Canada

Grassy Mountain is a defunct coal strip mine trying, like a phoenix, to rise from the rubble on the eastern slopes of Alberta’s Rockies.

The mine is owned by Northback Holdings Corp., part of Australian billionaire Gina Rinehart’s business empire.

Rinehart knows well the time-tested technique of “Heads you win, tails we flip again” for keeping her dream of a mine alive.

As you might remember, the “old” proposal, which seems very similar to this one, failed the test of a joint federal-provincial review. The reasons for the panel’s rejection were not trivial.

According to Northback, this new flip is the answer to all the issues of selenium contamination, high water use, impacts to a threatened cutthroat trout population and reclamation of a hole where a mountain once stood. All this with glib promises of economic development. Selenium, released during mining, becomes increasingly concentrated in the tissues of organisms as it moves up the food chain and leads to fish deformities and reproductive failure in exposed fish communities.