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Canada’s secret valley Little-known part of Canadian Flathead targeted for coal work
By JIM MANN July 2, 2006
Surrounded by thick willows and firs, Foisey
Creek winds toward the Flathead River in a lush flood-plain environment
teeming with wildlife.
Grizzly bear tracks are old but obvious on a creekside
gravel bar, and most beaches look like wildlife highways, trampled with deer,
moose and elk tracks. “There’s a bear,” comes a warning from a group of researchers
collecting water, insect and algae samples from the creek. The bear stands on
its hind legs to get a view above the willow thickets. Spotting the people in
the creek, it bolts for a timbered hillside. No more than a half hour later and a hundred yards away, a cow
moose emerges from the willows just 30 feet from the researchers. There’s
some mutual surprise, but the moose moseys into the river and vanishes in the
trees.
This is the Canadian Flathead, a place wilder and more unsettled
than any other along Canada’s southern tier. But that could change.
Just a couple of miles upstream from the confluence of Foisey Creek and the Flathead River, a mountaintop coal
mine is proposed. And just four miles downstream, exploration on a
flood-plain coal deposit begins this month.
A peculiar thing about the Canadian Flathead is its obscurity to
Canadians as well as Americans. It is in some ways a secret valley.
Steve Thompson, the Glacier field representative for the
National Parks Conservation Association, speculates that the vast majority of
Montanans do not think of the Canadian Flathead because they’ve never been
there, and that’s mainly because it’s difficult to reach. There is no longer a roaded border
crossing (it was closed in the mid-1990s) and when there was, it was scarcely
used.
While Montana’s North Fork is still considered remote and
rustic, the Canadian Flathead has no places like the Polebridge
Mercantile or the Northern Lights Saloon. Most of the mountains and ridges
remain unnamed. There are only a handful of cabins and lodges that get
part-time use by outfitters and a few families with deep roots in
southeastern British Columbia. Unlike Montana’s North Fork, there are no
year-round residents.
There is logging and hunting and fishing. Traveling on the
Canadian Flathead’s logging roads involves long, bumpy rides where maybe a
couple of other vehicles might be seen. Extra gas and spare tires are more
than just a good idea.
Dave Thomas, a staffer for the Canadian conservation
organization Wildsight explains that Canadians
simply refer to the basin as “the Flathead” and largely consider it to be a
distant hinterland. “Outside of this immediate area, people are completely unaware
of its existence,” says Thomas, sitting in a cafe in Fernie,
B.C., the population center closest to the Flathead basin.
“It’s off people’s mental or recreational radar screens,” says
Thomas, who also sits on the Fernie City Council.
“And they are somewhat puzzled by the importance that’s attached to it in the
U.S.” Montana’s North Fork Flathead and the Canadian Flathead are one
and the same, separated only by a great swath cut into the timber along the
U.S.-Canadian border. While people cannot lawfully cross the swath, fish and
wildlife do it all the time.
“A unique community of carnivore species resides in the transboundary Flathead region that appears unmatched in
North America for its variety, completeness, use of valley bottomlands and
density of species which are
In “The Transboundary Flathead,” Weaver goes on to say that the
basin “may be the single most important basin for carnivores in the Rocky
Mountains.”
And that, according to Weaver and scientists at the University
of Montana’s Yellow Bay Biological Station, is largely because it is an area
where grizzly bears, black bears, wolves and mountain lions make regular use
of the broad valley floor.
The spine of the 1,590-square-mile transboundary
basin is the river, flowing 47 miles in Montana and some 31 miles in British
Columbia.
Going north, the floodplain gradually narrows into three gushing
headwater basins. They are the northernmost sources of water flowing into
Flathead Lake, and one of them is Foisey Creek.
On a nameless ridge that feeds Foisey
Creek, the Lodgepole Mining Project is proposed by
a company based in Ottawa called the Cline Mining Corp. And just four miles
downstream from the confluence of Foisey Creek and
the Canadian Flathead River, another company plans to begin exploration this
month on a flood-plain coal deposit called Lillyburt.
Mining potential in the Canadian Flathead has raised a fuss in
Montana over the last two years, from a grass-roots organization called the
Flathead Coalition up to Gov. Brian Schweitzer. The state has engaged the
British Columbia provincial government in diplomatic talks that have led to
Montana representatives participating in a review process for the Cline
Mining project. The working group is developing “terms of reference” — the
conditions that Cline must meet when it develops its own environmental
assessment for the project.
“Montana has 13 people on there,” says the NPCA’s
Thompson. “This is the biggest working group that the province has ever had.”
Agencies and organizations south of the border aren’t depending
on Cline’s environmental review. An effort is under way to gather baseline information on current
ecological conditions in the Canadian Flathead. The research has been patched
together with funding from a wide range of supporters that includes the state
of Montana, Glacier National Park, the University of Montana Yellow Bay
Biological Station, the Flathead Basin Commission and the National Parks
Conservation Association.
Erin Sexton, a science analyst for the National Parks
Conservation Association and the Flathead Basin Commission, is leading the
water sampling efforts in the Foisey Creek area. In
June, she was joined by students from the Yellow Bay Biological Station who
were collecting aquatic insect and algae samples. The idea is to have samples of existing water chemistry and
biological conditions above and below Foisey Creek.
If mining does get under way, any changes should be detectable.
Ric Hauer,
a professor with the Yellow Bay Biological Station, is doing complementary
work elsewhere in the Canadian Flathead. The same day that Sexton’s crew ran into
the bear and the moose, Hauer was on a ridgetop overlooking the Foisey
Creek basin, collecting water samples from an exposed coal seam. With him was
Thompson, who located grizzly tracks on the mountaintop that would be removed
by the Cline Mining project.
Hauer predicts that such a mine
would have ecological impacts stretching far downstream. Mountaintop removal
mines in West Virginia have “basically hosed” rivers in that state, he said.
Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks biologists conduct bull-trout
spawning surveys in the Canadian Flathead every three years. Last year’s
count of 53 redds, or spawning beds, in the stretch
of river just below Foisey Creek was the highest
among Canadian tributaries. And 67 percent of all redd
counts for the entire North Fork Flathead were in British Columbia
tributaries.
Hauer is particularly concerned
about potential mine development in the Lillyburt
coal deposit. In late June, seasonal streams were gurgling with water,
creating pools next to the main road along the Flathead River.
“Did you see how fast that water is flowing?” Hauer says, referring to the roadside runoff. “Did you
see how it’s coming from nowhere? This whole thing is hydrologically
connected from valley wall to valley wall.”
Any mine that burrows into the flood plain would necessarily
involve “an incredible pumping operation” just to keep it clear of water, he
said.
For many who are concerned about mining potential in the
Canadian Flathead, there is a sense of skepticism that it can happen, largely
because the area is so rugged and remote.
Sexton, for one, sees a litany of obstacles — mostly practical,
economic roadblocks that could prevent the transition from exploration to
full-scale operational mining.
“The economic side of this may be more compelling than the
environmental side of it,” she says, recognizing that the British Columbia
provincial government has not once rejected a resource development project
for environmental reasons. “The economics are more likely the dealbreaker.” What’s hard to ignore, for Sexton and many others, is the haul
route that has been proposed by Cline Mining. Most of the route is currently
a narrow, winding and often steep gravel road along Lodgepole
Creek, up and over a 7,000-foot ridge and into Foisey
basin.
Cline’s proposed haul routes to the nearest loadout
areas range from 35 to 50 kilometers. Sexton says average traffic is
projected to be about six coal trucks per hour, seven days a week, every
month of the year.
“People in Fernie are far more likely
to be concerned about the haul road” rather than be worried about the mine
itself, Sexton says.
Thomas, the Fernie city councilman,
concurs. “That’s one of the biggest local issues — the road itself,” he says.
“I can’t believe they are proposing a haul road up there,” says Wildsight’s Brennan, who estimates a mining operation
would have to cope with snowpack as deep as 12 feet
in midwinter.
Still, Sexton and Brennan say the mine’s viability depends on
the international coal market, which has softened in recent months, and the
production capacity of the mine.
“They can engineer it if the price is right,” Brennan says.
“It’s not about the haul costs; it depends on whether the strip ratio is
favorable.”
So far, Cline is proceeding as if the mine is indeed a viable
venture.
“We have to take it very seriously,” Brennan says. “They are
going through the motions to open up a mine that would have serious impacts
on the wildlife values in this valley.” Reporter Jim Mann may be reached at 758-4407 or by e-mail at jmann@dailyinterlake.com |
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