Alberta's Refusal to Release Snowpack Contaminant Data
Snowpack data are essential for establishing baseline contamination before new mining operations get underway
In 2020, Alberta’s UCP government under Jason Kenney, withdrew longstanding legislation that prevented coal mining in the eastern slopes of the Rockies. This move prompted a number of foreign companies to immediately apply for permits to begin mining exploration in the eastern slopes, many of whom proposed to use a highly invasive mining technique called mountaintop-removal. It’s as nasty as it sounds.
It didn’t take long for the people living and working in the area to respond to these proposals. There was an immediate backlash. Ranchers in the area depend on clean water for their livestock. Fly fishers, outfitters, and companies catering to outdoor enthusiasts depend on a pristine environment to sustain their recreation and their businesses. Local people were concerned because mountaintop-removal mining threatened the ecosystem services on which they depended, like clean drinking water and healthy fish populations.
Although some people welcomed the prospect of renewed economic development to the region, most were opposed. The resulting backlash and open protests caused the UCP to back off on this initiative, and reinstated the previously rescinded coal policy until further notice.
But all of that was under the leadership of Jason Kenney—a moderate in comparison to Danielle Smith, who replaced him as UCP leader and premier following a successful challenge to Kenney’s leadership. Since being sworn in as premier, Smith has expressed an openness to developing Alberta’s rich coal resources—and damn the torpedoes!
In November 2022, a new paper was published in Environmental Science and Technology Letters that showed contaminant loads in a remote, southern Alberta lake, called Window Mountain Lake, were unexpectedly high owing to atmospheric deposition from active coal mining in southeastern British Columbia, on the other side of the Continental Divide. Snowpack data suggest that contaminants related to coal mining, such as metals and hydrocarbons, were being carried into Alberta by wind and depositing in southern Alberta lakes, like Window Mountain Lake. Contaminants in Window Mountain Lake sediments exceeded Alberta environmental quality guidelines for the protection of aquatic life; some contaminants exceeded these guidelines by as much as 30-times. This result was a surprise because Window Mountain Lake is remote, relatively distant from any active mining activity, and inaccessible by road.
Following from the publication of that paper, the Alberta government announced that it will not be making snowpack-contaminant data available to the public. Because of that announcement, I was asked to comment on the risks of these contaminants to local water bodies, which I did. But the topic is important and deserves a more thoughtful treatment than a 30 second soundbite on the local news.
Snowpack is a valuable resource to environmental scientists who wish to evaluate the spatial extent of the environmental impact of major industrial operations. Mountaintop-removal coal mining produces an enormous amount of dust which contains a wide variety of contaminants, such as metals, like arsenic, cadmium, copper, or zink, as well as non-metals, such as selenium and hydrocarbons associated with the coal being mined.
In southeastern British Columbia where coal is being mined using mountaintop-removal techniques, wind picks up contaminated dust and carries it over long distances—even over the Continental Divide—before it’s eventually deposited over widespread, down-wind landscapes, in places like Window Mountain Lake. By collecting and analyzing snowpack data, scientists can develop models to help understand the extent and distribution of contamination, which in turn, informs efforts to minimize environmental impacts.
The second thing that snowpack does is to accumulate contaminants over the course of a winter. Snow is very efficient at entraining contaminants like metals and hydrocarbons. When the snow finally melts in the spring, these contaminants are released to the environment in one massive toxic pulse. This has important ecological implications on the organisms that reside in the receiving waters. The metals, non-metals, and hydrocarbons that accumulate in snowpack can cause a wide variety of toxicological effects, ranging from sensory and behavioural deficits in aquatic animals to physical deformities in fish and amphibians, or even death.
Snowpack-contaminant data also serve a third purpose, especially in southern Alberta where interest in mountaintop-removal coal mining under Danielle Smith’s leadership is again being discussed. They establish a contamination baseline prior to the development of coal mines throughout the eastern Rockies. Without establishing this baseline before mining starts, it would be impossible to establish the true environmental impact of those mines. Importantly, it would be impossible to differentiate contamination from newly developed coal mines from contamination resulting from atmospheric deposition from mining activity in southeastern British Columbia.
If I were
a more cynical person, I might think that this decision to not make snowpack data publicly available was intended to obfuscate the contamination background in just such a manner. Once unacceptable contaminant loads downstream or downwind of a newly established Albertan coal mine were detected, without understanding the baseline contamination background prior to the onset of mining, it would be impossible to differentiate contaminants that were deposited by wind from mining in southeastern British Columbia from those produced by the newly developed mines in Alberta. That begs a jurisdictional question: who, then, would be responsible for the costly pollution abatement measures required to bring these contaminant loads below regulated concentrations?
I’m encouraged to learn that the Alberta government is, in fact, collecting snowpack contaminant data—particularly at Window Mountain Lake. However, it’s not clear to me that they’ve undertaken a broader sampling program to establish baseline contaminant levels in snowpack with the explicit purpose to inform future environmental monitoring programs should a new coal mining campaign be initiated by Danielle Smith’s UCP government.
Our natural resources belong to the people of Alberta, not to the government, and certainly not to the foreign companies that will profit most from them. Those natural resources include more than just oil, gas, and coal—they also include clean water, fish, and all the other ecosystem services that pristine environments provide. It is incumbent upon the government to release their snowpack data so that the people of Alberta can make informed decisions about the resources it wants to protect or develop, and those it is prepared to sacrifice.