Water Not Coal clears hurdle as Corb Lund gathers petitions in Lethbridge

Southern Alberta Newspapers Photo by Joe Manio. OFFICIAL: Corb Lund (left), who helped spearhead the Water Not Coal petition campaign, chats with Lethbridge canvasser Al Olson at Bully’s Sport & Entertainment Centre in Lethbridge on June 7.

By Joe Manio
Southern Alberta Newspapers
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

The stacks of petition sheets piled up at Bully’s Sport & Entertainment Centre in Lethbridge on June 7 represented more than signatures.
They represented months of conversations at farmers’ markets, community events, kitchen tables and doorsteps across Alberta, all part of a grassroots effort supporters hope will reshape the future of coal development in the province.

Country musician and rancher Corb Lund stopped in Lethbridge to collect petition sheets from local canvassers as the Water Not Coal campaign entered its final days. Volunteers gathered to hand over their completed forms, swap stories from the campaign trail and celebrate a milestone many weren’t sure would be reached when the effort began earlier this year.

That milestone became official June 8 when Water Not Coal announced it had surpassed the minimum number of signatures required under Alberta’s Citizen Initiative Act, clearing a major hurdle in its effort to force a province-wide referendum on coal development in Alberta’s Eastern Slopes.

On June 10, Lund, campaign organizers and volunteers from across Alberta delivered the petition packages to Elections Alberta in Edmonton, beginning the formal verification process.

“Albertans showed up for their water, their land and their future,” Lund said in a statement released June 8. “Reaching this threshold proves what we’ve known all along — people care deeply about protecting our headwaters, our Rocky Mountains and our way of life.”

The petition seeks legislation prohibiting new coal mining and exploration on Alberta’s Eastern Slopes, including areas affected by the proposed Grassy Mountain and Blackstone mine projects. Supporters argue the issue extends far beyond those developments, touching the headwaters that feed the Oldman, South Saskatchewan, Athabasca, North Saskatchewan, Peace and Red Deer river systems.

For Lund, who spent much of the spring and early summer travelling Alberta to gather support while continuing to perform scheduled concerts and tours, the campaign was never about politics.

“It wasn’t urban people that brought me into this,” he told Southern Alberta Newspapers. “It was ranching families in western Alberta whose places were going to be affected by a strip mine. We have family land ourselves, so it’s pretty sympathetic to it. The rangeland has to be protected and so does the water.”

Throughout the afternoon, Lund posed for photographs, chatted with supporters and thanked volunteers who spent weeks collecting signatures. Many came to thank him for using his public profile to spearhead the campaign.

Among them was Lethbridge canvasser Al Olson, who gathered more than 1,200 signatures.

“As soon as I saw there was a water petition out there, I had to be part of it,” Olson said. “Without water, there is no life.”

That simple message has become one of the campaign’s defining themes.

“Everybody drinks water,” Lund said. “I drink the water. My mom drinks the water. The animals drink the water. We’re right in the line of fire.”

Water Not Coal reports more than 3,000 registered canvassers participated across Alberta, organizing thousands of signing events in communities large and small. 

Among the campaign’s more unusual awareness efforts was a multi-day horseback ride from Longview to Edmonton to raise awareness about coal development in the Rockies’ headwaters.

Laura Laing, a rancher, longtime advocate for protecting the Eastern Slopes and spokesperson for Water Not Coal, said the campaign succeeded because it united Albertans from a wide range of backgrounds.

“People from every corner of the province — rural and urban, ranchers and anglers, farmers and business owners — came together to defend the Eastern Slopes through this petition,” she said. “This is what democracy looks like when citizens lead.”

Supporters maintain the issue is as much economic as environmental.

Both Lund and Olson expressed surprise that more voices from Alberta’s multibillion-dollar agricultural sector have not publicly weighed in. 

They point to concerns surrounding selenium contamination and the potential consequences for agricultural exports if international markets perceive risks to Alberta products.

Olson compared the situation to the long-lasting trade impacts that followed Alberta’s mad cow disease case more than two decades ago.

“Can you imagine what they would do if they decided there was selenium in the water?” he said. “It would harm agribusiness in southern Alberta and beyond.”

Yet even as volunteers celebrated the  June 7 achievement, both Lund and Olson emphasized that the hardest work may still lie ahead.

If Elections Alberta validates the petition, supporters will move into the next stage of the citizen initiative process, requiring them to convince Albertans across the province that protecting the Eastern Slopes deserves their support at the ballot box.

“If we get on the referendum, then we have to convince half the province about it,” Lund said.

Olson agreed.

“We cannot stop now,” he said. “This is only phase one.”

The June 7 gathering offered a chance to reflect on how far the movement has come.

Delivery to Elections Alberta on June 10 may mark the end of the petition drive, but supporters hope it will be the beginning of the next chapter in their effort to protect Alberta’s headwaters.

As volunteers have spent months reminding Albertans, water is one issue that belongs to everyone.