Another chapter closes in Flathead mining ban

Another chapter in the 40-year long effort to ban mining and energy development in the Flathead River drainage closed last month.

The British Columbia provincial government announced it had settled with Cline Mining Corp. for $9.8 million in mining claims the company lost when the province banned mining through the Flathead Watershed Conservation Act in 2011.

Cline had plans to develop an open-pit coal mine in the Foisey Creek drainage, which is in the headwaters of the North Fork of the Flathead River. Shortly after the province passed the law, Cline sued the province for $500 million. The company has since gone bankrupt.

The settlement mirrors the $10 million total the Nature Conservancy of Canada and the Nature Conservancy of Montana agreed to pay the province when legislation to ban mining and energy development in the region was first considered.

About $3 million of that payment came from Montana. The payment was made in 2012, according to Lesley Neilsen, Nature Conservancy of Canada’s communications director. Neilsen did not characterize the payment as a payoff for mining claims.

“How the province chose to disperse that was entirely at their discretion,” she said.

Since the mining ban was passed, the province has paid out a total of $21.56 million in tenure claims on the Flathead. Including the recent Cline settlement, eight of 10 claims have now been settled.

One claim held by the Tembec timber company was voluntarily forfeited in 2010. Penn West Petroleum holds the remaining claim and has taken no action to date, according to the British Columbia Ministry of Energy and Mines.

Canadian conservationist Harvey Locke, a strategic advisor with the Yukon to Yellowstone Initiative, likened the Cline settlement to a scene in an ongoing play.

“We’re at act two, scene three,” he said.

Locke said Montana still has to hold up “its end” and pass the North Fork Watershed Protection Act. He said the state of Montana also needs to pass legislation that permanently protects the Coal Creek State Forest from the energy development.

Locke also said the Canadian federal government should ban mining on lands it owns in the Flathead. The federal government last year agreed it would not mine Dominion Coal Blocks in the Flathead drainage, but there is no law to stop it from changing its mind, Locke noted.