For decades in the Flathead Valley, the threat of upstream mining and drilling across the Canadian border has persisted as a constant, lingering threat. Every so often, news would break that another corporation intended to extract the rich deposits of coal, gold or methane that lie in the northern reaches of the Flathead River watershed.
Conservation groups would announce their opposition, warning of irreversible harm to wildlife and water quality. Montana’s federal delegation would issue angry statements and write stern letters to CEOs. Petitions and public meetings ensued.
British Columbia’s provincial government, meanwhile, often projected an air of defiance, coupled with an inclination to exercise a sovereign right to develop its natural resources as it saw fit. And with all these mining and drilling firms navigating B.C.’s regulatory limbo, how it would all play out remained unclear.
Until last week, that is, when B.C. Lt. Gov. Steven Point announced in his “Throne Speech” to provincial parliament, “Mining, oil and gas development and coalbed gas extraction will not be permitted in British Columbia’s Flathead Valley.” The next day, Point formalized his declaration by signing the “Flathead Watershed Area Order,” prohibiting any mining or mineral activity there. The order overturns a 2003 land use plan that set mining as one of the area’s highest priorities and also asserted that resource extraction could not be precluded by wildlife habitat or recreation.
On the heels of the B.C. government’s action, Montana Sens. Max Baucus and Jon Tester said they would introduce legislation to prevent mining and drilling in the Flathead on this side of the border. Though it’s unclear exactly what form that ban might take, it’s likely to retire the 103 dormant oil and gas leases over 218,000 acres on Flathead National Forest land in the North Fork. Conservationists have long pointed out the hypocrisy of Montana urging B.C. to restrict development on its side of the border while energy companies still retained that right here. It now looks as though that issue will be resolved shortly as well.
At a time when most government appears hobbled by inertia, a floodgate of progress has suddenly opened on one of the most stubbornly contentious trans-boundary issues in the region.
“A new partnership with Montana will sustain the environmental values in the Flathead River basin in a manner consistent with current forestry, recreation, guide outfitting and trapping uses,” Point said in his Feb. 9 speech, which is the equivalent of a governor’s state of the state address to the Legislature. “It will identify permissible land uses and establish new collaborative approaches to trans-boundary issues.”
This week, as the eyes of the world turn to Vancouver for the Olympic Winter Games, Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer travels there to sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), putting a halt to ongoing exploration in the Flathead and prohibiting any future development.
In an interview with the Beacon, Schweitzer described the agreement as the result of talks between Montana and B.C. that have been ongoing since the spring of 2005, in which the governor and Premier Gordon Campbell gradually cultivated a high level of trust, bolstered by a mutual desire for discretion. Schweitzer said both parties took pains to keep the negotiations out of the news, but “we were quietly, methodically, always moving forward.”
“The greatest part of the praise ought to go to (B.C.) Premier Gordon Campbell himself, who through all of the adversity of the last five years, has continued to come back to the table,” Schweitzer added. “There wasn’t ‘chest-thumping’ on either side, and that’s what kept us negotiating.”
The governor also lauded the staff members of both administrations, describing his own role as less “the conductor of the symphony,” than someone in the back “playing the tuba.” He left it to the B.C. government to make the announcement, recalling that when the premier told him it would occur during the Throne Speech, Schweitzer replied, “Gordon, it’s your call.”
The announcement, however, apparently came as something of a shock to B.C.’s extractive resource industry.
“We are surprised and disappointed by the government’s action,” Stuart Rogers, president of Max Resource Corp., which was exploring for gold in the Canadian Flathead, said, “given our outstanding exploration results at Crowsnest in 2009. And we will seek adequate compensation.”
Gavin Dirom, president of the B.C. Association of Mineral Exploration, told the Associated Press the ban would hurt the province’s economy, adding, “We feel like we were bullied.”
A call to the Toronto office of the Cline Mining Corp., which sought to mine 40 million tons of coal along a tributary of the North Fork, was not returned.
Those comments contrast significantly with the reactions of the conservation community and Glacier Park officials, which might best be described as cautiously euphoric.
Glacier Superintendent Chas Cartwright called the announcement, “fantastic,” though park officials are anxious to see the details of the MOU. (Schweitzer plans to release the document upon signing it.) “We look forward to participating in any cooperative effort to conserve the World Heritage Site,” Cartwright added.
And while the announcement may have seemed an abrupt turnaround to those not following the issue closely, many conservationists describe it, like Schweitzer, as a conclusion gathering momentum over the last several years, driven just as much by domestic political pressure from growing anti-mining constituencies in southeastern B.C. communities like Fernie and Cranbrook as by any exterior pressure from Montana. The recent recommendation of a mining moratorium by a team of United Nations researchers didn’t hurt either.
“It’s just taken six years, really, since Campbell was installed to bring this to real prominence and to make it one of the most important environmental issues in North America,” Dave Hadden, director of Headwaters Montana, said. “They recognized they couldn’t win this, I think, and they were going to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.”
Both Hadden and Casey Brennan of Canadian conservation group Wildsight also noted that the Flathead announcement was among the only “green planks” in what was an otherwise “environmentally bleak” speech. They pointed out the timing of the announcement allows B.C. to point to a high-profile “green” action just as the Olympics commence.
“As the only environmental initiative that the B.C. government spoke about in the term speech, yeah, (the Olympics) played a part, but that was their own calculus,” Hadden said. “It needs to be regarded as a breakthrough, not a victory.”
Brennan said his group will continue to push for a more permanent protection for the Canadian Flathead in the form of an expansion of Waterton Park and the establishment of a wildlife management area.
“We’re pleased to see that B.C. is finally moving in the general direction of managing this ecosystem as one,” Brennan said. “We can tick off one of our goals, but there are still quite a few to go.”
But what role Montana may play in any future decisions like that remains unclear, as the urgency of this long-simmering issue appears, for now, largely defused.