The Livingstone Landowners Group (LLG) represents more than 100 land owners and supporters, who have become one of the most outspoken and organized anti-forestry and anti-mining organizations in southwestern Alberta. By invoking buzz words like biodiversity, sustainability and ecological integrity, the LLG hope to win a public relations battle and emerge as the sole arbiter of access to public lands in the southern Alberta Foothills.
The LLG was formed in 2004 in the Municipal Districts of Pincher Creek and the Ranchlands, southwest Alberta. This area spans some 1,200 km2 within the Livingstone-Porcupine Hills from the Whaleback to Highway 3, and the Livingstone Range to the Porcupine Hills.
Of late, the LLG is best known for promoting alarmism over the false premise that Albertans must choose between clean drinking water and metallurgical coal mining. This alarmism has been most effective in provoking the split personality disorder that the United Conservative Party has exhibited on this topic over the past 4 years.
The LLG claims that they are protecting the headwaters of the Old Man River, biodiversity and ranching livelihoods by opposing logging and mining. They claim these threaten water quality, fescue grasslands and wildlife habitats.
While the LLG are convinced their intentions are noble, I want to shine an alternative light on their methods and will show that as with so many environmental activists, they behave as if the end justifies the means.
For example, the LLG website shows a photo of a deformed trout that is clearly suffering from whirling disease, caused by the well-known cnidarian parasite Myxobolus cerebralis. Yet, they attribute the visible deformities to selenium poisoning.
I see most of the arguments used by LLG against regulated industrial development of public lands, other than for cattle production, as just another enterprise using scientific lingo as a shield against criticism.
LLG’s favorite chorus line of late, is the same tired song sung by more than ca thousand Canadian news stories over the last decade, which time and again, claims that Rocky Mountain coal mining operations are destroying aquatic ecosystems, impacting terrestrial wildlife and livestock, and threatening public drinking water supplies.
Albertans are all too familiar with this media methodology over the last decade, with respect to the persistent anti-oil and gas rhetoric. The more a claim is repeated, the more readily it is accepted as truth without ever being questioned, let alone being publicly tested to failure by subject matter expert peer review and/or criticism.
We should embrace scepticism when bombarded with a biased scientific-sounding narrative in the mainstream media and must all beware the dangers of the court of public opinion becoming a substitute for scientific dialogue and the peer review process, that is the historical prerequisite of non-partisan scientific discovery.
It is crucial that Albertans understand that — to date — no evidence has yet emerged demonstrating that water-soluble selenium released from native rocks, and disturbed by mining activities on the British Columbia side of the Rockies, have exceeded thresholds which could result in chronic health effects in aquatic ecosystems, let alone acute effects on fish population-level impacts.
Most of the current evidence is based only on laboratory studies, aimed at predicting worst-case scenarios.
News outlets like The Narwhal and environmental activists like Wildsight have declared that selenium leachates from British Columbia’s Elk Valley coal mines caused a short-term reduction in trout populations in nearby downstream areas. However, both have ignored the independent report, commissioned by Teck Resources, which attributed the short-term population decline to winter kill and that dissolved selenium is not toxic at the levels measured.
Best practices in mining have rapidly evolved across North America, and are being researched by the Rocky Mountain coal community, implying that any new facilities built on this side of the Continental Divide will be even more progressive in avoiding, mitigating and carefully managing selenium release into aquatic ecosystems.
A dedicated article, focusing on the subject of selenium from coal mining will appear in a follow-up article, in which we will strive to help the reader understand that regulatory guidelines on dissolved selenium concentrations are not toxicity thresholds, but rather are nothing more than conservative “guesstimates.”
Ultimately, the selenium cycle is complex and we should beware of charlatans who would over-simplify reality.
The LLG should focus on scientifically defensible arguments if they wish to maintain their credibility, while never forgetting that the end rarely justifies the means.