Proposed site of the Grassy Mountain mining project, in the Crowsnest Pass area of Alberta, taken June 16, 2021.
The company is seeking permission to mine steel-making coal from the Grassy Mountain deposit, located a few kilometres north of Blairmore, Alta., in the Crowsnest Pass. It says it wants to "better understand the full depth of the Grassy Mountain deposit, to obtain raw coal samples/acid rock drainage samples," plus model the structure of the seams of coal.The AER said it registered the application in early September and it is currently under review. Applications can be processed as quickly as three weeks while some take upwards of a year, according to the AER. A company is allowed to file an appeal if it's rejected.
In June 2021, the AER said the open-pit coal project wasn't in the public interest. Then, a federal review of the proposition found it was likely to cause unjustifiedon water quality, a threatened species of trout and endangered a variety of pine tree. "So it really actually is hard for me to fathom how the company thinks that they're going to get through all of those barriers and get a project."Coal development on the slopes in question has been a fraught political and environmental topic for the last three years.
The land proposed in Northback's application is classified as Category 4, but the initial project was one of a handful exempt from the ban because it was classified as an advanced project by the province.