That, he considers, is at least some sort of success, although much more work will be required to keep it there, buried beneath what's wild.
“In many ways, it's been a stalemate for 30 years,” Moy said. “We haven't lost much ground, but we haven't gained any, either. The Canadian Flathead and the wilderness north of Glacier National Park have been and will be a flashpoint of international controversy.”
When he finally retired last month, on the last day of 2008, the now-old controversy centered on yet another coal mine proposed in the headwaters, and a second coal mine in the river bottom, and a gold mine, and a phosphate mine, and an ongoing search for coalbed methane.
“In all these decades,” he said, “the British Columbia government has never wavered in its desire to industrialize the Flathead.”
Just as Moy has never wavered in his defense of the region's ecological integrity.
“This is a premier place in terms of biodiversity and wildlife importance,” he said. “There is absolutely nowhere else like it.“
Which is why Moy, like the coal, persists.
His scientific career both defined and was defined by one of the longest-running transboundary water disputes between Canada and the United States.
“It's been a long and sometimes difficult challenge,” he said, “but it was never boring.
Rich Moy came to know Glacier as a college student, working the backcountry before graduating into a distinguished career at the state Department of Natural Resources and Conservation.
He was top boss at that agency's water bureau in the early 1980s, melding science with public policy and coordinating with Canadian counterparts, when someone pointed him to a remote spot on the map called Cabin Creek, where the coal was waiting.
The site, about six miles above Glacier's northern edge, overlooks the Canadian Flathead River. That waterway spills south, crossing the international line to become Montana's North Fork Flathead River.
The wilderness waters form the western boundary of Glacier before pouring, finally, into scenic Flathead Lake.
The Canadians planned to pull down an entire mountain and sift out the coal. The Americans planned to stop them.
“We had nothing to gain,” Moy said of the project, “and everything to lose.”
On the U.S. side of the border, the North Fork Flathead River Valley is arguably the most protected place in the nation. It enjoys the strongest water-quality protections, the toughest air-quality protections, wilderness protections, endangered species protections, national park protections. It's blanketed by a Wild and Scenic River designation, a Biosphere Reserve designation, a World Heritage Site designation.
But on the Canadian side, it's valued for the promise of wealth that lies below those surface treasures.
“By 1984,” Moy said, “it was really becoming an issue,” with downstream interests worried that mining pollutants would flow south. And it wasn't just the environment at stake - the Flathead, even then, turned on tourism.
“I believe a sustainable economy and quality environment go hand in hand,” Moy said. “If you destroy your environment, the sustainability of your economy will likely deteriorate.”
Newly elected Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., took up the cause and fanned the flames of opposition. Eventually, both federal governments agreed to put the matter to the International Joint Commission, a six-member binational panel, treaty-bound to resolve transboundary water disputes.
The IJC convened a massive scientific review team, and in recognition of Moy's scientific and political integrity, named him secretariat of the effort.
For four years, Moy said, scientists from both countries scoured the wildlands for what baseline data they could find, often looking west, to the heavily mined Elk River country, for hints of things to come.
In 1998, the commission issued its findings.
“The bottom line,” Moy said, “is there would be impacts, some of them very serious impacts, and some of those impacts simply could not be mitigated.”
The IJC recommendation: abandon the mining plans, and do not entertain future mines until both countries agree the damage can be mitigated. Montana now had a veto stamp.
But to Moy, the most important of the IJC's recommendation was that the countries consider creating a binational reserve, a sustainable protected area that would pre-empt future water wars.
But protections for the Flathead have wavered in political limbo north of the border.
A provincial land-use process recommended strong Flathead protections, but the government later reversed course after intense lobbying from the coal industry.
Later, a regionwide wildlife management plan showed promise, until provincial Premier Gordon Campbell was elected in 2000 and “threw the whole thing out and opened the place up to mining,” Moy said. “That was really the beginning of the recent disputes.”
Not long after Campbell's election, Cline Mining Corp. arrived with a plan to dig 140 million tons of coal from the exact same mountain where the battle began.
Moy was still a top boss at DNRC, and now was head of the multi-agency Flathead Basin Commission, charged with safeguarding water quality in the region.
“It was just more of the same,” he said, with all the usual suspects claiming all the usual arguments. But Moy had kept close at hand that 1988 IJC decision.
The U.S. State Department eventually agreed that the 1988 IJC report still was valid, and amid increasing public and political pressure, the B.C. government backed down. Cline was refused, and the area was placed into a “reserve” status regarding coal exploration.
But other projects still are active.
“We know roads will continue to be extended into the area next summer,” Moy said. “We know gold exploration will continue. We know British Petroleum will continue to gather data in the Flathead. The province may talk the talk when it comes to protections, but they're not walking the walk in terms of what's happening on the ground.”
Down on the ground - where the thickest population of inland grizzly bears on the continent lives, where endangered bull trout still are plentiful, where wolves and wolverines cross the boundary with no thought of passports - Cline Mining is back, with a new coal project planned high in the headwaters.
A short ways downstream is another planned coal mine site, and closer to the border gold and phosphate interests are digging around.
And the entire drainage is being studied by British Petroleum, with an eye toward coalbed methane production.
Methane collection would mean de-watering entire aquifers, Moy said, a process that in other places has badly tainted surface waters. It also would mean a tight grid of wellheads atop what now is the remote wilderness home of several sensitive species - Glacier Park animals that spend a portion of their year in Canada.
But Moy remains an optimist, even after all these years of frustrating impasse.
South of the border, he sees new partners joining the debate - nonprofits such as the National Parks Conservation Association, government panels such as the Flathead Basin Commission, community groups such as the Flathead Coalition, premier scientific centers such as the Flathead Lake Biological Station, even Native American tribes. Montana's governor is on board, as is the state's congressional delegation and even President-elect Barack Obama.
North of the border, town councils and environmentalists are joining forces to resist industrialization of their wildlands, and a recent poll showed 70 percent of British Columbia locals support protections for the area.
The trick now, Moy said, is to take the message across the continent, to build pressure from both within and without.
The Olympics are coming to British Columbia, and the world is watching. The provincial premier is keenly interested in combating climate change. Glacier is turning 100. The time is ripe for “finding a long-term solution that is clearly acceptable to British Columbia, but that also protects the integrity of the basin.”
Despite the long years of deadlock, Moy believes “we will get there someday. I hope sooner rather than later, but I maintain optimistic. The key will be moving Premier Campbell. What a wonderful thing it would be for him, to show such leadership. He has all the playing cards, and if he could play a winning hand we could resolve this, once and for all.”
As for Moy, he's retired, but he's not going away. Already, his name is on the short list as one of three possible U.S. appointees to the IJC, and he's “very interested.”
“Montana is the only state that borders three Canadian provinces,” he said, “and I have had the luxury to be able to work with folks from all three provinces over the past 25 years.”
Their shared waterways and conflicting controversies “have been very close to me,” he said. “I'm sure I'll continue to be involved at some level.”
Because, after all, the coal's still there, just as it was when Moy arrived. That is both his blessing and his curse, his legacy and his challenge, hidden yet beneath the wilderness.
Reporter Michael Jamison can be reached at
1-800-366-7186 or at mjamison@missoulian.com
Timeline of Canadian Flathead mining efforts since December 2007
KALISPELL - For 30 years now, the United States and Canada have been at odds over energy development in the wilds north of Glacier National Park. British Columbia's government is keen on coal and coalbed methane production there, while Montana is worried about downstream pollutants.
Although 2008 was relatively quiet in terms of controversy, it was nevertheless a busy one for those tracking the issue, beginning just before the start of the year:
December 2007: Canadian federal government announces a limited environmental review of coal mining proposals, aimed at fisheries. Montana had sought a more comprehensive review.
January 2008: Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., secures nearly $1 million for water quality, fisheries and wildlife studies in the transboundary Flathead region.
February 2008: Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., announces that British Petroleum will not pursue coalbed methane development north of Glacier. The company clarifies, saying it will continue gathering data there, with the possible intention of drilling sometime in the future.
April 2008: Members of the Flathead Coalition travel to England for the annual shareholder meeting of British Petroleum. They meet with 11 large shareholders, to inform them about the controversy surrounding the company's Flathead interests.
April 2008: British Petroleum pursues coalbed methane development in the adjacent Elk River Valley. Town council in Fernie, B.C., passes a resolution opposing the project.
April 2008: The B.C. Outdoor Recreation Council recognizes the Flathead as the second-most endangered river in the province.
May 2008: Gov. Brian Schweitzer writes to B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell, saying a proposed environmental agreement is not sufficient to protect the region. The letter is optimistic, though, with Schweitzer saying “recent events have led me to believe that, for the first time in 30 years, this conflict can be resolved.“
June 2008: Then-candidate Barack Obama signals his opposition to industrializing the Flathead, saying “the Flathead River and Glacier National Park are treasures that should be conserved for future generations.”
June 2008: An international coalition of 11 conservation groups petition the United Nations World Heritage Committee to list Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park as endangered, due to nearby mining proposals.
July 2008: Canadian mining company Max Resources begins gold exploration on 10,000 acres, less than 10 miles north of the Glacier border.
September 2008: Montana fisheries biologists document significant bull trout populations within the footprint of the proposed coal mine site. The mining company had previously said none of the protected fish could be found there.
October 2008: Cline Mining Corp. lists on its Web site two active coal mine proposals, and exploratory drilling continues in the Flathead.
November 2008: A poll of local British Columbians finds 70 percent support protections for the Flathead, as well as an expansion of Waterton Lakes National Park.
December 2008: British Columbia's Ministry of Energy and Mines announces British Petroleum has been granted the rights to coalbed methane fields in the adjacent Elk River drainage. The Flathead is excluded from the exploration area in recognition of its “environmentally sensitive status.”
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