Dear Prime Minister,  The Southern Alberta Group for the Environment (SAGE) encourages the Government of Canada to legislate based on the values of distributive justice, social equity and intergenerational equity, which is largely premised on a sustainable relationship with the land – our natural environment. The Government of Canada has a legislative responsibility for the…

[The federal government (Environment and Climate Change Canada ) is seemingly set to change the coal mine effluent regulations, dramatically increasing how much selenium can be released into streams, rivers, and lakes. These proposed new standards ignore the limits prescribed in the science of ecotoxicity. If adopted, this will have devastating impacts on water quality,…

3 June 2025, By Lorne Fitch Research Paper: Cooke, C.A., et.al. (2025). Fish remain high in selenium long after mountaintop coal mines close. (https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.05.22.655156v1.full.pdf) Another piece of research has just revealed the contamination of trout and mountain whitefish in Crowsnest Lake with selenium, derived from the legacy Tent Mountain coal strip mine (Fish remain high…

May 21, 2025 from Lorne Fitch. The Alberta Energy Regulator (AER) has rendered its decision allowing Northback to proceed with more coal exploration on Grassy Mountain. You might remember Grassy Mountain, the zombie-like coal mine proposal that will not die and is kept on life support by the Alberta government. To get the good news…

May 21, 2025 from Water for Food. Premier Danielle Smith says we need metallurgical coal to make solar panels and windmills. 1. The UCP government effectively killed the booming clean energy industry in Alberta. 2. The steel industry world wide is rapidly implementing green steel technology which doesn’t require metallurgical coal. 3. The Alberta government’s…

Published in The Lethbridge Herald on March 6, 2025 Kudos to Lethbridge City Council for unanimously reconfirming its commitment to protecting our water. The City of Lethbridge has joined a number of other communities in the region to express concerns about water quality being adversely affected by the impacts of coal mining in the headwaters…

You’re invited: Dry Horizons: Stewarding a Future for Southern Alberta’s Water Film Screening in Lethbridge on March 18 (7 – 9 p.m.) at McKillop United Church Southern Alberta Group for Environment and McKillop United Church are partnering with Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society Southern Alberta (CPAWS sAB) and the Alberta Chapter of Backcountry Hunters and…

Lethbridge Councillor Belinda Crowson will Move a Resolution on February 25th (12:30 p.m.) for Protecting the Oldman Watershed and Protecting Agriculture and Agri-food Businesses in the region. SAGE advocated for, and supports, this Resolution (https://www.sage-environment.org/grassy-mountain-coal-project-a-resolution/) The Resolution states: WHEREAS water is vital for human, animal and plant life; and WHEREAS Lethbridge and surrounding communities are…

Thank you for your email regarding Northback Holdings Corporation’s (Northback) applications to conduct test drilling on Grassy Mountain. As Minister of Energy and Minerals, I am pleased to respond on behalf of the Government of Alberta. Government is tasked with overseeing responsible resource development for the benefit of all Albertans. We cannot comment on this…

Letter to Mayor & Council, City of Lethbridge On October 19, 2020, City Council unanimously passed a resolution that acknowledged the headwaters on the eastern slopes as the source of our drinking water and that the surface mining of coal has the potential of adversely affecting water in the watershed.  The resolution indicated the risk…