Mine fight may go to higher level

The Daily Inter Lake

Gov. Brian Schweitzer says Montana's issues with proposed coal mine development in British Columbia's Flathead drainage will have to be taken to the federal level.

And Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., says he will pursue the matter at that level in several ways.

The two headlined a meeting Monday in Kalispell organized by the Flathead Basin Commission to drum up Montana comments for a British Columbia environmental review process.

The Toronto-based Cline Mining Co. wants to develop a mountaintop removal mine above Foisey Creek, a tributary that flows into Canada's Flathead River, which becomes the North Fork Flathead River as it flows south of the border, eventually into Flathead Lake.

Schweitzer told a crowd of about 180 people that his efforts to convince the British Columbia government to address Montana concerns have not been as successful as he had hoped.

"I was hoping that we could work this out with British Columbia directly," he said. "But for the life of me, I've been looking for the things that would amount to a collaborative agreement and I haven't seen anything that looks like a collaborative agreement."

Officials representing the state, Glacier National Park, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and other agencies participated in the development of draft "terms of reference" - the conditions that Cline must meet in developing a satisfactory environmental assessment for its Lodgepole mine project.

But the draft terms do not reflect Montana's major concerns, the governor said.

They do not require the company to assess potential impacts beyond the immediate vicinity of the mine site and they do not require a comprehensive "baseline assessment" of the current ecological conditions on both sides of the border. The state has maintained that impacts from mining can't be known unless there is an inventory of current conditions.

Schweitzer said the state may have to pursue the help of the federal government, a course he doesn't prefer.

"I think we may be at the point where we have to do what I normally don't like to do. I think this now needs to be in the lap of the State Department and Condoleeza Rice," he said, referring to the U.S. secretary of state.

That could bring the issue to the International Joint Commission, a four-person U.S.-Canadian panel that presides over disputes involving the Boundary Waters Treaty of 1909.

And Schweitzer said he is not optimistic about the potential outcome, judging from the panel's history of often splitting 2-2 along U.S.-Canadian lines.

But others hope for a different outcome, based on the commission's unanimous recommendations pertaining to an earlier coal-mining project farther south in the Canadian Flathead. Soon after those recommendations came out, the Cabin Creek project dissolved, largely because of market conditions.

Other speakers outlined the potential impacts of coal mine development in the Canadian Flathead.

Chris Servheen, grizzly bear recovery coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildfire Service, emphasized the likely "domino effect" that would result if the infrastructure for one mine was developed in a valley that currently has no year-round residents, no electricity and mostly crude roads.

"This foot-in-the-door issue is really a big concern to a lot of us," Servheen said. "If the electricity and the roads are built, it will be a lot easier to develop other mines."

He pointed to the old Cabin Creek mine site and a nearby coal deposit called Sage Creek that has three times the volume of coal that the Cline project has.

"This would be a disaster for the terrestrial and aquatic species" in the Canadian Flathead, he said.

Servheen said the Cline Mine alone, producing 2 million tons a year for 20 years, would involve an 80-ton truck every 10 minutes, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, on a haul route to Canada's Highway 3.

The mine and the haul route would present an ecological fracture that would separate the densest grizzly bear population in southern British Columbia from the U.S. population.

Mark Deleray, a fisheries biologist with Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks, flatly predicted the mine would have impacts on bull trout and cutthroat trout populations that spawn in tributaries directly below the mine.

"Your fishery resources are at stake here," Deleray told the crowd.

About 37 percent of the North Fork Flathead river's bull trout spawning is in the upper reaches of the Canadian Flathead. That accounts for about 21 percent of the reproduction of bull trout that spend part of their life cycles in Flathead Lake.

Ric Hauer, a professor at the University of Montana's Yellow Bay Biological Station, described coal mine development as a "clear and present danger" to the Flathead Valley and Flathead Lake.

"The distance from Polson to Whitefish is about the same as the distance from Whitefish to this mine site," he said. "It's that close."

Hauer cited water samples taken from a tributary that flows below another mine - with similar geological features - not far from the Cline mine site. Those samples found sulfates 18 times higher, nitrates 650 times higher and selenium levels 57 times higher than levels found in the unimpaired waters below the Cline Mine site.

Hauer said the biological station needs to learn more about how pollution would spread downstream and what impacts it would have on the Flathead River system and Flathead Lake.

Baucus said he would pursue the matter in Washington, D.C., starting by bringing it to the attention of Secretary of State Rice.

"In the meantime, I'm going to bring in the Canadian ambassador to my office to have a visit about this and the same with the U.S. ambassador to Canada," Baucus said.

Baucus said he also will work to get the General Accounting Office to determine if the British Columbia provincial government is following its environmental laws in its oversight of the Cline Mine review, and whether the provincial government may be violating any provisions of the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Finally, Baucus said he will pursue $3 million to fund continuing efforts to gather baseline data north and south of the border.

"And I don't care what you call it," he said, referring to current debates over "earmark" funding methods in Congress. "We will be creative."

Baucus, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said he expects that funding to be secured this year.

Baucus summed up the rationale for his opposition to the Cline mining project.

"All of the economic benefits go to them, and all of the environmental degradation comes to us," Baucus said. "They get all the benefits, and we get all the costs."

"We can't allow this thing to get started," he later added. "We need to nip this thing in the bud."

Dozens of people lined up to comment on the project. The Flathead Basin Commission intends to submit their testimony, along with written comments, to the British Columbia provincial government.

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