Officials with the U.S. Department of State will not wade into a dispute that has driven a wedge between members of a bi-national commission designed to resolve conflicts surrounding shared water resources between the U.S. and Canada.
The State Department’s stance, first reported by The Narwhal and confirmed by sources familiar with the negotiations, comes after concerned U.S. delegates of the International Joint Commission (IJC) released a letter criticizing their Canadian counterparts for downplaying the levels of mining contaminants and the extent to which they are rushing out of British Columbia’s Elk Valley coal mines and into Montana. The letter asserted that the Canadian commissioners refused to endorse a report showing harmful effects to aquatic life and human health as a result of pollution stemming from coal mines owned and operated by Teck Resources Ltd.
The IJC is tasked with resolving transboundary water disputes under the 1909 Boundary Waters Treaty, and consists of members from the U.S. and Canada.
The commission’s two U.S. representatives wrote that their “Canadian colleagues prefer an earlier report that is weak on addressing the recently defined impacts of selenium in the Elk River-Lake Koocanusa-Kootenai River watersheds,” the letter states, referring to a type of mining contaminant.
It’s the latest in a series of developments on the transboundary Kootenai River watershed, where toxic contaminants leaching from coal mines situated upstream on the Elk River are flowing south through the Rocky Mountains before joining the Kootenay River in Canada and converging in Lake Koocanusa, the sprawling reservoir that spans the U.S.-Canada border.
The letter from U.S. Commissioners Rich Moy and Lorna Pollack cites recent data showing that water quality regularly exceeds regulatory standards governing the release of pollutants like selenium, and chastises Canadian commissioners for ignoring a report detailing the scope of the pollution and its deleterious ecological impact, including resulting in deformities and reproductive failure in trout and increasing fish mortality of up to 50 percent in some portions of the river system.
“Specifically, U.S. Commissioners are very concerned about long-term impacts of selenium pollution in the Elk-Kootenai watersheds caused by leaching of mountain valleys filled with waste materials from existing and expanding mountaintop coal mines,” the letter states. “In addition to documented short-term impacts, it is well understood that high concentrations of selenium will have long lasting impacts on water quality, fish, other aquatics species, wildlife and human health in southeast B.C. and northwestern Montana communities. These impacts could become permanent. Besides selenium, other significant pollutants from the exposed waste rock include nitrates (nitrate-N), sulfates, and cadmium.”
Teck Coal is investing between $850-$950 million to construct water treatment facilities, but has been fined for violating provincial environmental rules.
According to Chris Stannell, Teck’s senior communications specialist, the company is conducting water-quality monitoring stories at 100 stations in the Elk Valley.