Revised expansion of BC's biggest coal mine still poses unacceptable risks to aquatic life and wildlife

Posted on

For immediate release

July 24, 2025

Revised Fording River mine expansion still poses unacceptable risks to aquatic life and wildlife

Bighorn sheep, grizzly bears and native fish populations would suffer if a proposal to expand British Columbia’s biggest coal mine by over a third of its current size is approved, says Wildsight. 

Located in the southern Rockies, within ʔamakʔis Ktunaxa, the territory of the Ktunaxa Nation, Fording River Operations is one of four steelmaking coal mines currently at the centre of an international water pollution investigation due to selenium leaching into Elk Valley waterways from waste rock piles.  

An earlier iteration of the Fording River mine expansion was met by widespread opposition for its impacts on aquatic ecosystems and Indigenous rights, leading B.C.’s Environmental Assessment Office to reject it in 2023. 

Aside from being moderately smaller, little has changed at the heart of the revised project description, which would still see the expansion produce enough waste rock to fill Lake Windermere more than 10 times.

“None of the improvements to Elk Valley Resources’ submission negate the fact that this project would knock down an entire mountain and produce over 3 billion cubic meters of waste rock that will leach selenium into our waterways for decades, if not centuries,” says Simon Wiebe, Mining Policy & Impacts Researcher at Wildsight. 

“The Fording and Elk rivers are currently awash with contaminants that EVR still doesn’t have the capacity to treat. It would be irresponsible to approve a mine expansion that would increase the source of the problem before we have proven methods to safely manage current waste rock piles.”

Selenium is a naturally-occurring trace element that can quickly accumulate in aquatic food chains, leading to major reproductive failure and population collapses in top predators like the threatened westslope cutthroat trout. Polluted waters from the Fording and Elk rivers flow across the U.S.-Canada border, leading the International Joint Commission to launch an ongoing investigation into the issue last year. 

“The revised project description reduces impacts in the Chauncey Creek drainage, but make no mistake: when you’re dealing with a project of this size, even comparatively smaller impacts are still massive on a local scale,” says Simon. 

“In terms of improvements to this plan, Wildsight is glad to see EVR engaging meaningfully with First Nations, but that’s where the positive news ends.” 

EVR’s expansion plan would convert almost all of Castle Mountain into open, terraced pits. The mountain’s grassy slopes currently provide vital winter foraging habitat for threatened bighorn sheep, which have already lost huge swathes of their winter habitat to coal mining elsewhere in the valley. Stands of endangered whitebark pines, an important food source for grizzly bears, would also be impacted. 

“Those high-elevation grasslands are incredibly hard to restore because it takes such a unique combination of soil and climatic conditions for them to exist. Even EVR admits that its restoration plan is ‘conceptual’ and that success is uncertain,” says Simon. 

Currently, Fording River’s coal reserves are forecast to run out in the mid 2030s. The proposed expansion would extend the mine’s life into the 2060s, producing an estimated 280 million metric tonnes of coal. Burning that coal in blast furnaces to produce steel would emit more carbon dioxide than Australia does in an entire year. 

“Glencore wants this project approved by 2028. Given the significant impacts this expansion would have on land- and water-based ecosystems, the public should have an opportunity to offer comment on the proposal before it proceeds any further,” says Simon. 

-30-

For additional quotes or interviews, please contact:

  • Simon Wiebe, Mining Policy & Impacts Researcher, Wildsight
  • Amelia Caddy, Communications & Philanthropy Lead, Wildsight

Images: