Members of the Piekani First Nation have filed legal demands with the Alberta and federal governments to stop selenium pollution leaching from a closed coal mine owned by Australian speculators in the Crowsnest Pass.
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The letter gives Environment Alberta, Environment Canada and Evolve Power (formerly Montem Resources) until April 30 to comply with requests to clean up selenium contamination from Crowsnest Lake, a managed recreational fishery.
Two studies funded by the Alberta government and authored by the province’s aquatic scientist Colin Cook recently found widespread contamination in deep Rocky Mountain lakes from mines that closed 40 years ago.
These studies, published in 2024 and 2025, found that tissue collected from netted brown trout, lake trout, and mountain whitefish in Crowsnest Lake contained concentrations of selenium that exceeded state and federal guidelines. Crowsnest Lake receives runoff from the Tent Mountain Coal Mine, which the state certified for partial reclamation in the 1980s.
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Selenium concentrations in seafood were comparable to concentrations downstream of active mountaintop removal coal mining in the United States and Canada. The study added that further development “could push the Crowsnest fishery beyond sustainability.”
Selenium leached from exposed piles of waste rock gradually accumulates in organisms’ tissues, increasing in concentration as they move up the food chain, causing malformations and reproductive failure in exposed fish.
The legal claim says selenium contamination undermines Piekani First Nation Trevor Bastian’s constitutional right to “fish for food.” Bastian, the son of the late southern Alberta fish conservationist Harley Bastian, has brought the lawsuit to protect the Piekani people’s traditional right to fish in the Crowsnest and Oldman River systems with Edmonton firm Ackroyd LLP.
“High selenium concentrations in Crowsnest Lake, originating from waste rock from the Tent Mountain coal mine, are having a significant negative impact on the picani fishery and ultimately impacting Mr. Bastian’s cultural and indigenous rights,” the letter states.
The legal document calls for Environment Canada to require Evolve Power to “cease or control” continued releases of selenium from its coal properties, and for Environment Canada to direct the company to “implement a comprehensive selenium management plan to appropriately reclaim the Tent Mountain site and prevent further contamination or releases of selenium into Crowsnest Lake.”
The letter adds that if the government and the company fail to address the ongoing selenium contamination in the lake, Bastian will begin “legal proceedings seeking mandatory injunctive relief against all parties to accelerate the reclamation of contaminated Crowsnest Lake and river by a specified date in light of the excessive selenium concentrations noted in the May 2025 Cook study.”
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Dave Thomas, a spokesperson for Crowsnest Headwaters, a citizens’ group dedicated to protecting the Oldman River headwaters from coal mining, said the legal action is unprecedented and necessary given the Alberta government’s continued support for coal mining in the Rocky Mountains.
“The Alberta government and the energy regulators that have taken control of the industry have shown time and time again that they are in the pockets of Australian coal companies and don’t care what Albertans think about Rocky Mountain coal mining,” Thomas said. “The state’s regulatory process has been irrevocably seized.”
“As a result, we are working with Trevor Bastian and a group of community elders to elevate the issue of selenium poisoning to adjudication under federal law and federal courts, which are beyond the reach of the Daniel Smith administration.”
Bastian’s legal challenge is the latest development in the fight to protect the eastern slopes of the Alberta Rockies, a critical watershed in the prairie region, from coal mining and other industrial projects.
Koblund, an Alberta musician who lives downstream from the proposed Northback project, spearheaded a petition that gathered 178,000 signatures for legislation that would ban all new coal exploration and mining on the Eastern Slope.
Opponents say the ban includes Northback Holdings’ open-pit Grassy Mountain project, owned by Australian billionaire Gina Rinehart, and Valory Resources’ underground Blackstone project, which because of its size could directly impact central Alberta’s groundwater.
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Selenium pollution is a controversial issue, as the coal industry claims that it can be minimized using unproven technologies.
Elk Valley Resources (Glencore) mines continue to pollute British Columbia’s waterways with toxic levels of selenium, despite spending more than $1 billion on mitigation measures. The company was fined $3.6 million last year for failing to control nitrate and selenium pollution.
And when the Alberta Energy Regulator asked Montem Resources (now Evolve Power) in 2021 to improve its oversight of selenium and comply with the law when it proposed reopening its Tent Mountain open-pit mine, the company’s CEO refused and threatened to sue individual members of the agency.
At one controversial meeting, an executive compared dealing with regulators to an “interfering” proctologist exam.
Documents obtained by The Tyee last year show that Peter Doyle, then-CEO of Montem Resources, entered a two-year dispute with regulators fighting a request to establish oversight of Tent Mountain’s toxic contaminants. 
