According to recent government studies in Alberta, a pristine alpine lake’s waters are now as polluted as lakes downstream from the oilsands due to wind-borne dust from mountaintop removal coal operations.
The study’s findings, which were recently published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology, support the need to take into account more than simply these mines’ downstream consequences.
According to the research, “it is quite likely that our findings apply to other mountaintop mining operations with significant fugitive dust emissions.” “Permitting of existing mines and approval of new mines should consider and have mitigation plans for broader atmospheric impacts.
” The paper, written by two senior scientists in Alberta Environment and Protected Areas, comes as the province’s United Conservative government ponders whether to retain a ministerial order protecting Alberta’s Rocky Mountains from proposed mines that would remove summits to create open pits and expose coal seams.
Peter Guthrie, the newly appointed energy minister for the province, has not responded to inquiries about the matter from The Canadian Press.
The study focuses on Window Mountain Lake, a tiny, inaccessible alpine lake in southern Alberta that sits directly across the continental divide from coal mines in British Columbia’s Elk Valley. It can only be reached by foot. There is no water body that connects the lake to the coal-mining region, and there are no coal resources there.
A sediment sample from the lake that dates back to before 1850 was collected by the scientists.
They searched the strata for coal-related substances including selenium and polycyclic aromatic compounds. The former are known to cause cancer, whereas the latter are poisonous to fish.
They discovered that up until the industrial age, the carcinogens were stable. Around 1900, coal mining in the Elk Valley started, and by 1970, concentrations of toxic pollutants had quadrupled.
After the start of aboveground mining in the Elk Valley in 1970, the rate of contamination accelerated.
Every 10 to 15 years following that, Window Lake’s content of polycyclic aromatic compounds doubled.
These chemicals increased 30 times over pre-industrial levels over the last ten years. Some currently go above Canadian standards for the preservation of aquatic life.
According to the study, “(Contamination levels) of surface sediments of otherwise pristine Window Mountain Lake are equivalent to or exceed those seen in lakes downwind from the Canadian oilsands, the biggest collection of open-pit petrochemical mines in the world.”
The researchers matched the substances discovered in the lake sediments to those produced similarly by wildfires and mining in Elk Valley. They matched those from the mines and the lake sediments.
For selenium, a comparable pattern was discovered.
By the middle of the 1980s, levels of the compound had roughly doubled compared to pre-industrial levels, as had the rate of deposition.
The writers were not available for an interview because of Alberta Environment.
But Bill Donahue, a former chief of environmental monitoring for the department who has seen the study, said it shows mountaintop mining affects more than the rivers and streams that flow from it and has impacts that cross watersheds.
“You couldn’t ask for more clear results or cleaner results,” he said.
“Long-distance transportation of these materials is expected everywhere there is mining, particularly mountaintop mining. No matter how you look at it, coal extraction is inherently harmful to the environment.
Donahue points out that the study didn’t even check for dangerous heavy metals like mercury, which are frequently connected to coal deposits.
The new research was hailed as both ground-breaking and compelling by Emily Bernhardt, a well-known ecologist at Duke University in North Carolina who has published widely on mountaintop coal mining.
She stated in an email that only air deposition could have allowed these toxins to enter the lake.
She said that the study adds to and supports previous findings in other articles that mountaintop coal mining disperses toxins outside of mine sites.
“This paper suggests that contaminant laden dust is yet another way in which surface coal mine pollution is blown and deposited across large regions. Pollution does not respect the bounds of permits, and it gets worse as mining gets bigger in an area.
pristine lake in Alberta tainted by mountaintop coal mine dust: research
About Author
