Oops they did it again: Coal Company Once Again Given Immediate Approval to Drill in Sensitive Wildlife Habitat

Brooke Kapeller and Katie Morrison

A grazing mountain goat nanny and kid

You might remember back in June we wrote about our concerns with the Alberta Energy Regulator (AER) process when Elan Coal Ltd. was given approval to start their operations despite timing restrictions in place to protect bighorn sheep and mountain goats. The application should not have been approved and the fact that permission was granted one business day after submission was further grounds for serious concern. It also meant that our concerns were not even registered by the AER as the application had already been approved.

However, this was not the end of this story.

We recently discovered that once again, Elan Coal Ltd. had applied to extend their operations outside of the approved timing window. The application was made despite their previously stated rationale earlier in the year that they needed to break the spring restrictions so that operations would not continue into the fall restriction period. These timing restrictions are put in place to limit any industrial activity in important goat and sheep habitat to a less sensitive time of year: July 1 to August 22. This regulation should ensure that species are protected and not disturbed during important times in their life cycle..This time, Elan Coal Ltd’s  application to sidestep wildlife protections was approved on the same day it was submitted.

Given the importance of this restriction, we once again submitted a formal Statement of Concern  regarding the  waiving of restrictions in place to protect sheep and goats from industrial activity. Shortly after our Statement of Concern was sent in, we received another boilerplate message from the AER stating that our concerns had not been registered because the application in question had already been approved.

...the whole story

The brief summary is: 

• The timing restriction was waived by the AER in both the Spring and the Fall so that Elan Coal could begin and continue operations during sensitive periods.

• Elan Coal’s applications were approved either the next business day, or on the same day it was posted.

• CPAWS’ Statements of Concern were not even registered with the AER, as they were not submitted before approval was granted.

It seems that to participate in the AER’s process one must be able to anticipate when companies will submit applications, and submit a statement of concern before the application is posted online publicly. If anyone has advice on how to do this, please let us know.