Alberta’s coal industry experienced decline and resurgence in the mid-twentieth century, including the expansion of surface mine operations throughout the 1960s after a major energy transition saw the rise of oil and gas alongside the dramatic contraction of underground coal mining. Surface coal mining was seen as the best hope for profitable ongoing coal extraction. However, surface operations came at a cost as the destruction of the land threatened agriculture, watersheds, wilderness, and tourism. This destruction was most visible in the eastern foothills and Rocky Mountains. Many different groups of Albertans, including coal miners, urban residents, farmers, and outdoor enthusiasts called on the provincial government to impose restrictions on surface mine operations. Surface mining became a flashpoint for 1960s environmental activism and led to major 1970s environmental legislation. Mine reclamation became the centrepiece to a firmly expanding extractive ideology within Alberta – one that guaranteed the continued extraction of coal in a manner that promised to make as little long-term environmental impact as possible, satisfying the demands of both industry and activists. With the election of Peter Lougheed’s Progressive Conservatives in late 1971, public hearings brought these different voices to the table, leading to the passage of the 1973 Land Surface Conservation and Reclamation Act. These hearings and the policies they informed served to defuse public opposition through promoting reclamation as the solution to environmental problems, obscuring the ongoing destructiveness of strip mining through the promise of a future in which the land could be restored.
Green et al. (Sun,) studied this question.