Canadian coal mine could irrevocably damage the waters of Flathead Lake

The ecology of the Flathead basin is based on one substance: water.
While everyone knows about the lakes and rivers, many people don’t realize there is an entire system of subsurface water flowing through the valley. Surface waters from streams and lakes percolate into gravelly beds, “paleo-channels” that act as ground water pathways, said Ric Hauer, professor of limnology at the Flathead Lake Biological Station.
“The alluvial aquifer goes from valley wall to valley wall,” he said, indicating there is no place in the valley that is not part of the ground water system.
“Ground water typically flows at rates of meters per day,” Hauer said, but in the “preferential pathways” created by the constant movement of the river across the valley floor, water from the Flathead can percolate out and flow through surrounding gravels at rates of meters per second, returning to the river in a single day.
This makes the ground waters of the Flathead basin especially susceptible to infiltration by pollution, he said.
In areas of nutrient loading, he said, algae and insect life both boom.
“These floodplains are the primary places where water is cleaned,” Hauer said, equating the subsurface gravels of the valley with an aquarium filtration system.
Still, Hauer said, one of the biggest threats to the Lake’s health isn’t in Montana, but north, in British Columbia.
A proposed Canadian coal mine could irrevocably damage the waters of Flathead Lake and the entire Flathead Basin, Hauer said.
“At the mine site, there are bore holes,” he said, releasing water with a chemistry that would devastate the Flathead.
Hauer said the sample wells have rates of sulfates 18 times higher than the Lake, and nitrates 650 times as high. Nitrates, Hauer reminded, are a plant fertilizer that could lead to algae blooms and lowered oxygen levels in the Flathead’s waters.
Most worrisome, though, are the high rates of selenium. Selenium, Hauer said, causes kidney and liver failure. It causes neurological damage in children. And, he said, it concentrates in body tissue as you go up the food chain.
Selenium levels at the Canadian mine site are 57 times higher than those of Montana’s water.
Because of the gravelly composition and rapid subsurface flow rates in the Flathead Basin, Hauer said drinking wells could easily be contaminated if the mine is activated.
“The toxins from the mining will be in the domestic water supply, no question,” he said.
Because the project is out of the United States, Hauer said the only recourse Flathead dwellers have is to contact their elected officials and urge them to protest the project.