From the Tuesday, March 15, 2005 online edition of the New York Times . . .
Topping a mountain ridge after an hourlong, bone-jarring drive on a precipitous, rutted and muddy road, Henry Leuenberger, a Canadian hunting guide, gets out of his truck and surveys dozens of snow-mottled peaks around him. Then he hears the growl of a bulldozer below. "It makes me sick to imagine a mine in here," he says.
For Mr. Leuenberger, it's not only the where of the mine, but the when. Scraping a new road in the inhospitable month of February to carry out feasibility work for a coal mine, he says, means the project, at Foisey Creek, is on a fast track to bypass the opposition of locals like him and a roster of staunch opponents in the United States.
"It was under the radar screen," he said. "No one knew about it until it started."
State and federal officials in Montana, downstream from the mine, were also incredulous they were not informed when an exploration permit was issued in November, despite a memorandum of understanding on mining issues signed by the province and the state last year.
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