Country music artist and southern Alberta rancher Corb Lund says his team has collected enough signatures to compel the province to take action to stop coal mining on the eastern slopes of the Rockies.

Lund didn’t say on Monday how many signatures the Water Not Coal campaign received, but almost 178,000 were required by the citizen initiative petition rules.

The next step is to hand the names over to Elections Alberta for verification.

Lund said he will do that on the final official day of the petition campaign on Wednesday.

The petition asked signers to endorse stopping coal-mining on the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains, on the grounds it needlessly risks harm to the environment, particularly to water.

Lund argues coal mining in the foothills threatens the entire Eastern Slopes region and the headwaters that feed the Athabasca, Oldman, South Saskatchewan, North Saskatchewan, Peace and Red Deer river systems.

A successful petition would force Premier Danielle Smith’s government to consider passing a law banning coal mining or sending it to a provincewide referendum.

In December 2025, Lund applied and got the official OK — but Bill 14 legislative changes later that month by Premier Danielle Smith’s government meant his petition was retroactively cancelled and he had to start over.

The new application was approved at the end of January and since then, canvassers across the province have been working to collect support.

Elections Alberta rules for citizen initiative petitions requires at least 177,732 verified signatures, representing 10 per cent of the total number of votes cast in the last provincial election.

— With files from Karen Bartko, Global News

More to come…