December 8 (11 – 11:45 AM), Lethbridge Coast Hotel
Members of SAGE, McKillop Earth Action Team, Lethbridge Friends of Medicare and other local organizations and citizens are gathering to protest Northback Holdings Corporation’s continued promotion of a discredited coal mine on Grassy Mountain. A Lethbridge Chamber of Commerce event is giving Northback CEO Mike Northcott a stage and an audience December 8 (11:30 AM – 1:00 PM). Admission to the event is $69.
“Providing a forum for Northback to continue to shill a new coal mine in the headwaters of the Oldman River implies the Lethbridge Chamber of Commerce doubts previous decisions of the joint federal-provincial review panel and of City Council to reject this project” said SAGE Director and McKillop Earth Action Team member Cheryl Bradley. “We would appreciate a statement from the Chamber to address our concerns.”
The Grassy Mountain coal mining project formerly proposed by Benga Mining Limited was rejected by a joint provincial-federal review panel in 2021 because of significant adverse environmental effects and uncertain economic benefits. The decision to deny approval of the project has since been upheld by the courts in litigation brought by Northback. Northback and Benga both are subsidiaries of the Australian mining company Riversdale Resources.
Lethbridge City Council has unanimously supported multiple resolutions in 2020, 2021, 2023 and 2025 opposing coal mining in the Oldman River headwaters because of risk of selenium contamination and the absence of technology that will remove selenium in treatment of municipal drinking water. These resolutions were based on expert advice and received broad community support.
Little has changed from the original proposal for a coal mine on Grassy Mountain. Tried-and-true measures are lacking to address water and air pollution from mountain-top coal mining and cumulative impacts of land use continue to increase on the region’s biodiversity including at-risk westslope cutthroat trout, little brown bats, grizzly bears and whitebark pine.
Coal mines in the Elk Valley west of the continental divide in BC provide a clear demonstration of mountains turned to rubble and wind-blown coal dust contaminating snow and water bodies with polycyclic aromatic compounds many kilometres to the east in Alberta. The Elk River downstream of those coal mines is contaminated with selenium causing Sparwood and Fernie to look for alternative sources of drinking water and resulting in legal challenges from the State of Montana regarding selenium levels that exceed water quality standards in Lake Koocanusa, a few hundred kilometres downstream of the mines.
Contamination originating from the abandoned Tent Mountain Mine in Crowsnest Pass caused the Alberta Ministry of Environment and Protected Areas to issue an advisory in June 2025 to limit consumption of fish caught in Crowsnest Lake due to high selenium levels. This should be a warning to us who rely on our drinking water from the Oldman River.
“This Australian coal company is offering to trade a handful of promises for our clean air, clean water, and the good reputation of our agri-food industry” said SAGE Chair Braum Barber. “It is a high risk. It is a bad trade”.
Sources:
Report of the Joint Review Panel, Benga Mining Limited, Grassy Mountain Coal Project (2021).
https://iaac-aeic.gc.ca/050/documents/p80101/139408E.pdf
ABLAWG Coal Matters: Update 4, October 2025
https://ablawg.ca/2025/10/23/taking-stock-of-the-grassy-mountain-project-and-other-coal-matters-update-4-october-2025/
City of Lethbridge (Feb 25, 2025)
https://www.lethbridge.ca/news/posts/city-council-continues-stance-on-protection-of-clean-water/
Wildsight-commissioned report on selenium contamination in the Elk Valley BC (March 2024)
https://wildsight.ca/2024/03/19/the-elk-valleys-6-4-billion-pollution-problem/
Mountaintop removal coal mining contaminates snowpack across a broad region. Cooke et al. (June 2024)
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.4c02596