Mountain top removal coal mines in the historic Crowsnest Pass present a clear and present danger to downstream fish populations even decades after their closure, according to a new scientific paper funded by the government of Alberta.

The study, which examined the biological impact on fish from historic coal mining on Tent Mountain, found the legacy of open-pit mining “can persist long after mining operations end,” resulting in devastating losses for fish containing some of the highest levels for selenium ever recorded in the province.

The researchers also concluded that high selenium pollution recorded in fish netted from Crowsnest Lake strongly suggest that “any further coal mine development may well push the Crowsnest fishery beyond sustainability.” In other words, more development may well finish off the region’s distinct biological diversity.

That scientific warning contradicts the pro-coal policies of Premier Danielle Smith. Her government actively supports new coal mining projects in the Rockies, including reviving the controversial open-pit Grassy Mountain project even though a majority of Alberta’s population remains steadfastly opposed to endangering the province’s water security.

The press secretary to Environment Minister Rebecca Schulz recently explained that “Dr. Cooke is a government employee and a trained researcher. He is not a trained spokesperson.”

After a 2024 government study found dangerously high levels of selenium in Crowsnest Creek, coming from runoff from the historic Tent Mountain mine, Alberta government scientists decided to examine the potential for impacts downstream of the creek in Crowsnest Lake. This cold mountain lake is located just west of the community of Coleman along Highway 3.

There researchers netted and tested some 200 fish in Crowsnest Lake, which receives selenium-laced runoff from waste rock piles from the Tent Mountain Coal Mine even though the mine closed in the 1980s.

Open-pit coal mining removes topsoil to excavate coal seams. It then crushes and “cleans” the coal ore, which produces massive piles of waste rock. During this process, the exposure of the crushed waste to oxygen and water activates the leaching of a variety of contaminants, including selenium, a micronutrient that becomes a poison resulting in neurological and development damage at high levels.

Selenium not only gradually accumulates but becomes increasingly concentrated in the tissues of organisms as it moves up the food chain, leading to fish deformities and reproductive failure in exposed fish communities downstream of coal mining.

It has become a multi-billion-dollar problem in B.C.’s Elk Valley, the scene of extensive open-pit mining for metallurgical coal.

The biomagnification potential of selenium changes the toxin’s dynamics. As a result, standards for limiting selenium in drinking water or protection from direct harm to fish may fail to actually protect downstream fisheries and ecosystems. A recent U.S. Environmental Protection Agency study, for example, looked at conditions downstream of Lake Koocanusa, which straddles the Canada-U.S. border and receives waters from the Elk River in B.C.

The study found that selenium concentrations in whitefish eggs exceeded the EPA’s recommended criterion of 15.1 micrograms per litre. Above that level, fish reproduction may be harmed. Despite that finding, selenium concentrations in the water itself did not exceed the EPA’s protective limits for flowing waters.

Alberta has an interim fish tissue selenium guideline of four micrograms per gram by dry weight to protect fish populations from reproductive failure.

But the new study discloses that tissue samples taken from whitefish, suckers, brown trout and lake trout from Crowsnest Lake showed selenium concentrations that exceeded provincial guidelines and that even rivalled “fish selenium levels downstream of active mountain top removal operations.” Although the lake is stocked with rainbow trout, none were found.

Selenium concentrations in fish tissue samples ranged from five to 26 micrograms per gram, meaning that every fish exceeded guidelines for selenium poisoning four decades after the closure of the Tent Mountain mine.

‘Warning signals,’ says expert

Lorne Fitch, a retired Alberta fish and wildlife biologist who has worked in the Crowsnest Pass, called the study’s results sobering. He said that so-called “safe” guidelines for selenium were obviously not keeping fish safe in Alberta.

“The effects of coal mining from the watershed feeding Crowsnest Lake create legacy issues and trout are providing the warning signals,” he told The Tyee.

“The native cutthroat trout have been extirpated from the streams affected by the Tent Mountain mine and now both Crowsnest Lake and the river are at risk. This isn’t just an ecological catastrophe, this is a human health issue.”

In its conclusion, the study noted that selenium wasn’t the only problem now affecting waters in the Crowsnest Pass. The emergence of Whirling Disease (an invasive European parasite), declining snowpacks, increased droughts and heavy fishing pressure all combine to make the region’s water systems more fragile.

“Any new development of coal mining along the eastern slopes may well push the Crowsnest fishery beyond recovery,” warned the study, which is now available as a preprint and has been submitted for publication in the journal Environmental Science and Technology Letters.

The new study adds to a body of government-funded research highlighting the long-term environmental costs of coal mining. They include legacy selenium pollution from historic mines on Tent and Grassy Mountain in the Crowsnest Pass as well as clouds of toxic coal dust from currently operating mines in southeastern B.C.

A push to revive coal mining

The studies also show that Alberta’s past reclamation standards for open-pit coal mines did not protect downstream fisheries from harm, even decades after the mines had been closed and certified as reclaimed.

Although market conditions shuttered the Tent and Grassy mines in the 1980s, two different Australian speculators recently tried to re-develop these sites with new open-pit projects for metallurgical coal.

Montem Resources Limited, however, abandoned its four-year-long attempts to reopen Tent Mountain in 2021 for largely economic reasons and pivoted to a pumped energy storage project. Company submissions to the Alberta Energy Regulator revealed an interest in keeping the door open for coal mining.

A federal-provincial review panel quashed an application by Australian billionaire Gina Rinehart to develop a major mining project on Grassy Mountain in 2021. The regulators concluded that project was uneconomic and would threaten the region’s water security.

The new study also emphasized that “the potential for elevated selenium pollution was paramount in this decision, and any new selenium inputs would be additive to existing inputs from the legacy coal mines.”

Yet the Alberta Energy Regulator reversed the impact of that 2021 decision a week ago by permitting Rinehart’s project to conduct more coal exploration on the mountain — the first step towards reviving what was described as a “cancelled” project.

When the Alberta Energy Regulator asked Montem Resources Limited in 2021 to improve selenium monitoring and uphold the law at its proposed Tent Mountain site, the firm’s CEO not only refused but threatened to sue individual members of the agency.

At one contentious meeting the executive compared dealing with the regulator to being examined by a “meddling” proctologist.

Documents obtained by The Tyee show that Peter Doyle, then CEO of Montem Resources, fought a request to establish monitoring for the fish-killing toxin and water pollutants at Tent Mountain, entering into a two-year-long dispute process with the regulator.

Teaser image credit; Lake testing indicates ‘any further coal mine development may well push the Crowsnest fishery beyond sustainability,’ researchers write. Photo via Wikimedia.