A push by Australian billionaire Gina Rinehart’s corporate interests to open The Rockies in Canada to coal mining is facing growing resistance after the provincial government announced it is planning to rewrite environmental rules in consultation with industry.
The Lethbridge City Council in Alberta, Canada has become the latest regional authority to join a growing rebellion, voting on Tuesday to reiterate its opposition to coal mining in the sensitive ecological area.
This comes as Northback Holdings Corp, a subsidiary of Rinehart’s Hancock prospecting, has recently been working to reboot a failed attempt to open a mega-mine in the Rockies after it initially failed to get off the ground due to concerns about the potential for water pollution.
At the centre of the controversy is the Grass Mountain Project, initially proposed as an open-pit metallurgical coal mine covering 28km2 – an area that would cover the City of Sydney at 26.7km2 – on the site of a legacy coal mine. If built, it was expected to produce 4.5m tonnes of coal each year to be exported to Asia for steelmaking.
The proposal has passed through a succession of corporate entities over its lifetime but in 2019 Rinehart’s company, Hancock Prospecting, became involved as part of a $A600 million Canadian coal power play.
Early on it appeared the iron-ore magnate made a bad bet when the project failed to secure environmental approvals – a twist in the mining-friendly, low-regulation jurisdiction that has attracted other Australian coal miners, including Atrum Coal and Montem resources.
After the initial setback, Northback Holdings Corp has attempted to revive its dead project by pitching Grassy Mountain as a “responsible and innovative resource development” and emphasising the existing damage from legacy mining activities at the site.
Much of Rocky Mountain, also known as The Rockies, has been protected by Alberta’s 1976 Coal Policy that strictly controls where mining takes place in the ecologically sensitive area.
The site of Rinehart’s proposed coal mine sits at the headwaters of the Oldman River, which supplies 200,000 people downstream and feeds semi-arid grasslands that depend on the mountain snowpack.
Community concern has partly focused on the amount of water that may be drawn from the river for processing coal and mine operations, but also the threat of pollution from selenium and other heavy metals that pose a risk to drinking water and the West Slope cutthroat trout.
Selenium is a naturally occurring element often found in rock among Canadian coal formations and has caused river pollution in neighbouring British Columbia. When exposed to air and water, the element seeps out of rock and soil, where it enters waterways, becoming harmful in high concentrations.
Backlash to the flurry proposals in the area initially pressured the conservative provincial government to ban coal mining in The Rockies in 2022, “with the exception of lands subject to an advanced coal project.” Grassy Mountain was among the exemptions.
Five coal companies later sued the Alberta government December 2023 over the ban – seven months after the United Conservative Party was re-elected in May that year – alleging more than $US10 billion in losses from the moratorium.
For its part, Northback Holdings hired two lobbying firms as part of a publicity and lobbying blitz to secure permission for the project to go ahead, including re-writing Alberta’s environment laws.
Hancock Prospecting was contacted for comment.
In January, Alberta’s government cited the threat of litigation when it lifted the ban on coal mining in The Rockies saying it would “reduce regulatory confusion” around coal mining.
So far only the former mining community of Crowsnest Pass has expressed support for the project after a contentious, non-binding vote, even as a constellation of other groups ranging from ranchers, First Nations peoples and environmentalists line up against the proposal.
Katie Morrison, executive director of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society in Alberta, Canada, said the decision to lift the ban has been met with anger at what “felt like a broken promise.”
“People lost their shit,” she said. “People feel really betrayed and really angry.
“We don’t have a new coal policy yet, either, so there’s nothing to guide what the future of coal looks like in the province yet.”
The Blood Tribe Kainaiwa, representing Blackfoot First Nations people, published a statement in early February saying it had not been consulted by the provincial government and implying possible legal action.
Under a “modernisation plan” announced five-days before Christmas in December, the provincial government promised to consult with the coal industry through 2025 as it considers how to rewrite the rules.
As part of this the government pledged to ban mountaintop removal and not allow new open pit mines in The Rockies, again with exceptions for advanced projects – a pledge Morrison dismisses as “word games” intended to soothe public opposition as the decision still allows other forms of coal mining such as strip-mining.
“I don’t know why the Australians are so interested in Alberta,” Morrison says. “I think, in some sense, it’s probably the last ditch, right?”
“Coal, even metallurgic coal, is a sunset industry. If they’re not getting it out of the ground now, they’re not getting it in 50 years when we don’t need coking coal anymore.”
