A Canadian plan to mine coal a few miles upstream of Glacier National Park in the Flathead Valley has been stopped-again-but plans to extract coal bed methane in the same watershed are moving forward.
The proposed coal-mining development along Glacier's north edge at Cabin Creek, a tributary of North Fork of the Flathead River, halted in late May when Richard Neufeld, the British Columbian Minister of Energy and Mines, announced open-pit coal mines would not be allowed and that the area would be spared from future development. Critics had urged the province to make such a decision, asserting that coal mines would threaten wildlife and water quality in the Flathead area-one of the wildest places left in North America.
Residents and local groups such as the Flathead Coalition, which NPCA belongs to, hailed the decision but criticized the province for not also putting a stop to a proposal for coal bed methane exploration in the Flathead watershed.
"The death of the proposed coal mines is a huge victory, but we cannot divert our attention from the other major threat to the Flathead basin," says Dick Kuhl, president of the coalition. "Coal bed methane development is every bit as serious a concern as the coal mines. It's one down, and one to go."
Cline Mining Corporation had yet to secure permits or submit specific plans to the British Columbian government, but it sought the development of the coal mines by 2007. NPCA and other groups strongly criticized those plans, as did Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), who recently wrote a letter to the U.S. State Department to voice his concerns and determine whether the proposal was illegal under a ruling issued in 1988 by the International Joint Commission. That ruling halted a proposal for coal mining at Cabin Creek, asserting that it violated international law and a boundary treaty signed by Canada and the United States. The State Department agreed that the ruling still applied.
Neufeld cited the previous ruling and trans-boundary agreements, as well as the proximity of the proposed coal mines to Glacier and adjacent Waterton Lakes National Park in Canada. He did not, however, express similar concerns about coal bed methane extraction, saying it was "not nearly as intrusive on the landscape." But critics counter that exploration would bring a vast industrial complex of roads, drilling pads, compress stations, and pipelines, creating tainted wastewater that would settle into Flathead Lake.
Coal bed methane development is a relatively new technology that differs from conventional gas development. Coalfields contain methane gas, whose removal requires taking water from the coal aquifer with a high density of wells. Massive volumes of wastewater are dumped into nearby streams, possibly polluting them with sediments, acidity, temperature variations, heavy metals, and salts.
Glacier National Park advocates are working closely with residents and elected officials in Fernie, British Columbia, who also oppose the coal bed methane development.
"Coal bed methane development is a scary prospect, in terms of industrializing the landscape," says Steve Thompson, NPCA's Northern Rockies program manager and board member of the Flathead Coalition. "The headwaters of Glacier National Park are a highly inappropriate location for such a development."
Take Action: E-mail Gordon Campbell, Premier of British Columbia, to urge him to protect Flathead Valley from coal bed methane extraction: premier@gov.bc.ca.
