The Cardinal Divide Read Online Free PDF Page B

Reader’s Digest version is fine for now,” he said.
    â€œWell, it’s the same old thing, really.” Peggy McSorlie spoke in an even-toned voice that Blackwater figured she must have perfected for dealing with mining executives, Parks officials, and the media. “You remember a few years ago, even before the whole Jasper thing that you and I worked on together, there were plans for an open-pit mine south of the town of Oracle, along the eastern boundary of Jasper?”
    â€œI remember it,” answered Blackwater. “Some sort of coal operation on the north side of Cardinal Divide.”
    â€œThat’s right, metallurgical coal, the stuff they use to make steel. Well, that mine didn’t play out. The market was in the sewer, and the company who owned the operation couldn’t get their act together and wrote a rotten environmental assessment. They forgotreally to make any mention of the mine’s impact on any of the wildlife in the area.”
    â€œConvenient,” said Blackwater.
    â€œYup, convenient. They likely thought that the assessment would just sail through with a rubber stamp from the province. You know, the good old boys in Edmonton would make some sounds about protecting wildlife and sustaining the local economy and the mine would be off to the races. But it didn’t happen like that.”
    â€œIt got bumped to the feds, as I recall.”
    â€œRight. I wasn’t doing this sort of thing then. I was still doing contract work for Jasper. But some concerned locals made the argument that the mine would impact the National Park. The folks at Parks Canada agreed and that got the Federal Environmental Assessment Office involved. The EcoDefence Fund threatened to sue the federal government, saying that because the mine would come within a few kilometres of Jasper and would destroy fish habitat and impact endangered species, that both Environment Canada and Fisheries and Oceans had obligations to protect.”
    â€œDid they win the suit?”
    â€œIt never went to court. But the feds did get involved, and the whole thing went to a hearing, and that’s where the coal company’s assessment basically fell apart. It wasn’t even so much that they were planning on dumping mine waste in streams full of bull trout and harlequin ducks, but that their economic arguments were pretty weak. Full of holes, really.”
    â€œDucks, eh?”
    â€œWhat’s that?”
    â€œHarlequin ducks?”
    â€œYeah, there are nesting sites on the streams they want to use as a dumping ground for waste rock.”
    â€œWho found the nesting sites?”
    Peggy McSorlie laughed. “Me, of course. On my days off, of course.”
    â€œOf course.”
    â€œBut listen, Cole, the ducks weren’t the point. That proposal wasn’t worth the paper it was written on. And I might add that it was written on a lot of paper. The thing was a thousand pages long! I could hardly lift it – a thousand pages of bull crap. Shameful. Written by a former Park Superintendent turned environmentalconsultant, no less. It was a disgrace. He should have known better. Or if he did, he chose to look the other way.
    Lot of that going around, thought Cole Blackwater.
    â€œAnyway, the review board sent the company back to the drawing board. They didn’t say no – ”
    â€œThey never do in Alberta.”
    â€œNo, they never do, but it was enough to delay the project, and the company ended up selling out.”
    â€œNot the end of the story,” said Cole.
    â€œNope. Not end of story. A big Toronto-based company bought up the whole operation a year ago, including the two mines that currently operate in the region and the rights to coal, maybe even coal bed methane in the area. It’s hard to say with coal bed methane. Anyway, this all happened in the last year. Now they’ve brought in a new hotshot area manager named Mike Barnes and he’s making