 2021 provincial and federal regulators pointedly rejected Rinehart’s mega-mine as an uneconomic project and a threat to water quality and quantity in the region. Three courts upheld that decision.

But the litigious Rinehart, a climate change skeptic, has found in the pro-coal government of Danielle Smith, a willing accomplice. Smith vowed in 2022 that if locals ever said yes to the project in a referendum, she would push it forward.

Since then, Rinehart has been busy preparing for that day. She renamed her company and began a concerted campaign to reanimate her project with government lobbying, a media blitz, funding for a local school lunch program, applications for more coal exploration and now bold support for a non-binding referendum on whether locals support her proposal even though the project isn’t located in the Pass but in the neighbouring Municipal District of Ranchland where everyone opposes the project.

Rinehart also has the backing of a group called Citizens Supportive of Crowsnest Coal. It’s not truly a community-based organization but one with ties to the well-funded oil and gas corporate lobby: Energy United.

Just compare the slick CSCC’s website with the grassroots pluck of Crowsnest Headwaters.

Rinehart’s company, which has made effusive promises of jobs and prosperity (“Vote YES for the future”), has even offered to drive residents to the polls on Nov. 25.

And that wielding of influence in an Alberta election occupied the minds of many folks at the Polish Hall.

Voices of resistance

Terry Ostrom, a Métis and former public works supervisor, was one of them. He didn’t think the Grassy Mountain project was a sound idea for either water, people or the future.

He talked about the growing scarcity of water in the bone-dry region where wells are going dry all the time. He detailed how many of his neighbors “were hauling water.”

He said everyone knew that B.C.’s Elk Valley coal mines dominated the news and not in a good way. One day they were being fined $16 million for poisoning water with selenium and another day for unauthorized waste disposal. In northern B.C. Conuma Resources behaved no differently: It just got fined $45,000 for fouling waterways on 400 separate occasions.

“They take it with a grain of salt,” said Ostrom. “That’s what I’m concerned about.”

Susan Wagner, a 72-year-old retiree from Saskatchewan, moved to the Pass (Hillcrest Mines) in 2004. “If there had been a coal mine here, I would not have come,” she said.

She added that she was particularly worried about the impact of coal dust on human health. She said particulate matter from the site would travel 70 km. It can infiltrate the lungs and the bloodstream causing all manner of disease.

Dust-free coal mining?

Rinehart’s company has promised a dust-free mine, but Wagner sums up the prevailing view of foes of the project. “I think they are selling us a bill of goods to make a profit.”

A new U.S. study found that trains carrying loads of coal also leave a trail of dust and illness behind them. Residents living near the tracks have higher rates of asthma, heart disease, hospitalization and death — all due to particulate matter.

The train loading site for Rinehart’s Grassy Mountain project would be located just 200 yards from the hospital in Blairmore just east of Coleman. “There is no dust-free mining,” noted Alan Brice, a well-known fly fishing guide and millwright in the Pass, in a film.

And then came the subject of the referendum. Why should the Municipality of Crowsnest Pass be holding a referendum on a project that will be built in another municipal district and whose impacts could affect 200,000 water drinkers downstream?

And why, asked Ostrom and Wagner, would the Municipality of Crowsnest Pass whose council renewed a water contract with Rinehart’s company in 2021 after the project was rejected by regulators, limit the referendum to only full-time residents? “It makes no sense,” said Ostrom. “If you are paying full taxes, you should be able to speak to the issue.”

Cowboy protest singer

The star of the night was Corb Lund.

He hails from a ranching family that moved to southern Alberta from Utah in the 1800s. And he’s been opposed to coal mining on the eastern slopes ever since Premier Jason Kenney secretly upturned the province’s restrictive Coal Policy and invited Australian developers to benefit from Alberta’s one-per-cent coal royalties and flexible reclamation rules.

The mines in the oilsands, for example, have amassed $58 billion in liabilities yet companies are only required to put aside $2 billion for the cleanup. That means taxpayers will foot the bill.

Although a collation of Albertans soundly defeated Kenney’s coal machinations, Rinehart is using her clout to open the doors again on the eastern slopes.

In between songs about cows, whiskey and horse soldiers, Lund explained that he normally was not one to engage in partisan politics. Nor was he opposed to resource projects. But each one had to be looked at for their own merits and Rinehart’s gamble was just bad for water and bad for the economy.

Politicians and their coal buddies, he added, are disingenuous.

“No matter what they say, what they want is the coal and once it is gone, they will leave a mess,” said Lund at the concert’s end.

The crowd roared and clapped.