Wedged into the Rockies, the Elk Valley is only 60 kilometres from the Alberta and Montana borders. From mountains to wildlife, beauty is everywhere, and so is mining.
Nearby, miners end their 12-hour shift at Teck Coal’s Fording River operations near Elkford. It’s one of five coal mines the Vancouver-based international resource firm owns in the region.
The Fording River operation is the largest coal mine in Canada and employs 1,200 people.
“Fording River has been operating since the early 70s, for some 74 years now,” says Teck Resources GM Dean Runzer. “We have another 74 years of proven and probable reserves on this property alone.”
The first coal prospecting licence here was granted in 1889, a few years after confederation.
“With mining total in B.C., it’s one per cent of the geographical area,” says Sparwood Mayor Lois Halko. “It’s very small when you look at the big picture.”
Fording is an open pit mine where rock is removed to expose coal seams. Rock waste is taken away and a bulldozer pushes the exposed coal into a hauler where it’s transported, cleaned and loaded onto a train.
The region is known for its metallurgical coal, one of the core ingredients for making steel.
“It’s found here in the Elk Valley along the Rocky Muntain trench and other along the Rocky Mountains such as Tumbler Ridge and in northeast B.C.,” Runzer explains. “And it’s also found in Australia. There are a few other places that are starting to produce such as Mozambique and Mongolia.”
Once the coal has been mined and loaded onto a train, it’s sprayed with a glue-like polymer, which acts like a crusting agent to keep the pack firm.
It’s sprayed again in Tappin, B.C., near Kamloops, so coal dust can be reduced significantly as the train makes its way to a Vancouver port.
“There’s no way you can transport coal safely whether it’s in a train or burned in a thermal power generation, it’s all coming back to us locally, we’re all taking the hit for this,” says Eoin Madden.
Mayor Halko says they see 12 trains come through a day but from her experience of watching the trains, they don’t see dust coming off the trains.
Environmentalists say coal is nothing more than a dirty, carbon intensive fuel that contributes significantly to air quality when burned.
But mining pays a lot of bills, too.
Coal mining in B.C. generates $3.2 billion dollars a year in economic activity, with $715 million paid in taxes to municipal and provincial governments.
The average yearly wage for miners in B.C. is more than $95,000 a year.
“The thermal coal that’s being exported from B.C. is all American coal,” says Kevin Washbrook, Voters Take Action on Climate Change.
“If our government and Teck coal and the ports were to say this is a huge crisis… lets make sure all the steel made from B.C. coal is used to make wind turbines, buses and solar panels, the things we need to get through the crisis. I’d be all over it. But right now they’re saying let the market decide. So frankly, that’s an excuse for business as usual.”
A recent U.S. report claims invisible pollutants like selenium, a metal-like substance that can cause deformities in young fish, is reaching alarming levels in the Elk River.
The B.C. government says no new coal mines in the region will be approved until a valley-wide plan is developed to deal with the selenium concentration.
Teck says it has committed $600 million over the next five years to address the complex problem and has a dedicated team that works to return the region to its original state.
The company has a greenhouse on its property where conifers are grown and this year they will plant 153,000 seedlings in the region.
“This is a continuous process, we’ve been reclaiming here since 1969,” says Laura Bevan-Griffin Teck superintendent of environment. “Reclaiming the site for us is really important.”
Even as opposition to coal exports continues in Vancouver, coal mining will remain a major economic force in the Elk Valley in the years to come.
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