Open pit coal mining should be a dead issue in the province

Editor:

You know, Igor’s got a lot to answer for. He’s the one who keeps going out, digging up the bodies, hauling them up to the top of the castle, hooking up the electrodes... then... after the monster has gone lurching through the village, goes back out, gathering up spare parts for the Monster Mark

II, Sort of like Brian Jean and coal mines when you come right down to it. There are five operating coal mines in this province at the moment and at least half of them are close to flat=lining. As far as any new ones are concerned the Grassy Mountain play, out there in the Crowsnest Pass, has been killed off so often the silver plate is wearing off the stake through its heart. Yet, just this past week, Jean has made the papers, telling anyone who will listen, that it doesn’t matter that reopening the coal mine north of Blairmore has been rejected by both federal and provincial review panels and that pretty much everyone downstream of the mine site has come out against it a a really, really, bad idea. Nope. Here comes Igor, staggering up the road to the castle with the monster in a firemans’ carry, shouting:”It’s not dead Master. It’s just sleeping.” “Once a project, always a project.”

That’s what Brian Jean told the energy regulator. Doesn’t matter it’s so dead it’s no longer even drawing flies.

Igor doesn’t know the meaning to the word ”dead.” Though I’d suggest he go to Google Earth and dial up the Elk Valley. Those grey, lepopous scabs running up the B.C. side of the Continental Divide from Highway 3 to just over the mountains from the Baar U Ranch.

Them’s open pit mines and that’s a dead landscape. Brian Jean country if there ever was one.

Ken Sears

Lethbridge