The threat of coal mining in the Canadian Flathead became an issue for Kalispell resident Wayne Herman more than three decades ago when he read about it in Montana Outdoors magazine.

“Here, only eight miles into British Columbia along the North Fork of the Flathead River which forms the western boundary of Glacier National Park, a giant mining company plans to remove high-grade coking coal from two ‘hills,’ clean it on the mine site and then ship it to Japan,” the article said. “In addition to the actual mining, the proposal could bring a new town, a railroad, a blacktop highway, power lines and perhaps a natural gas line to what is now a semi-primitive, undeveloped, unpopulated region.”

That project, and others like it, never came to pass, largely because Montanans were stirred into a vigilant resistance that persisted for the next 36 years.

“This is what started it all,” Herman said, referring to the article written by Bill Schneider in 1974.

Within a couple of months, Herman helped organize a community meeting that he chaired at Flathead High School that attracted about 70 concerned people.

“Our concern was that coal would be drifting all the way down our drainage,” Herman recalls.

A steering committee was formed, leading to the establishment of the Flathead Coalition, a grass-roots resistance to mining in the Canadian Flathead that would have certain consequences for Montana’s North Fork Flathead River and Flathead Lake.

“People just came out of the woodwork. It was tremendous,” Herman said, noting that the coalition was made up of 26 organizations. And they weren’t just conservation groups; they included chambers of commerce, civic groups and even outfits such as the Flathead Auto Dealers Association.

“Because so many groups were involved, it got a lot of attention and brought the issue forward,” Herman said.

Indeed it did. Potential mining in the Canadian Flathead captured the attention of a young congressman, Max Baucus, and a series of Republican and Democrat Montana governors: Ted Schwinden, Stan Stephens, Marc Racicot, Judy Martz and Brian Schweitzer.

All pushed for an agreement with the province of British Columbia that would protect Montana waters from the effects of mining north of the border.

Schweitzer finally got that agreement last week, signing a memorandum of understanding with British Columbia Premier Gordon Campbell that expressly bans all mining and oil and gas development in the Canadian Flathead and Montana’s North Fork.

Schweitzer said his involvement amounted to running a lap with the baton, when many others have run laps before him and more will run laps after to ensure the agreement holds up.

One person he mentioned by name was Rich Moy, who has been the state’s point man on Canadian mining issues since the threat of the coal mine on Cabin Creek in the 1970s.

“It’s been a very long process and I’m extremely happy with the outcome. But it’s been a roller-coaster ride for many years,” said Moy, who recently retired from the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation. “For a long time, B.C. really wanted to put a mine in the Canadian Flathead.”

Moy said state government got involved because of the concerns raised by organizations such as the Flathead Coalition.

“There was an enormously large swell of opposition on our side of the border,” he said.

By 1985, with the Cabin Creek mine still a threat, the state sought intervention from the International Joint Commission, a committee that resolves disputes over the U.S.-Canadian Boundary Waters Treaty of 1909.

Moy said he was involved with a three-year scientific assessment to determine potential impacts from the mine, with Baucus (who had become a U.S. senator) securing funding for the assessment. The commission considered the assessment results and made several recommendations in 1988.

“The commission recommended that the mine could not move forward unless the impacts could be mitigated,” Moy said. “The bottom line is many of the impacts could not be mitigated.”

One of the most important recommendations was that British Columbia and Montana should work toward an agreement on what land uses should be allowed in the transboundary Flathead Basin, said Moy, who has served as chairman of the Flathead Basin Commission, a state organization established in the wake of the International Joint Commission process.

“I’ve worked for 25 years for that to get negotiated and this is the closest we’ve seen to that happening,” Moy said of last week’s memorandum of understanding.

Apart from the controversy and political tangles, the Cabin Creek mining project faded away, largely because of economic conditions.

Dave Hadden, current president of the Flathead Coalition, recalls getting involved as a University of Montana student in 1976 and producing the coalition’s first brochure.

After Cabin Creek, Hadden said, “the issue went dormant for about 12 years, but the Flathead Coalition board of directors, in their wisdom, maintained the coalition’s status, because everyone knew that the coal was still in the ground and that it would come back up, sooner or later.”

And it did, he said, “bigger than ever.”

In 2001, a Canadian firm, Cline Mining Corp., proposed a new coal project on the Cabin Creek mine site. It was met with stiff opposition, with the Flathead Coalition reactivated and other groups such as the National Parks Conservation Association and a growing number of British Columbia citizens getting involved.

“We have more friends north of the border that are concerned about preserving the good things they have up there,” Hadden said. “From the beginning to today, it certainly has been citizens responding to threats to their way of life and what’s valuable.

Faced with controversy and pressure, the provincial government put an end to the new Cabin Creek by imposing a moratorium on coal prospecting in the lower third of the Canadian Flathead basin in 2005.

Not long after that, Cline Mining announced plans to pursue another mountaintop-removal coal-mining operation on Foisey Creek, one of the northernmost headwater streams in the Flathead River system.

Then came coalbed methane development proposals. And last summer, a Canadian company pursued exploration for gold in the basin, recently reporting that it had discovered high-quality gold deposits.

“It was one proposal after another that we had to stop,” Moy said.

Soon after Schweitzer was elected in 2004, the state of Montana put a priority on gathering baseline environmental information in the Canadian Flathead. The goal was to document existing conditions before any type of mining operation got under way, in order to demonstrate any impacts on Montana water quality, fish and wildlife.

Ric Hauer got involved with the mining issue as a graduate student at the University of Montana’s Flathead Lake Biological Station in 1976. He focused his doctoral research on the North Fork Flathead River through 1981.

“I’ve always had something going on up the North Fork,” Hauer said. But over the last few years, his efforts have been concentrated north of the border.

Very little was known about the northernmost part of the Canadian Flathead, Hauer said, because prior to the Cabin Creek mining proposals, there was no need to pursue research north of that site.

Hauer has supervised research aimed at comparing environmental conditions in the Canadian Flathead and conditions in the Elk River drainage, a separate watershed to the north that has been impacted by coal mining for decades.

The research was particularly concentrated in the Flathead’s Foisey Creek area below the proposed Cline Mine site, and in an Elk River tributary called Michelle Creek, which has been impacted by the nearby Coal Mountain mine. The two areas have “very fundamentally similar” geological and hydrological features, Hauer said.

“What we found was really dramatic,” Hauer said. “We found in excess of 1,000 times the concentration of nitrates in the coal mining affected water, 100 times the sulfur values and in excess of 10 times the selenium values.”

In the clean and cold Flathead waters, in excess of 100 species of aquatic insects were found, many of them sensitive.  But in Michelle Creek, only 15 of the most tolerant species were found.

In addition, Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks expanded its fisheries research into the Canadian Flathead, finding over several years that Foisey Creek and other tributaries provide important spawning habitat for bull trout and cutthroat trout that have matured in Flathead Lake.

One year, 75 bull trout redds were detected in a two-mile stretch of the Flathead River just below its convergence with Foisey Creek.

 Other research has been done to document how grizzly bears, wolverines, elk and other wildlife use habitat on both sides of the border.

Combined, all of the research added up in support of Montana’s position on mining.

“I think it will become a model case where compelling science coupled with resolute policy and relentless political pressure formed three legs of a stool that basically put British Columbia in an untenable position,” Hauer said.

An international element was added to the political pressure when United Nations representatives visited the area last year, meeting with Hauer and several other scientists. Hauer said that resulted in a report that was sent to the British Columbia government in January.

The report concluded that mining in the Flathead would have “incompatible” impacts on Glacier-Waterton International Peace Park, a designated World Heritage Site.

“For 35 years, British Columbia has presented a stonewall position to maintaining their mining, coalbed methane, oil and gas [development] in the Flathead Valley,” Hauer said. “One might think its only coincidental that they capitulated to Montana’s request at this moment. But I think any reasonable person would come to the conclusion that has been going on a long time .... and the three-legged stool is what drove this to the conclusion where we’re at.”

Reporter Jim Mann may be reached at 758-4407 or by e-mail at jmann@dailyinterlake.com