For a Nova Scotia coal miner, if the mine doesn't get you, the coal dust will. Back in the day, at least the unions were strong and after many hard-fought, occasionally bloody battles with Devco (the crown corporation that used to run the coal mines), a coal miner could earn a decent living.

Devco, on the other hand, struggled in the face of increasing labour and shipping costs for its bulky bread and butter. As environmental awareness climbed toward its recent zenith, coal's lung-cuttingly high sulfur content, the millions of tonnes of solid waste it gave us for Christmas each year and the dangerous chemicals it leached into our water, made it passe with provincial legislators, who demanded reduced emissions.

In 1998, crippled by more than a billion dollars in debt, Devco was privatized and the bell tolled for Nova Scotian coal. Now, 10 years later, we're still addicted to the coal junk.

The 3.3 million tonnes of coal we burn each year provides more than 70 percent of our juice. The difference is that the vast majority of our coal now comes from foreign mines, mainly in Colombia (41 percent this year) and the United States (36 percent this year, mostly from Pennsylvania).

On average, US coal and particularly Colombian coal have much lower sulfur content than the local stuff. "There is no way we could meet local emissions standards with local coal," says Margaret Murphy, Nova Scotia Power's spokeswoman.

It is this low-sulfur Colombian coal that some have dubbed "blood coal." From their perspective, we're exporting the old environmental and human costs of coal mining in exchange for lower labour costs down south. Rachel Brighton, editor of the Nova Scotia Policy Review, published an editorial about Nova Scotia's Colombian coal imports in June. "I wondered every time I switched on a light, am I inflicting harm on Colombians?" she explains.

All of the approximately 1.4 million tonnes of coal we imported from Colombia last year came from one infamous mine in the northwest: Cerrejon. It is the largest open pit mine in the world and it is owned by three mining giants: BHP Billiton, Anglo American and Xstrata.

Cerrejon is also the only supplier Nova Scotia Power will reveal by name. Murphy says that if the names of its suppliers were public "it would hurt our negotiating position." Cerrejon is the exception because activists have already made NSP's link to the mine very public.

According to Chris Arsenault, a Phil Lind Fellow at UBC who visited the mine as a journalist, Cerrejon has a 20-year history of violently displacing indigenous and Afro-Colombian farming communities, including Manantial, Caracoli and, most notoriously, Tabaco. Arsenault has written that "the village of Tabaco, a sustainable farming community populated primarily by Afro-Colombians, was destroyed by Cerrejon's bulldozers in 2001 to make way for more coal exports."

Colombian farmers, Arsenault reports, blame Canadian power companies for fueling unaccountable violence in their homeland. He says mine officials admit to employing "private vigilantes" to secure the mine.

Since about the time Nova Scotia's coal industry wheezed its last silicosis-infused cough, the annual production at Cerrejon has almost doubled, necessitating the acquisition of new farmland from old villages. The mine continues to grow to meet the needs of a western world that can't kick its habit, and the villages of nearby Roche, Pantilla, Chancleta and Tamaquito are up next.

Given how the land acquisition went down in Tabaco, that's bad news for the indigenous Wayuu and the Afro-Colombian peoples of those villages. According to a report by Atlantic Regional Solidarity Network, the village "disappeared in August 2001 when its residents were forcibly displaced, its church and other buildings razed to the ground and the land incorporated into the mine."

Arsenault calls the forced removal of people with generations of connection to the land "the worst kind of public policy. There were 700 people living sustainably in Tabaco for generations, living and working the land. Now they are living with other families in one-room shacks on the outskirts of the nearby cities selling gum and cell-phone cards."

Murphy defends her company's choice of suppliers on many fronts, explaining that NSP carefully reviews mining practices. Although their main purchasing critera are sulfur content, heating quality and price, Murphy says labour standards are also important.

"Suppliers are scrutinized for compliance with international industry standards for environment, labour and safety," she tells me. She adds that the owners of Cerrejon are ISO 14001 certified, meaning they undergo independent reviews on their environmental practices. "We meet with our suppliers several times per year and typically visit their mines once per year. They are as good or better than Canadian standards, they have unions in place and negotiate with miners and the treatment of workers and families is also a factor."

Margaret Murphy, spokesperson for Nova Scotia Power, won't comment on the controversial forced relocation of 700 villagers by Cerrejon mine in Colombia, from which our province imported about about 41 percent of our coal this year. She doesn't say whether NSP considers this practice when selecting its coal suppliers.

Instead, she refers me to a 48-page report entitled Cerrejon Coal and Social Responsibility: An Independent Review of Impacts and Intent. The report was commissioned by the owners of Cerrejon. Its lead author is John Harker, president of Cape Breton University.

Murphy says that the report vindicates the practices of Cerrejon's owners and that the mining companies are following the recommendations in the report. But Chris Arsenault, a Phil Lind Fellow at the University of British Columbia, who visited the mine as a journalist, disagrees.

"That's simply crazy," says Arsenault. "The people who work at the mine might have good employment, but what UCB found in their report makes it clear that the company didn't follow proper protocol in the land acquisition process."

I found a copy of the report on the Nova Scotia Policy Review website (policyreview.ca), courtesy of editor Rachel Brighton. "The report was very carefully written," she says. "But in my reading there was an environmental problem---the pollution of water supplies---and it implies that the mining companies are currently not credible and transparent."

Harker writes that mining in Colombia has a "poor reputation, often deserved," and that the communities around the mine "have found it difficult to maintain past activities or develop new ones during the time in which Cerrejon has been in operation." His team found little public confidence in the credibility of the mine's emissions monitoring program, and he writes that "the Union complains that the company minimizes the number of incidents of dust-related diseases...these are also heard in the communities surrounding the mine."

Harker adds that the families of Tabaco have been left "divided and bitter...waiting for financial compensation as well as believing that a new community will be developed." He recommends that Cerrejon compensate the families, plus interest and inflation and "fashion a new approach which does emphasize clear consultation and negotiation practices and strategies."

This, says Arsenault, is precisely what mining companies want to avoid. " could be replaced for just one- or two-million dollars," he says. By contrast, the mine, owned by multinational giants BHP Billiton, Anglo American and Xstrata, reported $1.5 billion revenue in 2007. "They spend more on public relations than on addressing this issue because they don't want to set a precedent," says Arsenault.

Brighton says that some responsibility for that inaction should fall to the buyers of the Cerrejon coal. "If we're concerned with mining here we should be equally concerned for Colombia," she says. She calls for more transparency by Nova Scotia Power, saying the company has never proven that its coal is blood-free or sustainable.

According to the Harker report, the lack of transparency goes all the way down to the source. "An effort should be made by Cerrejon to ensure that all stakeholders, from the local, to the national and international, better understand what the company is trying to do and how it goes about it," writes Harker.

Arsenault goes further, saying that, as a Cerrejon buyer, NSP should publicly demand better practices by the mine. "New Brunswick Power wrote a simple letter to mine owners about negotiating with the former residents," he says. "NS Power could just come out and say, 'people lost land because of our fuel; please negotiate giving land back to them.'" He also argues for prioritizing Canadian fuel sources until renewable fuels are more widely available. "Shipping coal across the ocean intrinsically doesn't make sense," he says.

NSP counters that it is practising due diligence, ensuring we purchase the lowest emitting, highest quality, most affordable options from reputable companies meeting international labour and safety standards. Land acquisitions, community relocations and shipping are, according to Murphy, beyond the company's scope of responsibility.

"Mining practices are the purview of the companies that are mining and transporting coal," she says. "The industry standard is that our footprint is based on our own activities, not that of shipping companies."

Murphy says that NSP has taken numerous steps to reduce its dependence on coal, including investments in wind power, tidal power, waste heat recovery and consumer conservation programs and has even considered importing nuclear power from New Brunswick. As a result, the company hasn't built a new coal facility since 1992, despite an increased consumption of two percent per year.

Even with NSP's best efforts, she says, our coal dependence isn't going away any time soon. "Transformation is not something that occurs in a year. We recognize the need for change, but it's not something you can just switch on or off."