A former mining pit, now full of water, sits at the base of Grassy Mountain north of Blairemore, Alta.Gavin John/The Globe and Mail
The wind rips across Grassy Mountain as the truck rumbles slowly along a crude track that, for decades, carried miners and coal around this part of the Crowsnest Pass, Alta.
Abandoned mining infrastructure sits at the former coal mine on Grassy Mountain.Gavin John/The Globe and Mail
Remnants of the region’s coal industry, which dates back to 1900, litter the mountain; an old cart, twisty rusted metal, pockmarked buildings, weathered planks of wood and a mountaintop carved by decades of open-pit mining.
It’s also a battleground, pitting those who support coal development in the region against those who are firmly opposed.
A lead proponent is Northback Holdings Corp., which owns a huge swath of land that was, until the 1960s, teaming with coal mines above and under the ground. It is one of the many companies owned by Hancock Prospecting Pty. Ltd, which is run by Australian billionaire Gina Rinehart – the country’s richest person.
Northback has three applications in front of the Alberta Energy Regulator (AER), seeking permission for a coal exploration program, a deep drill permit for Crown and private land, and a temporary diversion licence for 1.5 million litres of water.
None of those are applications for a mine proper, but for the kind of exploratory activity that comes before developing a detailed plan to get to the veins of metal-making coal that run deep and plentiful across this part of southern Alberta.
Northback used to be called Benga Mining Ltd. Under that name, in 2017, the federal and provincial governments accepted its application for an environmental impact assessment of a new surface metallurgical coal mine encompassing about 2,800 hectares of land. It would have produced 4.5 million tonnes of coal annually over a mine life of about 25 years.
A joint federal-provincial panel rejected Benga’s plan in 2021, citing significant environmental concerns – which Northback hopes it can address using information gleaned from a drilling program.
The panel’s decision was released at a time of intense public backlash over coal mining in Alberta, which forced the government to halt exploration for the fossil fuel on a swath of sensitive land and cancel a series of leases earmarked for potential new mines.
In 2022, then-energy minister Sonya Savage also directed the AER to suspend approvals and refuse new applications for exploration and development, unless they were related to an advanced coal project or an active approval.
Northback Coal employee Rina Blacklaws shows visitors the proposed mine boundaries of the former coal mine.Gavin John/The Globe and Mail
In November last year, Energy Minister Brian Jean told the AER that a coal mine project retains its advanced status regardless of previous application outcomes. As a result, the regulator ruled that Northback’s new applications were excluded from the government-mandated ban and sent them for a public hearing.
A date has not been set for that hearing. And one ranching community is fighting the regulator’s decision to proceed to one at all, arguing that the project should not be considered advanced because Northback is making all new applications.
The AER has received hundreds of objections to Northback’s new applications, but plenty of local residents, businesses and the Piikani First Nation, about 50 kilometres from the project site, have registered their support.
Each week at the Crowsnest Community Market in Blairmore, a quaint town that acts as the commercial centre of the region, a black Northback tent stakes space alongside locals pedalling baked goods, fruit and knitting. Inside, there’s a map of the area and information about Grassy Mountain, and folks can sign up for a tour of the site.
The Globe and Mail took one of those tours earlier this summer. The south-facing view from the top is breathtaking. In the distance, cotton ball clouds hover over snow-capped peaks in the Rockies. Green trees and grassland blanket the range nearby.
Face north, and the area is awash with evidence of its mining past. A deep V carves into the mountain with spoils – mainly waste rock and low-grade coal – sluffing down the side. A wall of exposed coal snakes along the range, the black layers stark in a sandwich of rock.
Blair Painter, the mayor of Crowsnest Pass, has seen the scarred land plenty of times. He’s a vocal proponent of the project and said he mainly hears pro-mine sentiment around the topic of Grassy Mountain.
That’s in large part owing to the economic benefits that it could bring to the region, including hundreds of much-needed jobs.
“The anti that we’re hearing comes from people that don’t even live in the proximity of our community,” he said in an interview. “Those folks still view this as a pristine mountain area, and I’m sure you can agree it’s anything but.”
Northback has argued that the environment will never be cleaned up and that the remnants of industry will never fade unless there is a new mine on the site, held to strict modern reclamation standards. Mr. Painter agrees.
Those standards have evolved by leaps and bounds since operations ceased at Grassy Mountain decades ago, he said, and stiff federal and provincial regulations govern the sector to protect water and wildlife.
“With that in mind, moving forward with this project, we can be assured that all these regulations that are in place – that are there for a reason – will be strictly adhered to.”
But Katie Morrison, executive director of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society’s southern Alberta chapter, puts no stock in the argument that the site can only be reclaimed with a new mine.
“The only way we can clean this up is by making a bigger, riskier disaster? That’s really problematic,” she said in an interview.
Although the landscape has been disturbed by decades of mining, Ms. Morrison said, it is only a fraction of the size of the project being eyed by Northback.
“With that bigger disturbance footprint comes much larger risks,” she said, including water contamination and potential threats to wildlife and tree species at risk.
“I think it’s a little bit of a silly argument to say we’re going to have to build a massive mine with potentially hundreds of years of liability – particularly when looking at water – to reclaim what’s there now.”