Australian company makes local lobbying push for coal mine as referendum looms in Crowsnet Pass

Emma Graney, The Globe and Mail, November 25, 2024

We are a coal town,” declare signs propped in the windows and front yards of dozens of businesses and homes in Blairmore, a small Rocky Mountain town in Alberta’s south.

On Monday, communities will find out whether that’s true – or whether residents who oppose a new coal mine hold more sway among the 5,700 or so people who live in the Municipality of Crowsnest Pass.

Northback Holdings Corp., an Australian company, wants to mine the coal seams that stripe Grassy Mountain just north of Blairmore. A previous application for a metallurgical coal mine here was rejectedby a joint federal-provincial panel in 2021. Northback changed its name from Riversdale Resources Ltd. and is trying again.

The Alberta Energy Regulator agreed to go ahead with hearings for Northback’s three applications for coal exploration, drilling and water diversion on Grassy Mountain, despite concerns about the legality of the applications from the province’s top court. Those hearings will begin in December.

In the meantime, Crowsnest will on Monday hold a non-binding vote of the electors (similar to a referendum) on whether residents support coal development. It holds no legal weight, but Councillor Dean Ward, who proposed the vote, says it will give the council social licence to lobby the provincial and federal governments for the mine should the “yes” vote win.

Northback has dedicated scads of time and money to the “Vote yes” campaign. Company spokesperson Rina Blacklaws wouldn’t confirm how much but said the campaign is registered as a third-party advertiser and is adhering to expense limits.

Northback has hosted various pub gatherings, a wine and cheese night and chats over coffee at a local café as it tries to clinch the “yes” vote. Volunteers and employees have pounded the streets, door-knocking with a vigour usually reserved for election campaigns.

Despite Northback’s public efforts to woo residents, its chief executive officer Mike Young remains tight-lipped. The company has denied multiple interview requests, and Northback points to its parent company, Hancock Prospecting Ltd. – controlled by Australian billionaire Gina Rinehart – as the reason behind his silence.

The Globe and Mail recently visited a pub in the Crowsnest town of Coleman called The Rum Runner, a nod to the region’s thriving bootleg business during Prohibition. Downstairs, in a low-ceilinged room strung with fairy lights, Northback fed and watered supporters. Wearing a black sweater, Mr. Young sat in the corner at one of the long trestle tables where pro-coal locals drank beers, soft drinks and Caesars bedecked with giant skewered pickles and salami sticks.

Guiding The Globe from the room, Ms. Blacklaws said Mr. Young would not be interviewed that night.

Among those supporters was Bonnie Castellarin, a 72-year-old born and raised in the Crowsnest Pass. She grew up during coal’s heyday, a time of lax environmental standards when coal dust blackened the air.

Monday used to be laundry day in the Pass, and “God help any mine manager who started up a tipple,” she recalled, sitting in The Rum Runner. “It was enough to incite a riot among all these irate housewives who had their nice white sheets on the line, and there would be all this coal dust coming over.”

Yet she passionately supports Northback’s plan, so much so that she helped establish Citizens Supportive of Crowsnest Coal, a local group pushing for the mine.

Her eyes flashed as she sipped a ginger ale, voicing displeasure at anti-coal campaigners who don’t live in the Pass. She said she’s convinced that Northback will keep dust to a minimum and protect waterways from selenium contamination. (Large amounts of the element, which is essential to life in small doses, can cause fish deformities and reproductive failures.)

“I would not be supporting them for one second if I thought that they were going to destroy my home. I’m very possessive when it comes to this place,” she said.

Between the pub nights and the brand new golf course and club house built on the company’s dime, Ms. Castellarin raised the question of whether Northback has tried to buy locals’ favour.

“The answer would be ‘no,’” she said. “We’re pretty smart, us mountain folk. You don’t get anything past us.”

The applications Northback has before the regulator are not for a working coal mine. The company is first redesigning its project to try and address concerns raised by the environmental panel that rejected the last plan. Citing worries about coal load-out, water, fish, air and noise, the panel declared that the mine would not be in the public interest.

Critics of the project – including the Municipal District of Ranchland, where the mine would be located – say the company has no legal right to even pursue the plan. Alberta banned new coal exploration in 2022 amid a public backlash against mines. But advanced projects are exempt from the ban, and Northback insists it’s on that short list.

Among the critics is David Thomas, a Blairmore resident and spokesperson for Crowsnest Headwaters.

The grassroots group spent the summer signing up supporters at the local community market, but Mr. Thomas said it’s hard to compete with a massive company backed by Australia’s richest person. And there is a culture of intimidation around the vote, he said, that has prevented residents from displaying anti-coal signs.

Mr. Thomas was hesitant to pick which side will win on Monday. But if it’s the “yes” vote, he said, then “the battleground shifts” outside Crowsnest Pass.

“If we lose, we’re going to have a clear and present danger to take to other municipalities and irrigation districts in Alberta, and we will do so aggressively,” he said.

“The water belongs to everybody downstream, from here to Hudson Bay. For people in the Pass to say that that the downstream water users should have no say over how the Crowsnest headwaters are affected is just simply selfish.”