Coal taking center stage next week

Two meetings scheduled Jan. 15 in Kalispell

Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer and Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., will headline one of two meetings Jan. 15 in Kalispell on coal-mine development in British Columbia's Flathead drainage.

In a significant development, the Northwest Power and Conservation Council is taking up the issue at its meeting this month.

Two meetings are scheduled Jan. 15 at the Red Lion Hotel Kalispell - one from 9 a.m. to noon, and a second from 7 to 9 p.m.

Schweitzer and Baucus will attend the early meeting, said Caryn Miske, executive director of the Flathead Basin Commission, a state agency that is organizing Montana comments to be submitted to the British Columbia provincial government.

Miske said an additional meeting will be held from 7 to 10 p.m. Jan. 24 at the Doubletree Hotel in Missoula.

The meetings will include presentations from representatives of Glacier National Park, Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the University of Montana's Yellow Bay Biological Station. Opportunities for public comment will be available.

British Columbia, in cooperation with the Cline Mining Co., is holding meetings this month in Elko, Sparwood and Fernie, B.C.. Those meetings will gather comments on draft terms and conditions that the mining company must meet in developing an environmental assessment for its proposed open-pit coal mine in the headwaters of the Flathead River, which flows south into Montana's Flathead Basin.

Although the Canadian meetings were advertised in Montana newspapers, Miske said it would be difficult for many Montanans to get to those venues.

"We felt it was necessary to give folks the opportunity to comment here," she said.

British Columbia officials invited a Montana delegation to participate in the development of the draft "terms of reference." But most of the concerns raised by the Montana delegation were not incorporated into the draft terms of reference that are now subject to public review, said Rich Moy, chairman of the Flathead Basin Commission.

The terms of reference that eventually are adopted will prescribe just what Cline must do to produce a satisfactory application and environmental assessment for a mountain-top removal operation that is expected to process 2 million tons of coal annually in 20 years.

Schweitzer and other state officials have long called for a comprehensive assessment of existing environmental conditions in the transboundary Flathead drainage, in order to quantify impacts should the mine be developed.

But state officials have become increasingly critical of the proposed mine, to a point of opposing it altogether.

"The impacts of the proposed mine cannot be mitigated due to the location of the mine at the headwaters of a transboundary river, and the scale of the project is simply unacceptable," according to a notice from the basin commission.

According to the notice, "B.C. does not currently possess sufficient information to accurately determine the impacts of the proposed mine on fish, wildlife and the entire Flathead Basin."

Concern is growing in Montana about the nutrient and heavy-metal pollution that could spill from the mine into Foisey Creek, a tributary of the Canadian Flathead River that is about 22 miles north of the border.

State and federal biologists have concluded that the mine would have adverse impacts on fisheries, including threatened bull trout, as well as grizzly bears and other transboundary wildlife populations.

The state is taking the matter to the four-state Northwest Power and Conservation Council, said Bruce Measure, one of Montana's two council members.

Measure said Thursday that a letter "consistent with the Montana governor's position" will be submitted to the council for adoption at a Jan. 17 meeting in Vancouver, Wash.

The council oversees fish and wildlife mitigation programs related to federal hydropower projects in the Columbia Basin states of Montana, Idaho, Washington and Oregon.

"We've stuck millions of dollars into recovering fish and wildlife habitat that's been displaced by the dams," Measure said.

Brian Marotz, fisheries mitigation manager for Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks, estimates that at least $13.5 million has been spent on council-approved fisheries restoration projects in the Flathead Basin during just the past 10 years.

Marotz said that Canadian tributaries just below the proposed mine site produce fish that spend more than half their lives in Montana waters.

"We don't want to see all the money we've spent trying to recover those fisheries go to waste," Measure said.

Measure said the council could be considerably influential on the matter, because it has relations with British Columbia about transboundary waters, including the Kootenai River, which flows north into Canada from Idaho.

Reporter Jim Mann may be reached at 758-4407 or by e-mail at jmann@dailyinterlake.com