From the Tuesday, December 18, 2007 online edition of the Daily Inter Lake . . .
The Canadian federal government has announced that it will review a coal mine proposed in British Columbia’s Flathead drainage, but it’s a review that falls short of what Montana officials wanted.
The Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency published a “notice of commencement” for a review of the Lodgepole Coal Mine on Dec. 13 in the country’s equivalent of the U.S. Federal Register.
Up until now, the Cline Mining Corp. project has been a British Columbia provincial matter that has caused deep concerns in Montana.
According to the notice, the mountaintop removal mine would have production capacity of more than 5,400 tons per day, with access roads, waste rock dumps, a coal washing plant, a dry tailings storage area, a load-out facility, a power-line corridor, a mine camp and a fuel storage area. Much of that would straddle headwater streams that flow south into Montana’s North Fork Flathead River, with the water eventually reaching Flathead Lake.
Over the past year, Montana’s congressional delegation and Gov. Brian Schweitzer have requested the most rigorous type of federal review available under Canadian law.
They specifically sought a review under a specific section of law that applies to projects that “may cause significant adverse environmental effects occurring outside Canada” by an independent panel of scientists that would preferably include U.S. scientists familiar with the Flathead Basin.
Instead, the recent announcement calls for a lesser review to be carried out by an agency called Fisheries and Oceans Canada.
Read the entire article . . .