Lab 6 Coal Mining F23

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Apr 3, 2024

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NAME: ___________________________________ CAMOSUN COLLEGE GEOGRAPHY 105 / 85 ASSIGNMENT 6: COAL MINING IN BC British Columbia’s coal mining began on northern Vancouver Island in the mid-1800s when a modest coal seam was discovered at Suquash, a Kwaqu ’l vi llage near present day Tsaxis, BC (Fort Rupert). The mine was scouted in 1949 and opened for only a year (1851) closing when Robert Dunsmuir discovered the more lucrative coal deposits in Nanaimo. Suquash Mine reopened in 1908 and the main seam was mostly exploited by the start of WWII when the mine was closed to make way for the largest airfield on the north Island.
1. The coal found at Suquash was termed thermal coal. What is this? / 1 In 1852, Nanaimo coalfields went into operation and continued until the 1960s. Three coal seams – the Douglas, the Newcastle, and the Wellington – peaked in coal production in the early 1920s, producing high grade bituminous thermal coal until 1953. In the 100 years of coal production, Nanaimo fields produced ~50 million Tonnes of coal over 170 km 2 and is now considered fully dug out. Comox coal field stretches from Campbell River to Fanny Bay, almost 200 km 2 and from 1888- 1953 it produced 18.6 million Tonnes of high-grade bituminous coal. In 1988, operations were concentrated at Quinsam Mine and until 2016, ~300,000 tones of thermal coal were extracted. In 2017, operations transferred to Hillsborough Resources Ltd. and while reserve estimates are still at 25 million Tonnes, Quinsam Mine has been reduced in operat ions…now only employing about 45 people. Raven Mine was proposed in 2009 by Compliance Energy to extract coal west of Fanny Bay, in the same Comox complex but in 2015, the proposal was turned down by the BC Government for failure to submit the appropriate documents for environmental assessment. In 2021, we have virtually no coal extraction remaining on Vancouver Island but, yet, it still makes up more than half of BC’s mineral production. So, somewhere else has taken over coal mining (see map on previous page). With the expansion of the railways in the 1800s, underground coal mining began in southeastern BC. Since 1898, the East Kootenay Coalfields – identified as the Flathead, the Crowsnest and the Elk Valley fields – have produced ~830,000 million Tonnes of high quality, bituminous coal used for steelmaking. Teck Coal Limited has operated five large open pit mines in the Crowsnest and Elk Valley fields but, since 2011, surface and sub-surface mining have been prohibited in the Flathead field. 2. The coal extracted in the East Kootenays is called metallurgical coal. What is this and how is it different from thermal coal? / 2
I am going to refer you to the 2020 publication, “ Exploration and Mining in the Southeast Region, British Columbia ” by Fiona Katay for the next series of questions. This document gives a very comprehensive overview of mining reserves and operations in our coal belt and, while its tone is academic, it contains the most recent statistics on our active coal seams. I’d like you to read from the Introduction through to section 3.2.4. From: Katay, 2020: Map of Kootenay Group coalfields and mine sites
3. Metallurgical coal mines dominate the southeast regions on BC but what other industrial minerals are mined in this region? / 3 4. Quarrying is different from mining; what mineral resources are quarried out of the southwest region? / 5 5. What’s the oldest historic mine in the southeast and what did it produce? / 4 6. What two (of five) northwest-southeast trending physiographic belts are found in the southeast corner of BC? / 2 7. The Southeast Region currently produces metallurgical coal from four mines in the Elk Valley; what deposit are they exploiting? / 1
8. Using the details contained in section 3.2.1 through 3.2.4 and Table 1 (on page 99 of Katay’s article ) complete the following table to get a sense of the resource abundance at each of these coal mines: / 8 Mine Name Coal Lands (Ha Production Capacity (Mt) Lifespan (Yrs.) Type of Coal: Fording River Greenhills Line Creek Elkview Back in section 3.2, Katay tells us that open-pit mining in this area began in 1968 with the introduction of large-scale equipment. In 2004, the then-five Elk Valley mines consolidated into Elk Valley Partnership and then, in 2008, they were bought by Teck Coal Limited. These open pit mines continue to produce ~25.5 MT of clean metallurgical coal (with a bit of thermal and PCI coal, too) annually. Coal mining is dirty work and Katay makes oblique reference to the fact that “all mining in the Elk Valley watershed has been subject to conditions laid out in the trans-border Elk Valley Water quality Plan” but she doesn’t mention that i n 2012, Teck Resources was charged under the Federal Fisheries Act for high rates of discharge of both selenium and calcite into the Fording River from both its Fording River and Greenhills coal operations. Teck pled guilty to the charges as their own logbooks showed elevated discharge rates for both components in the 2010-2012 years and they were fined $60 million for the 2012 contamination and, after an Order in Council, Teck was mandated to prepare a water quality plan to address their contamination, past, present and future. $60 Million, while not huge, is enough to make you think that having selenium and calcite in freshwater is a problem for some reason. Let’s find out why we would be concerned about it by scanning Environmental Impacts of Selenium Contamination: A Review on Current-Issues and Remediation Strategies in an Aqueous System by Okonji, Archari & Pernitsky (2021). Selenium is considered to be a micro-nutrient for humans – we need just a very little bit of it and it seems to help the functioning of our hearts, is anti-carcinogenic, can be an anti-viral and helps us resist the flu. Sounds like a winner! But, it turns out we have a very low dose threshold; more of it is not better but in fact, quite dangerous – for us and for other life forms. In Section 3.5 of the Okonji, Achari and Pernitsky (2021) article, you’ll find the optimal concentration range for selenium in freshwater and the National Academy of Sciences Institute of Medicine has set the tolerable upper safe limit for humans at 400 μg/day while other studies have placed the beneficial threshold from 63-135 μg/day. For humans, selenium intake normally comes
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