In the weeks since torrential rains began pummeling Alberta, the focus has, understandably, been on the human victims—those who lost their homes and towns.

But while Alberta Oil Magazine touts the flooding as an opportunity for oil companies to “start winning a few public relations battles,” what have been the effects of these extreme weather events on Alberta’s infrastructure and the multi-billion-dollar oil and gas industries that rely upon it?

With all the devastation in Calgary, it’s easy to forget that the story began with days of flooding around Fort McMurray, sparking fears that tailing ponds might overflow or embankments erode and spread toxic chemicals throughout the Mackenzie River Basin.

Two pipeline leaks have been directly linked to the heavy rains, which many scientists have said are a sign of what is to come as climate change progresses.

In the Turner Valley, a pipeline carrying sour gas containing one per cent hydrogen sulfide was ruptured by floating debris, prompting the evacuation of 50 residences within a 100-mile radius. Although the operator Legacy Oil and Gas moved to shut the line off from the source, it was impossible to access the line itself due to deepening flood waters.

On Tuesday Enbridge confirmed that heavy rainfall caused a leak of about 750 barrels of crude oil from the Wood Buffalo Pipeline (Line 37). The line between Fort McMurray and Cheecham was restarted at a reduced pressure “pending completion of further geotechnical analysis in the incident area.”

Fears of flooding damage also prompted Enbridge to shut down the 540 km Athabasca line between Cold Lake and Hardisty, 200 km southeast of Edmonton, and the Waupisoo line to Edmonton from Cheecham Terminal.

That, along with the closure of the iconic Trans-Canada Highway, leaves the cash-strapped Alberta government, where oil sands make up 29 per cent of the economy, still calculating the loss in revenue.

And then there was the case of the Lubicon Lake spill. On June 23 Penwest Exploration was hampered by flooding as they rushed to deal with a produced water leak near Red Earth, Alberta, approximately 170 km east of Peace River. But the issue didn’t come from flooding in the area, but rather flooding at Penwest's Calgary-based head office, reminding us that a disaster plan is only as good as a company’s ability to follow through on it.

The Calgary office of the newly inaugurated Alberta Energy Regulator (AER) was also closed due to flooding. It re-opened on June 28, but spokesperson Bob Curran said their inspectors have been run off their feet since the flood struck.

He says that the agency will continue to inspect pipelines based on reported incidences, but ultimately the onus is on the companies themselves to ensure the safety of their operations.

“We have staff across the province, but we've also got about 400,000 km of pipelines in Alberta, so what we will do is what we would always do, which is inspect pipelines where there may be more likelihood of a problem, or where we've had problems in the past.”

Greenpeace's Mike Hudema says the environmental organization has been reticent to speak out thus far in respect for victims of the flood. But he does have misgivings about the AER's ability to handle this kind of catastrophe, particularly in light of the recent streamlining of the regulatory process.

"We had questions about the safety of Alberta's pipeline infrastructure before, and after the last week we have even more about how prepared pipelines are for extreme weather events like floods, that we know are going to increase in the coming years and decades because of climate change."

Other signs of damage have appeared all over the province. On June 27 already stressed emergency workers were given another challenge when Bonnybook Bridge collapsed, almost sending five rail cars filled with petroleum product that may have been tar sands diluent into the Bow River. Engineers blamed the failure on gravel that had been scoured away by the fast-moving currents. Only divers could have detected the damage.

John Pomeroy, of the University of Saskatchewan, told the Canadian Press that the flooding has altered the landscape of the Rocky Mountains irrevocably. He described an entire mountainside collapsing. "A side of it sloughed off and a large section created a debris flow 50 metres wide through a little creek you could have jumped across."

In Edmonton, which was spared the worst of the damage, heavy rains have nonetheless led to an outbreak of unusually large sinkholes. The month of June saw more than 111 mm of rain, where the average is 87 mm, overwhelming drainage systems and flooding apartments.

Dr. John Clague who holds the chair in natural hazard research at Simon Fraser University says that the primary damage to the landscape from the extreme flooding will appear in the widening of river channels that must be taken to account in the recovery efforts.

With underwater pipelines, engineers must pay attention to the depths of scouring that can occur during flooding. Extreme caution is required when placing this kind of infrastructure in areas sensitive hydrological events such as torrential rain. “When you look at fixed infrastructure—pipelines and highways—you're looking at infrastructure that has to maybe not be bullet proof, but you have to have a plan B if you have one of these storms over a period of 50 years or 100 years.”

This issue becomes much more serious when dealing with pipelines that run east to west, such as the proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway and Kinder Morgan pipelines. East-west pipelines—more than the north-south lines that have been typical in Alberta and Saskatchewan—cross an extraordinary number of watersheds. Each crossing is vulnerable to extreme changes in the movement of water.

Although he’s reticent to comment on the specifics, University of Western Ontario professor of civil and environmental engineering Slobodan Simonovic says he doesn’t think that operators and government are paying enough attention to these kinds of disasters when planning oil and gas pipelines. “They're talking about environmentally sensitive areas, but I don't think the impact of disasters has been taken into consideration at all.”

Simonovic, author of Systems Approach to Management of Disasters: Methods and Applications, says colleagues in the Calgary area have been working around the clock to deal with the extraordinary amount of damage. “I don’t think they’ve been sleeping."

He reiterates that the best way to deal with events like this is to recognize and move to mitigate the effects of climate change on infrastructure.

“One of the very serious problems that is becoming very obvious with Canada is much more frequent occurrences of these extreme events. I'm talking on both sides: floods and droughts," he says. "If we continue to ignore them, as our government is currently doing, and we don't include them in our planning of the design in the future infrastructure and in the maintenance of the existing infrastructure, if we don't take into consideration the change of the land use and do not implement regulations that prevent further development in these areas, we’re just going to continue increasing the damage from event to event.”

Hudema agrees that the floods present an opportunity for the Alberta government to change its stance on climate change. "The question is, is Alberta ready for the type of horrific incidents that we saw in the past few weeks in this province? A lot needs to be done and currently the question is whether the government is willing to put in the resources, not only to deal with the immediate impacts, but also to improve the system in the future."

Image Credit: Premier Alison Redford via Flickr

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A failing rail bridge could dump train cars possibly full of tar sands diluent into the swollen Bow River this morning.*

According to emergency personnel, six cars—five full of petroleum-based fuel products and one empty—are slowly sinking toward the water.

“The bridge is continuing to drop as we speak, so that distance between the failure point and where the bridge decking is, is starting to open up more,” he said. “It appears that the bridge is failing.”

Ed Greenberg, a spokesman for Canadian Pacific Railway (TSX:CP) says the cars were heading east when they derailed.

"They are all upright," he said of the derailed cars. "There are no leaks reported and no injuries reported as a result of the incident."

Josh Wingrove from the Globe and Mail recently reported on twitter that the cars are carrying a product used to dilute tar sands bitumen.

Calgary rail cars are carrying diluent, CP says. That's the stuff used to water down oil sands bitumen for shipment.

— Josh Wingrove (@josh_wingrove) June 27, 2013

Greenberg told CTV News Calgary that the bridge was inspected on Saturday and has been used several times since. Rail bridge inspection is under federal jurisdiction.

Mayor Naheed Nenshi said that he knows many railway employees been laid off and speculates that too many of them might have been bridge inspectors.

Acting fire chief Ken Uzeloc likened the pile-up of multiple emergencies to a training exercise.

He worries that a fire may cause black smoke to billow onto the already traffic-choked Deerfoot Trail expressway, causing more damage.

"Each car could have about 80,000 pounds of product in that car and they're all flammable liquids, so if something does go wrong, we could have a very big pile of burning material. And also then you have the smoke and the combustibles in the air that come off that," acting fire chief Ken Uzeloc told the Canadian Press.

Workers are currently tethering the cars together, trying to prevent the cars and their cargo from falling into the Bow River below.

This latest breakdown comes just over a month after a CP derailment 150 km east of Saskatoon. Earlier this year, a derailment near White River, Ontario leaked up to 400 barrels of oil into a remote area 700 kilometers northeast of Toronto.

Given the current discussion surrounding pipeline safety, these failures have prompted Greenpeace’s Keith Stewart to ask whether we should be transporting oil at all.

“Derailments are not uncommon. According to Emile Therien, Past President of the Canada Safety Council, there were 103 derailments in 2011 on ‘main tracks’ (i.e. the lines between stations and or terminals) and 485 derailments on “non-main tracks” (mainly in yards or terminals).”

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has repeatedly stated that North America must choose between rail and pipelines to transport oil.

“That is nonsense,” writes Stewart. “[T]he Canadian government is basically saying we have to pick our poison, while hoping no one notices that there are healthier options on the menu.”

*Update 28/06/13 3:00pm PST: These train cars have since been removed.

Image Credit: Malcom via Flickr

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As the people of southern Alberta begin to put their lives back together, the question has become whether this historic disaster could be the result of climate change. The answer from scientists has been a resounding maybe.

Yes, record high temperatures in the north caused the weather pattern that brought about unprecedented rainfall at the foot of the Rocky Mountains. But no single weather pattern, no matter how rare, can be attributed to climate change. 

However, in the case of Calgary itself, there is another lesson to be learned—it’s time to start listening to scientists.

Andrew Nikiforuk points out that experts from the insurance industry to budget-starved government organizations have been warning of a massive flood in the Bow River and Elbow River for years. He calls this Calgary’s “Manhattan moment.”

But Canada Research Counsel Chair in Natural Hazard Research John Clague says the problem goes back much further, and it’s a story that feels eerily familiar to those who are interested in the debate over climate change.

Evidence of the likelihood of this kind of disastrous flooding has existed for more than 30 years. In 1979, the municipal government of Calgary commissioned Montreal Engineering Company (Monenco) to do a study of the flooding hazards at the confluence of the Bow and Elbow Rivers. The results were prescient.

Although Clague says that this flood is most likely worse than anything in recorded history, there were three major floods between 1875 and 1902, then again in 1932, followed by decades of relative dryness. The study predicted a major flooding event every 70 years or so.

With this in mind, Monenco presented Calgary with a number of strategies for limiting the predicted millions of dollars worth of damage (thanks to development since then, the number is more likely to be in the billions).

“At the heart of the recommendations was a floodplain management scheme in which hazardous areas would be officially delineated. New development would be prevented or discouraged in the hazardous areas, and existing structures would be required to meet certain ‘floodproofing’ standards,” University of Calgary’s G D Osborn wrote in Geologic And Hydrologic Hazards In Calgary.

The standards went into public consultation, inciting ire on the part of residents. Those who stood against the plans saw them as an economic impediment. They argued that there were holes in the science, and that because they’d never personally experienced such a disaster, it seemed unlikely.

“This report was made public and there was a huge amount of resistance to it,” Clague says. “People thought that this was intruding on their freedom. Those flood-prone surfaces were developed and now we see the consequences of that.”

What this comes down to is a problem that has become familiar in the debate over climate change: political obstinacy ending in disaster. The extraordinary damage wrought in the last week is the end of a Rube-Goldberg machine set rolling in the early 1980s.

There’s no reason to fault the current administration. The Monenco report was buried long before Naheed Nenshi came to power, its warnings consigned to a few paragraphs in a university textbook.

“But it does show you how politics can get in the way of proper planning,” says Clague.

This kind of blindness a global problem. It’s the same problem that has caused the deaths of almost 1000 in Uttarakhand in India. In December 2012, the Ministry of Forests Environment and Forests there declared the “entire watershed around the 135-km stretch between Gaumukh and Uttarakashi, along the Bhagirathi River, as an eco-sensitive zone under the Environment Protection Act, 1986.”

The declaration should have banned all construction in the area, but the government there felt this would be an impediment to economic growth.

In 2009 I came across a graveyard in the town of Soma on the east coast of Japan, Fukushima prefecture, that was dedicated to the victims of a 1960 tsunami, caused by a massive earthquake in Chile. Concrete barriers shaped like giant jacks blocked the surf from the shore. Their weight had gifted those who lived around them a sense of freedom. That long ago disaster was all but forgotten. Not far away, they had built a nuclear reactor.

The only way to move forward now is to learn. Calgary should be the last piece of evidence Canada requires to begin paying attention to the future. Thinking ahead of the disasters.

This lesson will only become more potent as the dire predictions of climate scientists come to fruition in the next few decades. As global temperatures rise, there will be more evaporation from the warming ocean, and the warmer atmosphere will be able to hold more water. This could lead to more rain. Alberta has historically been vulnerable to extreme weather and as the decades pass, it will likely grow worse, unless we act.

Here we can find a positive roll model in Japan. Since the 1920s that country has poured massive amounts of money into earthquake safe building techniques. Rather than waiting for a new disaster to rebuild, they sought innovative new ways to work around the problem. Imagine what might have happened in 2011 if most of the high-rises in Tokyo hadn’t been built to sway with the shaking of the earth during an earthquake. The death toll might have struck closer to the millions.

The lesson here is not just for Calgary. There are other cities in Canada that are exposed to the whims of our changing climate. Last year’s record landslide in Hope, BC that killed four people was a terrible sign of what is to come.

Cities that build near water are particularly vulnerable. “It's true in Kamloops and arguably in Vancouver,” says Clague, who teaches at Simon Fraser University. “We've allowed a huge amount of development on the Fraser River flood plain.”

Alberta Premier Alison Redford estimates ten years for recovery in southern Alberta. She has already pledged $1 billion from the provinces cash-strapped budget.

With that money, there is an opportunity to do it better this time around, given the right amount of structural support. Clague says the solutions will be expensive, but the benefits far outweigh the costs.

We’ve all made some “bad decisions,” says Clague. “That's kind of the way it is. We learn from our mistakes.”

Image Credit: Wayne Stadler via Flickr

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