Critics are saying that the sudden cancellation of a public hearing on a proposed coal mine is evidence the Alberta Energy Regulator is in the back pocket of the coal industry and not looking after the public interest.
Australian-owned Valory Resources Inc. wants to mine 3,600 tonnes of coal per day from Mine 14, a proposed underground operation near Grande Cache in the Smoky River headwaters.
Valory bought the mine and Summit Coal Inc. in 2022. That same year, in a presentation to the Municipal District of Greenview, the company claimed to have a mine permit and mine license but was awaiting other approvals, including an amended water license and Environmental Protection and Enhancement Act permit.
Watershed concerns
Groups like the Alberta Wilderness Association and the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society have made written submissions to the AER about the potential of selenium, arsenic and sediment contamination in the Smoky River as a result of mining activity.
The mine would be built upstream of threatened bull trout habitat. Arctic grayling, burbot and whitefish are also native to that watershed .
Mining could add to cumulative impacts on mountain caribou due to increased traffic on Highway 40, and could harm grizzly, wolverine, mountain goat and bighorn sheep habitats.
Valory was supposed to respond to these and other concerns by July 30, and a public hearing was scheduled for October 21.
Instead, a day before the July deadline, the company filed a motion with the AER to adjourn the hearing. The company also sent a letter to the Minister of Energy and Minerals complaining that it was “concerned and disappointed with Alberta’s regulatory processes.”
That’s all it took for AER CEO Rob Morgan to go one step further than Valory’s request for an adjournment and instead cancel the public hearing previously approved by his own staff. In an unprecedented decision announced in late August, Morgan wrote that “the social and economic effects of the project as well as the interests of local landowners strongly support that the Decision be varied, and the hearing be cancelled.”
Concerned groups are calling a foul on Rob Morgan
Morgan is a veteran oil patch executive who was appointed CEO of the regulator last February, and he may be breaking the AER’s own rules, according to Albertans concerned about watersheds on the Eastern Slopes.
“The purpose of the written submission is to outline the concerns and evidence you plan speak to at the hearing, but without a hearing, what has been lost is the ability to cross examine the proponent, to ask them to respond to those concerns in front of a panel of hearing commissioners and the public,” Kennedy Halvorson, a scientist and conservation specialist with the Alberta Wilderness Association, told The Rockies.Life.
“The decision to cancel the hearing removes a critical public transparency and accountability component of the regulatory process – whether you support or oppose the project, this hearing would have been an opportunity for everyone to get more information on the mine, its expected impacts, and how the company plans to address them.”
According to Halvorson, Morgan’s decision goes against how AER staff have been handling the Mine 14 process and that he may not even have the authority to cancel the hearing.
“The AER staff and hearing commissioners could have decided a hearing was not necessary in the first place, denied our request to participate, or limited how we participate, but they repeatedly recognized the merit of our concerns and our participation,” Halvorson said.
Eroding public trust in the regulator
In 2021, after the Alberta government reinstated the 1976 Coal Policy, then-energy minister Sonya Savage created a coal policy committee to engage with the public and industry about the future of coal mining on the Eastern Slopes.
Among the key findings released in the committee’s final report were “concerns about the AER’s perceived lack of transparency and accessibility” and the need to restore “trust throughout Alberta’s regulatory system for coal, including material new efforts to convince Albertans that the public interest is respected.”
“This action does nothing to convince me that the public interest is respected,” Halvorson said of the cancelled hearing.
The Alberta Wilderness Association is urging Albertans to send a letter objecting to Rob Morgan’s decision and is exploring other options for responding to the Mine 14 public hearing cancellation.
Mountain View petitioner worried about the precedent it sets
Robert Beuck, a resident of Mountain View County, has launched a petition against expanded and new coal mines on the Eastern Slopes. He said the AER top dog’s recent intervention is troubling.
He called the cancellation of the public hearing into Mine 14 at the request of the mining company “absolutely outrageous,” in an interview with The Albertan.
He’s worried that the decision by the top dog at the regulator sets a dangerous precedent for stifling public participation in important decisions about coal mining near Sundre and elsewhere on the Eastern Slopes.
“If a majority of people think [the proposed mine] is a good thing – despite the fact that it may not be – but if the majority thinks it should go ahead, then that’s just the way democracies work,” he said. “But it is absolutely unacceptable that two people in a democracy can actually have that much power that they could just override everything.This is what they do in dictatorships. This is not what you do in a democracy.”
Beuck plans to be at the Canadian Legion in Sundre on September 16 gathering signatures for the petition.
