NOVEMBER 2014 Time to Kick the Coal Habit What About Carbon Storage? Crowsnest Déjà Vu Coal Branch Reclamation Editor: CONTENTS Ian Urquhart NOVEMBER 2014 • VOL. 22, NO. 5 Graphic Design: Doug Wournell B Des, ANSCAD Printing: Features Association News Colour printing and process is sponsored by Topline Printing 5 Get Off Coal: 22 Wilderness Defender Awards A Doctor’s Prescription 26 How Many Bucks Does It Take? 8 Should we embrace carbon capture and storage? 28 Cows as Stewards: Hyland Armstrong’s AWA Talk 10 Crowsnest Pass Coal Mining: A Déjà Vu to Avoid Departments 14 Coal Mine Reclamation in the Coal Branch: Gear Ideas A Volunteer Steward’s Perspective 30 Kilini Creek and Gravel 18 Events ALBERTA WILDERNESS Mining Impacts: A Microcosm of Cumulative ASSOCIATION Impacts on Alberta Water Resources 31 Fall Events “Defending Wild Alberta through Awareness and Action” Alberta Wilderness Association is Cover Photo a charitable non-government Competing Prizes organization dedicated to the – can we have both completion of a protected areas healthy landscapes donation, call 403-283-2025 or and coal mining? This contribute online at question is raised by AlbertaWilderness.ca. Carolyn Campbell’s Wild Lands Advocate is published bi- photo of the coal monthly, 6 times a year, by Alberta sought by Grande Wilderness Association. The opinions Cache Coal. PHOTO: expressed by the authors in this © C. CAMPBELL publication are not necessarily those of AWA. The editor reserves the right to edit, reject or withdraw articles and letters submitted. Please direct questions and comments to: Featured Artist: Lisa Kozokowsky 403-283-2025 • [email protected] Lisa Kozokowsky combines oils, metals, and encaustics (wax Subscriptions to the WLA are $30 per based paints) to create rich abstractive Western Canadian year. To subscribe, call 403-283-2025 landscapes. Her artistic vision, where colour, movement, and or see AlbertaWilderness.ca. illusion merge together, animates powerful and intriguing pieces that float between contemporary and historical painting styles. What Lisa calls her “wild woman” style draws from the richness she sees in both the natural and the man-made environment. Primarily self-taught, Lisa’s work may be found in individual and corporate collections across Canada and the United States. In Calgary her art may be seen at Latitude Art Gallery http://www.latitudeartgallery.com. For more of Lisa’s imaginative and abstractive interpretations of Box 6398, Station D, Western Canada visit her website: http://www.lisakozokowsky.com. Calgary, Alberta T2P 2E1 403-283-2025 Toll-free 1-866-313-0713 www.AlbertaWilderness.ca AWA respects the privacy of members. Lists are not sold or traded in any manner. AWA is a federally registered charity [email protected] and functions through member and donor support. Tax-deductible donations may be made to AWA at Box 6398 Station D, Calgary, AB T2P 2E1. Ph: 403-283-2025 Fax: 403-270-2743 E-mail: [email protected] www.AlbertaWilderness.ca ISSN 1192-6287 How About a Lump of Coal in Coal’s Stocking This Christmas? The idea for the features focus in this the industry a $16 million refund from only will TransAlta transition off coal but issue of Wild Lands Advocate came from the 2011-12 production year. Sweet. it also is expected to spend $30 million an op/ed piece I read in an April 2014 Given what we know about the human to support economic development and issue of the Edmonton Journal. Drs. Joe and environmental costs of thermal coal energy efficiency jobs in the affected Vipond and Raquel Feroe, two members production it’s high time the provincial community. It also is expected to spend of the Canadian Association of Physicians government took strong action to a further $25 million to develop clean for the Environment, described in painful transition Alberta to other source of energy technology in Washington. detail coal royalties – one example of electricity (52 percent of Alberta’s Taking the equivalent coal-generating the provincial government’s favouritism electricity in 2013 came from coal-fired capacity off of Alberta’s electricity towards Alberta’s coal industry. Coal generating plants). If Premier Prentice grid would reduce Alberta’s coal-fired companies pay a pittance to the public wants to finally put Alberta on the path to generating capacity by 23 percent from for the coal they strip and dig out of our reduce greenhouse gas emissions it makes the 2013 level. Let’s hope Premier prairie and mountain landscapes. tremendous sense to tackle coal. Such Prentice sees this move as an important My pain became something else once action could be central to developing a first step that would benefit Albertans I started to look more closely at the serious climate change strategy. and the climate alike. royalty situation. That transformative Now such an idea may encourage some moment came when I discovered that, captains of industry to suggest that the Ian Urquhart, Editor in 2012-13, 34.7 million tonnes of coal end of days is nigh. Nonsense. In 2011 were produced here and Alberta didn’t the Washington State legislature passed collect a penny from it! In fact, the the so-called TransAlta energy bill – a government didn’t just effectively give law requiring TransAlta to transition away royalty-free coal that year it paid its Centralia coal-generating electricity companies $2.7 million because it owed plant completely off coal by 2025. Not Coal Branch Sports Day circa 1920 Royalties: Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose 55 cents per tonne: Alberta’s 1992 thermal coal royalty AND Alberta’s royalty today. In 1992 dollars today’s 55-cent thermal coal royalty only would have been worth 37 cents. In inflation-adjusted terms then, today’s measly royalty delivers 33 percent less revenue than it did in 1992. Measly? Yes. A 55-cent royalty was no more than 2.9 percent of the price Sherritt received for the coal it sold from its prairie operations in 2013. 4 WLA | November 2014 | Vol. 22, No. 5 | FEATURES Get Off Coal: A Doctor’s Prescription By Dr. Joe Vipond y most powerful memory conglomeration of pollutants – over 60 at Asthma Society of Canada, and the Pem- of exposure to Alberta’s coal latest count. bina Institute, produced a report called A M fired power generation is So let’s run down the prime suspects in Costly Diagnosis: Subsidizing coal power from a couple of decades ago on my first our pollutant lineup PM 2.5: or particulate with Albertans’ health. Using two well-vali- road trip from Edmonton to Jasper. Hav- matter 2.5 microns, and known to most of dated models, one from the Canadian Med- ing just moved to Edmonton, the iconic us as soot. NOx: this refers to a number of ical Association and one from Environment Yellowhead Highway was new to me… nitrogen/oxygen compounds implicated in Canada, the report calculated the impact of beautiful farmland, rolling aspen park- ozone and acid rain formation. SOx, pri- these emissions on Albertans’ health. The land… and then suddenly the landscape marily sulfur dioxide, is a key generator of numbers were staggering. north of the highway dropped away into a the acidity of acid rain. Ozone, formed from Looking at only two of the pollutants, massive open pit mine. Huh?! My travelling the previous pollutants, visible as smog, ozone and PM 2.5, and at only the respi- companion, very familiar with this route, and a powerful pulmonary toxin (bad for ratory effects, the calculations showed that calmly explained that this was a strip mine our lungs). There’s also a mishmash of or- coal is associated with approximately 100 feeding the nearby electricity plants of Wa- ganic compounds such as furans, dioxins, deaths, 80 hospital admissions, and 4,800 bamun Lake, whose smokestacks we could hydroxychlorobenzene, and polyaromatic asthma days (an asthma day is defined as see nearby. It rattled me… wasn’t Canada’s hydrocarbons. And we shouldn’t forget the a day missed from work or school due to electricity generation primarily hydroelec- heavy metals such as mercury, cadmium, an exacerbation of asthma). The report tric? and arsenic. Our lineup needs a big room calculated that this translates into an extra So began a long learning process into the in the station. 1.7-2.1 cents/kWh in electricity costs to Al- sources of electricity that charges my cell The modern science behind coal’s effects bertans (off the baseline of approximately 6 phone and drives Alberta’s industrial pro- on health goes back to two major health cents/kWh pool price). This costs Alberta cesses. Coal is king of the electricity land- disasters of the mid-20th century. In 1948 taxpayers an extra $300 million dollars per scape in Alberta. In 2012 52 percent of the a major inversion in the steel-producing year. This is undoubtedly a gross underes- electricity used in Alberta came from coal . town of Donora, Pennsylvania killed 20 timation – it doesn’t consider the cardiovas- This translated into burning 20 kilograms people and sickened 7,000 (50 percent of cular and stroke illnesses, intellectual dis- of coal per day for each Albertan, or 6.6 the town) over five days. Then in 1952 the abilities caused by mercury, developmental tonnes per Albertan annually. Or, in total, ironically named “Great Smog” hit Lon- disease, and cancers caused by the various more than the rest of Canada combined. don. That five-day smog, primarily gener- other pollutants. Some incredible statistics. ated from houses using coal for heating, So, where do these illnesses occur? Al- Should we be concerned? Once coal was calculated to have killed 4,000 people berta has 18 generating stations, scattered is scooped out of the ground it must be prematurely and sickened approximately throughout the middle of the province.