How a US owner’s dream of ‘clean’ coal left behind acid, arsenic and a warning for today. A Tyee investigation.

When left unattended, large piles of coal can spontaneously combust, which is what happened on Campbell River’s oceanside loading dock on Sept. 24, 2019.

The coal pile and the mine from which it came had just been abandoned by its owner, Thomas Clarke. A nursing-home owner turned coal magnate, Clarke had developed a reputation for just this kind of disappearing act, having left a trail of bankrupt mines across the United States. Now, as firefighters worked to extinguish the blaze, the Quinsam Coal mine was about to join them.

A half-hour’s drive west of the dock and its burning pile of coal, the mine site was leaking sulphuric acid and arsenic into a salmon-bearing watershed. Investigators warned that accumulating gases underground might explode.

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