Canadian environmentalists question plan to sell coal mines above Lake Koocanusa

A pair of Canadian environmental organizations have asked Canadian regulators to consider several issues that could throw a wrench in a major coal mine sale north of the Montana border. The request tees up a decision that will have implications for Lake Koocanusa, a boundary-spanning waterway that a coal mining operation in British Columbia has polluted for decades.

Wildsight and Ecojustice submitted the petition last week out of concern that the pending sale of Teck’s coal mining operation to Swiss commodities giant Glencore bodes poorly for the prospect of adequate remediation of the land and water that have changed dramatically as a result of more than a century of coal mining in the Elk River Valley.

Wildsight Conservation Director Casey Brennan told MTFP he hopes the petition will shine a light into the “black box” surrounding Glencore’s $9 billion bid for Teck’s coal mines. More specifically, he said he hopes the petition will force Canadian agencies involved in commercial and environmental matters to consider the sale’s repercussions for taxpayers, the environment and communities living in the Kootenay watershed.

“We’re very concerned that the provincial government, and now federal government, are sleepwalking their way into a massive liability for the taxpayers of Canada,” Brennan said. 

The petition puts eight questions to Canada’s Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development surrounding Glencore’s financial and environmental legacy, the adequacy of the bonds that the British Columbia provincial government is holding to reclaim the mines, and the sale’s implications for taxpayers.

The British Columbia government is currently holding a $1.4 billion security to reclaim the mines once they’re shuttered and has pledged to increase that amount to $1.9 billion.

Earlier this year, Wildsight commissioned a study finding that it would take $6.4 billion to remove the mining-related selenium pollution in the Elk River Valley. Selenium is a chemical element that can cause deformities and reproductive failure in fish. 

Last November, the week after Glencore announced its plans to buy Teck’s mining operation, the U.S. Geological Survey published a report finding that selenium and nitrate loading in nearby waterways as a result of coal mining in British Columbia is without measured precedent.

Teck has said it will have invested nearly $2 billion by the end of this year in an effort to “stabilize and reverse” selenium and nitrate trends and “protect the ongoing health of the watershed.”

Canadian regulators have not yet signed off on the mines’ sale.

Amanda Eggert is the environmental reporter for the Montana Free Press, a Helena-based nonprofit newsroom, and can be reached at aeggert@montanafreepress.org.