Coal mine poses a looming threat to water quality

While the Flathead Basin's water quality has plenty of local pollution to contend with, there's also a distant, looming threat that has generated considerable concern.

Potential coal-mine development in the remote Canadian Flathead is in the hands of another country, another government with different environmental rules.

But Montana officials have engaged in the provincial process in an unprecedented fashion and there has been an effort to gather baseline water-quality information from the pristine headwater streams that feed Montana's North Fork Flathead River.

"It's probably one of the biggest threats to the Flathead system right now," said Ric Hauer of the University of Montana's Flathead Lake Biological Station. "The North Fork plays an incredibly important role in maintaining the water quality of Flathead Lake."

Flathead Lake is as clean as it is largely because of the waters that flow from protected or undeveloped forest lands such as those found in the Canadian Flathead, where there are just a handful of summer cabins and outfitter lodges.

A Toronto-based penny stock company called Cline Mining Corp. is proposing a metallurgical coal mine on a mountaintop above Foisey Creek, one of the northernmost tributaries to Canada's Flathead River. Another company has done exploration a few miles south in the river flood plain.

With the backing of Mitsui Matsushima, a Japanese conglomerate, and Germany's ThyssenKrupp corporation, Cline is seeking a large-scale mining permit from the provincial government. Cline is planning a "mountaintop removal" mining operation, similar to another mine 10 miles north above Michelle Creek, a tributary that flows into British Columbia's Elk River.

Hauer said recently collected water chemistry samples show striking differences between Michelle Creek water and that in Foisey Creek.

"We do have some numbers from Michelle Creek," he said. "And the nutrients there are way up. Phosphorus and nitrogen are much higher in that creek than the comparable creeks on the Flathead … Many of the metals are significantly higher."

What's most alarming, Hauer said, is that selenium levels are more than 10 times higher in Michelle Creek than in Foisey Creek.

"It can cause metal toxicity problems," Hauer said. "It's just one of those metals that you don't want to see elevated numbers of that magnitude."

The Elk River is often perceived as a cold and clean Canadian River, mainly because it is known for producing large trout, despite having coal mining operations above some of its major tributaries for nearly a century. But the Coal Mountain Mine is a mountaintop removal operation that has involved massive land disturbance.

The healthy fishery is a direct result of the river being overfertilized with nitrogen and phosphorus, Hauer asserts.

"Just because you happen to have a productive fishery does not mean that the system is healthy. It could mean that the system is being overfertilized," Hauer said. Land disturbance associated with the Cline coal mine would produce similar nutrient loading that would flow south into the Flathead system.

"Those same nutrients that result in large fish in the river … would end up driving algae growth and green scum on the surface of Flathead Lake," he said.

The contrasting conditions are precisely the reason there has been a strong push to measure existing biological conditions in the Canadian Flathead.

Montana officials have been participating in a process to determine what requirements Cline must meet in developing its environmental assessment for the project. But so far, there is a perception that the Montana delegation's input is being ignored.

The state and its partners, including Glacier National Park, initially submitted 129 comments on the draft conditions for the environmental review. But those comments resulted in no changes.

According to Hauer, officials with Cline and the provincial government have resisted any suggestion of accounting for the impacts that would result if more than one mine became operational in the Canadian Flathead.

"It's very difficult for us to tell the Canadians how to run their environmental laws," Hauer said. But he added that Canada does have obligations under the nearly 100-year-old Boundary Waters Treaty, which includes provisions protecting both nations from environmental harm.

Student researchers collected samples of 50 to 60 different aquatic insects from Foisey Creek and nearby streams this past summer, and there was a wide diversity in the different types of trace algae that support those insects.

By contrast, Michelle Creek has a lot of bugs, but none of the more sensitive species found in Foisey Creek.

"In Michelle Creek, productivity was dominated by very tolerant species of May flies, midges and black fly larvae," he said.