While coal mining can leave a landscape devastated and denuded of life, it is in the water where some of coal’s most harmful impacts – such as selenium toxins – can be found.
Crystal ball gazing is notoriously unreliable. But when it comes to looking at the impacts of the newly proposed coal mine in the Eastern slopes we don’t need one.
For a glimpse into what Alberta’s Oldman River watershed could look like if Australian coal giant Benga Minerals is allowed to mine there, we need only to look across the Continental Divide into British Columbia. There we find the Elk River, which rises along the western slopes of the divide north of the town of Elkford, flows south through Sparwood and Fernie, and then enters the United States beneath the waters of Lake Koocanusa.
The experience there can provide Albertans with useful insights into what the Oldman River watershed might look like should Premier Smith’s plans to allow new coal mines. This would undoubtedly create a toxic and deadly future for Alberta’s eastern slope rivers.
Coal mining has been taking place in the Elk River since 1897 and currently the material is shipped to China for use in steel making, leaving gapping rents that desecrate entire mountain ranges, and leaving dozens of kilometres of waste rock piled on the slopes of adjacent mountains. However, it is beneath the waters of the struggling Elk River that we have to look to see some of the most potent impacts of coal mining.
The mining of coal directly contributes to the build of invisible pollutants, the most prominent and dangerous of which is a toxic metal like element called selenium. These toxins directly threaten species such as the Westslope Cutthroat Trout and their invertebrate foodsource – caddisflys, stoneflys and dragon fly nymphs.
Selenium is an essential component of various enzymes and proteins, called selenoproteins that our bodies need in very small amounts. It helps make special proteins that protect our cells from damage, fight infections, and help with reproduction and thyroid function. Without these trace amounts, our cells wouldn’t work properly.
Unfortunately, both elemental selenium and (especially) selenium salts are toxic in larger doses. Too much selenium causes a condition called selenosis, which makes people extremely tired, causes breathing problems, lowers blood pressure, and can lead to tremors and heart disease. Any more than 400 micrograms (one microgram is equal to one millionth of a gram; in strict scientific terminology, that is really, really small) can result in big trouble.
While selenium naturally exists in the limestone rocks of the Rocky Mountains, it usually doesn’t get into the water under normal conditions. Unfortunately, the large coal mines in the Elk River Valley have changed this. These mining operations have released harmful amounts of selenium into the water, polluting rivers that flow across boundaries.
This has occurred because the broken-up waste rock from coal mining has a high surface area, and without proper mitigation, the combination of air and water penetrating the waste rock produces conditions which lead to the formation of soluble selenium (selenate). The soluble selenium can then be flushed out of the waste pile by rain and snowmelt, entering creeks, streams, rivers and groundwater.
There is no known mitigation for removing selenium once it’s in a watercourse.
Selenium accumulates in fish, resulting in deformations that render the prized Westslope Cutthoat trout caught in the Elk inedible, and have forced the community of Sparwood to dig new water wells after one of the town’s wells was poisoned by the metaloid.
Why should Albertans care about what happens in Sparwood, Fernie, and across the Canada-US border in Montana? Because it offers a cautionary tale about what will likely happen in Alberta should we fall prey to the demand for more coal mines. Nearly all of the waterways feeding communities such as Lethbridge and Medicine Hat arise along the narrow strip of mountains Albertans call the Eastern Slopes.
The strip mining of coal will poison the water, threatening human health and lead to potentially devastating impacts on local fisheries, impacting the livelihoods of hundreds.
The world might want coal today, but as climate change decimates our water supply and worsens droughts, fresh water will be even more critical in the future. Meanwhile, steelmaking is evolving, with electric arc furnaces and hydrogen advancing. Instead of spending time, money, and energy digging new mines in Alberta, we could invest in green steel projects—ones that don’t scar mountains and leave a toxic legacy beneath the clear, but clearly poisoned, waters.
(We’ll look more carefully at the positive and negative impacts of mining coal and alternative steel making in our next blog on coal mining.)
Read the first instalment in our coal series here.
Stay tuned for a future instalment that looks at the impact of coal mining on local communities and their economy.
