"This is a critically hot issue," said Rick Moy, chief of Montana's water management bureau and member of the Flathead Basin Commission. "No one in Montana was notified. I'm very surprised, and actually very disappointed. British Columbia knows Montana's concerns; we've made it so clear. For them to do this again without even notifying us, I'm very disappointed."
Moy's surprise and disappointment center on a mining exploration permit granted - quietly - in November to Cline Mining Corp.
The company's request for an exploratory permit immediately ran into stiff bipartisan opposition south of the border.
This time, however, the permit was granted before opponents even knew the request had been made.
The battles between Montana and British Columbia over water quality and Canadian coal date back to the mid-1970s, when coal companies first proposed mines about five miles above Glacier Park. The mines would straddle the headwaters of the North Fork Flathead River, which forms the western boundary of the park and pours into Flathead Lake.
The plan raised concerns in Montana, where residents feared mining wastewater would pollute recreation and fisheries.
The dispute eventually reached the level of international diplomacy, with the International Joint Commission stepping in to review the project. The IJC, established to work out transboundary water conflicts, eventually recommended the mine be abandoned.
The plan was dropped in 1988, but not before Montana's state government created the Flathead Basin Commission to monitor Flathead Valley water quality issues.
Last April, Cline Mining president Ken Bates announced he was resurrecting the coal proposal, prompting a flurry of activity south of the border. The Flathead Basin Commission was joined by the Kalispell Chamber of Commerce, the Flathead Coalition, Montana's congressional delegation and others in calling for a comprehensive environmental assessment prior to provincial approval of Cline's permit.
The province eventually denied the permit, with British Columbia Minister of Energy and Mines Richard Neufeld saying the 1988 IJC decision and an environmental agreement between the state and the province meant killing the plan "would be best, in the interest of all."
But the province would not back down from an attempt to sell coalbed methane leases in the same area; the international opposition also remained firm.
In the end, however, industry opted to steer clear of the dispute, with no companies bidding in the provincial auction of methane rights.
With the immediate threat apparently behind them, Montana and Canadian stakeholders stepped back and began the work of negotiating a plan for a comprehensive environmental assessment of the area, a document that would steer development and help to avoid site-specific battles.
The Montana Senate recently passed a resolution calling for a comprehensive review, and the matter is now set to go before the House.
"We're seeing a flurry of coalfield development schemes in the Canadian Flathead," said Flathead Coalition president Richard Kuhl. "The U.S. and Canadian governments need to get together and conduct a comprehensive baseline assessment so we can begin to analyze the potential impacts."
Otherwise, Kuhl said, "we'll be dealing with this recurring issue on a piecemeal basis for decades to come. We need to break this cycle."
But even as Montanans were working toward a long-term solution to the long-term dispute, provincial officials were quietly signing off on a short-term mining plan.
According to a Jan. 5 press release by Cline Mining, the company "is now proceeding with the planned exploration and development work" at a site in the headwaters of the Flathead River system, on Foisey Creek.
The "approved program," according to Cline, will cost about $1.8 million, and will drill some 51 diamond drill holes.
Company president Bates would not acknowledge the permit had been granted, saying only that "we don't discuss our exploration."
But provincial documents show Cline has received a permit to build roads and remove some 90 tons of coal, which will be used to fashion feasibility and environmental studies for subsequent full development.
Cline's press release says the company "is targeting one to two million tons of annual production" at the site southeast of Fernie, British Columbia.
Just north of the exploration area are 50,000 acres of Canadian federal lands, called a Dominion Coal Block. A multi-year mining plan published last week by British Columbia officials calls for working with Ottawa to develop those coal and coalbed methane reserves, underscoring the provincial interest in tapping energy resources in the north Flathead.
"There is a huge interest in the Kootenays to actively develop those" federal coal blocks, Minister Neufeld told the Cranbrook, B.C., newspaper last week.
The province has asserted ownership of the coalbed methane beneath the federal lands, but Ottawa disagrees.
"The view that we have at this time is that we (the Canadian federal government) own both the coal and the coalbed methane under the Dominion Coal Block," said Denis Lagace, director general of the programs branch of the Minerals and Metals Sector of Natural Resources Canada. "We have a different opinion."
As do Montana and British Columbia when it comes to coal and coalbed methane exploration north of Glacier Park. The dispute, Moy said, is well documented at both the state and federal level, and has been a high priority for several of Montana's governors.
Former Gov. Judy Martz, in fact, joined those calling for comprehensive analysis prior to provincial resource development.
This time, however, Montana was left out of the loop, Moy said, and Cline expects to begin dirt work early this spring.
The mine site is located on lands provincial Ministry of Energy and Mines maps designate as "core grizzly bear habitat," in a drainage where a government report shows several "species at risk," including bull trout, westslope cutthroat trout and wolverines.
But downstream water quality tops the list of concerns south of the border, and the IJC remains a potential tool for ensuring that water quality.
"If British Columbia's not willing to work with us, which certainly appears to be the case, then yes, the IJC might be the way we have to go," Moy said.
"Everyone is very concerned," he added, "not just about the exploration permit but about the provincial process. It's clear that they need to work with us on these issues, and if they don't, we'll have to gear up again. We have to."
Reporter Michael Jamison can be reached at 1-800-366-7186 or at mjamison@missoulian.com
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