Nearly one year after the catastrophic collapse of the Mount Polley mine tailings pond, which sent an estimated 25 million cubic metres of contaminated mining waste and water into Quesnel Lake, the project is permitted to partially reopen.

The B.C. government approved a permit to temporarily restart the gold and copper mine at half capacity even though the company has no long-term plan to deal with an abundance of water on site. A backlog of water, which overburdened the tailings storage pit, contributed to the accident last August according to an engineering panel that investigated the incident.

Mines Minister Bill Bennett said the province will approve the short-term permit while the mine figures out how to deal with the excess water.

“Our choice was: Do we wait for them for a year to do absolutely everything that shows they have a long-term plan, or let them operate for a few months and get people working again and allow the company to earn some revenue, given there’s no negative impact to the environment?” Bennett said.

The Mount Polley Mining Corporation, owned by Imperial Metals, has until June 30, 2016 to craft a long-term water treatment plan. The province will review the mine’s operation permit at that time.

Major Water Contamination Concerns Remain

Despite assurances from the Ministry of Environment and mining officials that no permanent damage was caused to the lake, locals remain skeptical.

Until recently Mount Polley provided drinking water to residents drawing directly from Quesnel Lake or the river. But according to locals, the mine decided to cancel that program.

Greg and Ingrid Ritson, who live on and draw water from the Quesnel River in Likely said the company has always insisted the water was safe to drink but provided them for months with bottled water.

“I think water’s one of the biggest issues we’ve got to deal with,” Greg Ritson said.

Ritson said he and his wife shower in water they draw from the lake and the effects of doing so have him worried.

“You’ve got to watch. You will find if you shower every day, you will get dry spots, like I’ve never had in my life,” he said.

“But there’s lots of people here that have horrendous problems: breaking out in skin rashes and stuff that they’ve never, ever had. And no body can tell you why. If you ask what are the long-term effects of the chemicals in the water, they’ll say ‘oh they’re fine,’” he said. “But if they’re fine why couldn’t we drink them? There seems to be an imbalance there.”

Ritson said the initial water bans warned people not to drink or bathe in the water and to keep their pets away. Now with no substantial change, he said, “we’re supposed to bathe in it. Where did they come up with that?”

Fisheries biologist Richard Holmes near his home in Likely, B.C. Photo: Carol Linnitt

Major Remediation and Fisheries Questions Unanswered

“People are still wondering what the future holds for them and for Quesnel Lake,” fisheries biologist Richard Holmes told DeSmog Canada.

“Even though we’ve been at it for months now there are still a lot of questions left unanswered.”

Sitting in his home, a five-minute drive from the Quesnel River, Holmes said he is left wondering what the spill means for his community and the lake's aquatic species.

“You saw the damage done to Hazeltine Creek when you were here in August of last year, but even though they say that’s been repaired there’s so much left to be done. “

Holmes said sediment was dispersed from top to bottom in Polley Lake immediately adjacent to the mine and throughout Quesnel Lake for many months.

“We think the impacts will be long term but we just don’t know how severe they will be.”

“We can only hope the regulatory bodies do their job and that the regulations become much stronger. We have to expect better from these people.”

Recently groups in Alaska have expressed alarm at the B.C. government’s mismanagement of mines. There are currently 10 advanced mining projects proposed or operation along the B.C./Alaska transboundary watershed that Alaskans are saying pose a significant threat to the State’s fisheries and tourism.

“The world is watching us,” Holmes said.

“We have to keep stressing to the company and the government that they can’t shortcut this remediation. Unfortunately the mining company has a mindset of bottom line: what can we do as fast as we can for the least amount of money. That has to stop.”

“Right now we’re faced with the immediate concern of getting the excess water offsite.”

Even if the mine never reopened again they’d still have this water issue on site, Holmes said.

“It’s not just about re-openeing the mine but getting rid of contaminated water on site.”

Waste material from the Mount Polley mine tailings pond at the base of the Hazeltine Creek on August 11, 2014. Photo: Carol Linnitt

B.C.’s Sockeye Salmon Still At Risk from Mount Polley Spill

Sam Albers, manager of the Max Blouw Quesnel River Research Centre, said he’s concerned with the massive deposit of mining waste that remains at the bottom of Quesnel Lake.

In a recent paper published in Geophysical Research Letters, Albers and his team of co-authors estimated the waste deposit was roughly 600 metres long, one to three metres deep and over a kilometre across.

But Albers said that estimate was based on current information made available by the mine.

“A new report, the post-event environmental impact assessment, shows that deposit is way, way bigger,” Albers said. What concerns him is the effect of mining contaminants on aquatic species.

“There are a lot of resident fish here and they have a lot of value. But there’s a ton a sockeye salmon here as well.”

In his research Albers found that during peak years the amount of sockeye salmon returning to Quesnel Lake represents as much as 50 or even 60 per cent of the province’s sockeye salmon population. That’s during peak years, Albers said, adding sockeye tend to return in “a really pronounced four year cycle,” a natural rhythm that is to this day not exactly understood.

Quesnel River. Photo: Carol Linnitt

“We had a million fish come back this most recent year and two years before that we had 700 fish come back — which is natural. But the thing is this is an important salmon producing lake.”

"The big concern,” Albers said, “is that copper and salmon really don’t mix all that well.”

“Specifically dissolved copper and salmon don’t mix well. It can get into their olfactory system — so the fish equivalent of a nose — and really mess with their ability to utilize their ecosystem properly.”

Albers said studying the levels of dissolved copper in Quesnel Lake over the long-term will be critical to understanding the impact of the spill on sockeye.

“You’ve got that huge deposit on the bottom of the lake that’s what worries me,” he said.

“This is a really important sockeye salmon lake so monitoring the sockeye food source seems like a really prudent thing to be doing.”

Image Credits: Carol Linnitt

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The Council of Canadians called on the federal government Tuesday to implement regulation of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, in Canada. The process, widely used for unconventional oil and gas recovery in western Canada, is linked to numerous human and environmental health threats and currently faces bans or moratoria in Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, as well as Newfoundland and Labrador. 

“The next Oka in Canadian history is going to be in B.C. and it’s going to be about energy,” indigenous lawyer Caleb Behn said during a press conference in Ottawa addressing the fracking boom in northern British Columbia and other parts of western Canada. 

“I guarantee it. The writing is on the wall. It is just a question of when in my view. That is why the regulators need to step up.”

Behn, who is Eh Cho Dene and Dunne-Za from Treaty 8 Territory in northeastern B.C., and Dr. Kathleen Nolan, co-founder of Concerned Health Professionals of New York, joined the Council of Canadians today in calling on the federal government to safeguard Canadians and their drinking water from the controversial method of releasing natural gas and oil trapped in rock-like shale.

“We need a national water policy that addresses threats to water such as fracking,” Emma Lui, water campaigner with the Council of Canadians, told the press conference this morning at Parliament’s Centre Block.

“With the upcoming federal election, the Council of Canadians hopes to see real federal leadership and commitments to protect our communities, health, water and our water sources from fracking,” she said.

Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, involves drilling underground wells 200 to 3,000 metres vertically and another 1,000 metres or more horizontally to penetrate the rock-like shale. Pressurized water mixed with hundreds of toxic substances (including benzene, hydrochloric acid, mercury and formaldehyde) is shot down the well to penetrate the rock and force natural gas or oil to the surface.

A single fracked well consumes anywhere between seven to 23 million litres of water. Poorly constructed or cracked concrete wells have led to the contamination of groundwater with fracking chemicals or methane, a main component of natural gas.

“There are roughly 200 chemicals used in fracking that we know about that have not been assessed by Health Canada or Environment Canada,” Lui explained.

“There is a rapidly emerging body of evidence that shows harms from this activity (fracking) at every stage of the process. With contamination of air, water and social,” Dr. Nolan said.

“People are getting sick.”

Headaches, disorientation, rashes, seizures and asthma are some of the immediate health impacts airborne contaminants from fracking operations can have on people living nearby, Nolan said.

“With water contamination there’s a lag time between the time the contaminants enter the water and then enters the person and then the person gets ill….it could take years or decades before the contaminants reach people,” she said.

“What we are seeing is the tip of the iceberg and that the people who are sick now are basically our biomarkers.”

Behn fears his home territory, which is located in and around Fort Nelson, B.C., and which is at the centre of the Fractured Land documentary, will be destroyed if federal and provincial regulators do not take significant steps to determine the impact fracking operations have on local populations and the environment.

“Absence of proof of harm is not proof of the absence of harm,” Behn said.

A report commissioned and released by Environment Canada last year concluded the potential threat of fracking operations on groundwater “cannot be assessed because of a lack of scientific data and understanding."

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Late Saturday afternoon, Transport Canada officially cleared the Marathassa to leave Canadian waters. As it slowly moves out of the Salish Sea, the bulk carrier leaves angry mayors, a combative coast guard, a distrustful public and many, many questions in its wake.

Even U.S. authorities are anxiously looking north wondering if Canada knows anything about marine oil spill response. 

What we know about this spill is important, but there’s a lot more we don’t know, and might never know, about what happened in English Bay.

We Don't Know the Total Volume of Fuel Spilled, and Maybe Never Will 

In his first press conference after the April 8th spill, Commander Roger Girouard of the Canadian Coast Guard stated that the volume of the spill was 2,700 litres, or approximately 17 barrels of bunker C fuel. He reiterated this point several times at media appearances and press conferences in the weeks following the spill. Federal Industry Minister James Moore echoed his comments.

Vancouver City Manager Penny Ballem disagrees. In her presentation to Vancouver City Council after the spill, she quoted officials saying that figure is incorrect and the real volume is likely in the range of 3,000 – 5,000 litres spilled.

Similarly, there’s the reality that even the most successful oil spill cleanup efforts only recover a small portion of the oil. In 2010, Gerald Graham, president of Worldocean Consulting, a marine oil spill prevention and response planning firm based in British Columbia, told LiveScience.com that recovering between 10 and 15 per cent of conventional oil spilled in seawater is a ‘best case’ scenario.

Except bunker C fuel — the product spilled in English Bay — is not conventional: it is denser, more viscous and heavier than conventional crude oil. Unlike conventional crude oil, bunker C fuel is not certain to float on water surfaces, nor does it weather and dissolve as easily. On average only five to 10 per cent of the bunker C fuel will evaporate in the first 24 hours after a spill. Instead it breaks into tarballs and settles lower in the water column, sometimes as far down as one to three metres below the surface.

On April 9, Commander Girouard reported that cleanup crews had recovered approximately 1,400 litres of the oil spilled. A few days later, a statement from Coast Guard Commissioner Jody Thomas stated that cleanup crews recovered 80 per cent of fuel spilled within 36 hours after the spill.

If these figures are correct, then without counting the oil which washed up on Vancouver and West Vancouver beaches or the large ‘bathtub ring’ of bunker fuel oil encircling the Marathassa, the Coast Guard should have recovered approximately 2,200 litres of spilled oil in the first 36 hours (based on lower spill estimates). This is definitely possible, but extremely unlikely given past precedent of what constitutes a ‘best case’ cleanup.

But if total spill volumes are incorrect — as City Manager Ballem and others suggest — there is a lot of oil still unaccounted for.

It is worth noting that in the first 24 hours after the spill, oil traveled 12 kilometres to foul at least 10 beaches in Vancouver, West Vancouver and North Vancouver.

Would an Operational Kits Coast Guard Station Have Helped? Who Knows

In 2013, the federal government closed the Kitsilano Coast Guard station, consolidating operations with the Coast Guard Station in Delta, B.C. Both the City of Vancouver and the province of B.C. publicly objected to the closure, citing its importance in oil spill and disaster response efforts.

“The Kitsilano Coast Guard base has been one the most important public safety resources in and around the City of Vancouver, responding to over 300 calls each year. Vancouver is one of the busiest harbours in North America and has depended on robust search and rescue services that are professionally-trained and fully-resourced by the federal government. In the event of major freighter, cruise ship, or aviation emergency, we remain very concerned that the Kitsilano closure will put many additional lives in danger.” – Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson

Both Commander Girouard and Federal Industry Minister James Moore stated they believe the Kitsilano Coast Guard Station being open would have made no difference in the cleanup of this spill. Speaking to the media on April 12, Girouard said the station was never manned with environmental response experts, and would not have been called on in this scenario. James Moore echoed his comments.

According to Commander Girouard, the Kitsilano Coast Guard station had less than 100 metres of oil-absorbing booms, and that they were likely too old to be useful.

Retired Coast Guard Captain Tony Toxopeus, who served at the base, disagrees. So does Mike Cotter, General Manager of the Jericho Sailing Centre, which is located next door to the shuttered station. In an interview with CKNW’s Shane Woodford, Captain Toxopeus confirmed that the Kitsilano Coast Guard Station had two ships (a pollution response vehicle and an Osprey cutter), along with oil spill response equipment and staff trained in pollution response.

At the same time, an operational Kitsilano Coast Guard Station would have greatly reduced the response time for the spill.

As it stands, it took the Coast Guard more than three hours from the time the spill was reported to send a ship to investigate, a further four hours to set up an absorbent boom and a total 12 hours to completely encircle the Marathassa in a containment boom. In an open letter to Minister Moore, Mr. Cotter said:

“Had the Kitsilano Coast Guard Station remained open, the Osprey could have been on scene within 10 minutes in direct contact with the boater who originally reported the spill just after 5 pm on April 8. Her crew would’ve assessed the scene (the boater says he could tell the fuel was coming from the aft section of the source ship) and activated the PRV crew who would’ve been on scene and commenced spill containment within an hour of the report.”

Late last week, the federal government announced that it would also be closing the Vancouver office for its Marine Communications and Traffic Services. Now everything from marine safety communications co-ordination with rescue resources, vessel traffic services and waterway management, broadcast weather and sail plan services for the entire south coast and most of Vancouver Island will be managed out of the Victoria office.

As the Globe and Mail recently reported, officials in Washington State have serious doubts about the Canadian government's ability to address oil spills in the Puget Sound. The Washington Department of Ecology told the state's Governor that "B.C. lacks authority over marine waters, and their federal regime is probably a couple decades behind the system currently in place in Washington State."

A U.S. maritime lawyer also said if the U.S. Coast Guard scored an eight or nine on a worldwide 10-point spill response scale, Canada would score a one or two. 

We Don’t Know Who is Responsible for Monitoring Burrard Inlet for Long-term Spill Impacts

To be clear, the Burrard Inlet and the Salish sea have not been pristine waterways for a long time. E.coli contamination regularly closes local beaches to swimming in the summer, and the waterway is a working port. All of that considered, Vancouver beaches attract millions of people every year, and many people fish its waters for recreation or subsistence.

On April 15, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans banned fishing for shellfish and groundfish in Burrard Inlet, citing concerns about the Marathassa spill. DFO calls the closure a precautionary measure, and gives no indication of when the fisheries may reopen.

The closure makes sense, of course. While the Marathassa spill was minor,  toxins from bunker C fuel can stay in the water for a very long time. A study done by U.S. Department of Fisheries scientists on a 2007 bunker C fuel spill in San Francisco harbour found the spill had decimated local herring stocks and left surviving fish with extensive birth defects and short life spans. This persisted for at least three years after the spill.

But Vancouver’s waters are different. According to Dr. Peter Ross, director of the Vancouver Aquarium’s Ocean Pollution Research Program, there’s no baseline data for English Bay’s waters, nor is there a cohesive long-term monitoring program. Both of these deficiencies make it hard to measure long term impacts.

Since coastal waters fall under the purview of the federal government, it should be the responsibility of the DFO to monitor long-term impacts. But millions of dollars in cuts by the federal government have decimated DFO budgets, closing programs and leaving at least 50 scientists out of work. This included Dr. Ross, who used to run a marine toxicology program through DFO. It no longer exists.

The Vancouver Aquarium, the City of Vancouver and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans have all collected water samples independently following the spill. Unfortunately, as Dr. Ross says, "There is no official clarity around who is to monitor the effects of a spill."

WWKMD? We Don’t Know What Kinder Morgan Would Do Differently

For all the opacity of the government response, one thing is crystal clear after the Marathassa spill: we could, and must, do better by these waters. As the National Energy Board considers approval of the Kinder Morgan TransMountain tanker and pipeline expansion, both parties could be learning from the Marathassa response and ensuring that future spill preparedness and response is truly ‘world-class.' But, as always, there’s a problem.

Namely, that Kinder Morgan refuses to publicly reveal any of its oil spill cleanup plans for Burrard Inlet — even though the company owns 50.9 per cent of Western Canada Marine Response Company, the lead party responsible for cleanup operations on the Marathassa spill and the primary subcontractor for any future oil spills on the B.C. south coast.

This leaves all levels of government in the dark about what might happen if the new twinned Kinder Morgan pipeline ruptures again (as it did in 2007), or one of the hundreds of new Aframax-sized tankers (40,000 tonnes larger than the Marathassa bulk carrier) leaks diluted bitumen into English Bay.

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Although city officials from Dawson’s Creek won’t disclose the names of the companies involved, they are confirming that fracking waste has been illegally dumped into the city’s water treatment system on at least two occasions.

Jim Chute, administrative officer for the city, told DeSmog Canada, that illegal dumping has occurred at least three times, but twice the waste was “clearly” related to fracking.

“It has actually been on three occasions in the last 18 months where we’ve caught inappropriate materials being dumped,” he said. “One of those was a load of contaminated diesel. It’s not clear to us exactly how that diesel got contaminated so we don’t know if that was frack-related or not.”

“The other two were a mix of compounds that were clearly flowback waste from a frack operation.”

Chute said the chemicals used in the fracking process can damage the city’s water and sewage treatment facilities which are unable to handle industrial waste. Chute told the Alaska Highway News the waste could cause irreversible damage to living organisms that play a crucial role in the city’s water reclamation system.

Fracking in northeastern B.C.

Fracking, otherwise known as high-volume slickwater hydraulic fracturing, is a controversial extraction process used to free oil and gas from tight rock formations using extremely high pressures and large amounts of toxic chemicals.

The incidents in Dawson Creek involved subcontractors of the gas companies, Chute told DeSmog Canada, saying “virtually all jobs are outsourced to subtrades.”

“If you’re Encana Corporation, you probably don’t drill that well yourself, it’s probably contracted out to a subcontractor like Precision Drilling. And then Precision Drilling themselves don’t build the lease roads, they contract that out to a subcontractor…and they don’t do their own waste disposal, they contract that out.”

“It’s so busy up here,” Chute said.

“The situations we’ve encountered in every case has been an independent contractor to a company who signs on to a company [saying] they will dispose of the waste in an appropriate manner…and then behave badly, try to save themselves some money by coming to our dump instead of going to the proper spot.”

Chute told the Alaska Highway News the contractors were fined and responsible for cleaning the contaminated holding tanks.

Toxic wastewater a problem for industry

The B.C. Oil and Gas Commission, the provincial oil and gas regulator, is responsible for monitoring the activity of fracking companies, including the disposal of wastewater. B.C. has several private wastewater facilities where recyclable water is separated from toxic waste, which is then disposed of in underground injection wells.

In an emailed statement, B.C. Oil and Gas Commission communications coordinator Hardy Friedrich said, “B.C. has strict regulations related to the disposal of oil and gas waste in the Oil and Gas Waste Regulation and the Hazardous Waste Regulation.”

He added: “Fluids used in hydraulic fracturing must be disposed in a deep underground formation via a service well. Most other waste must be disposed at an approved disposal facility. There are currently 106 operating deep well disposal sites in northeast B.C.”

The difficulty of disposing of wastewater from fracking operations is a problem that has plagued the industry across North America. Flowback fluid from a fracking well includes toxic chemicals and oftentimes radioactive elements from extremely deep wells.

Most municipal wastewater systems are not equipped with the technology to handle such toxic waste in such high volumes.

Dawson Creek, located in the shale gas-rich Montney Basin, has seen a major increase in gas companies in recent years. The Montney Basin, along with the Horn River Basin also in northeastern B.C., could potentially account for 22 per cent of all North American shale gas production by 2020 according to the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers.

In the early years of B.C.'s shale gas boom, Grant Shomody, president of Grantech Engineering International, warned of the potential problems producers would face when it comes to wastewater disposal in the Montney:

“If this play develops as producers hope, the number of wells being drilled would severely tax local water resources. In that case, we can expect a lot of ecologically related criticism. There’s also the problem of disposing of the frac water or treating it for reuse. It’s expensive, and Montney producers have not installed water treatment capabilities at their plants.”

A challenge and liability for Dawson Creek

Chute expressed concern with illegal dumping of fracking wastewater, especially in light of new Environment Canada rules, which could hold city officials accountable for negligence.

“Previously there had been less onerous regulations, around how anyone who is a sewage treatment operator or handler of sewage…in order to prevent unauthorized discharge into watercourses,” Chute explained.

These new federal regulations are more strenuous and more robust than any that had been in place in the past, Chute said.

“The onus was put on us to ensure we had the safeguards in place that nothing escaped into the environment. Part and parcel because of that, and [how] thinking changed around Enron and evidence of bad corporate behaviour, part of the regulations imposed personal liability on the people responsible.”

“In Dawson Creek, that would be me,” he said.

Dawson Creek is moving to a new system, said Chute, where a failsafe dump station will monitor regularly for harmful compounds. If those compounds are found, the waste will be prevented from entering the regular treatment system.

Chute says the new facility, which will cost nearly $4 million to build, will be continuously monitored during open hours, 12 hours a day, six days a week.

“All of this is to make sure unauthorized industrial waste doesn’t go into our system.”

“We are going to make sure that we catch anybody that tries to circumvent the system by coming to us because we’re a shorter haul than they’d have to go to the proper spot.”

Image Credit: Fracking water storage near Hudson's Hope in B.C. Image from the CCPA report: Fracking Up B.C.

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Never swim in the Ottawa River if it has rained during the previous 48 hours, recommends Meredith Brown, the executive director of Ottawa Riverkeeper.

The non-profit group is raising public awareness about raw sewage pouring into the popular recreational river after rainstorms or snow melts. Making matters worse, on the Quebec side of the river, there is a lack of adequate testing for fecal coliform bacteria levels at beaches, Brown said.

The problem is combined sewer overflows — pipes that carry both storm water and untreated sewage. These systems were built in many Canadian cities between 1880 and 1960.

Usually the liquid goes to treatment plants, but, when volumes threaten to swamp plants, the untreated mixture is diverted into the river to prevent flooding and sewer backups.

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“Some combined sewers rarely overflow, while others overflow every time it rains, “ says a City of Ottawa information sheet.

It is a problem that is gaining increasing attention from those who kayak, swim, sail or paddleboard in the river, Brown said.

“Once people find out, they are disgusted,” she said. “People are starting to think of this as a moral issue.”

Ottawa Riverkeeper has teamed up with Mountain Equipment Co-op this summer to raise awareness of the issue and encourage outdoor enthusiasts to join them in calling on the cities of Ottawa and Gatineau to report every time untreated sewage is released into the river.

Many people do not realize that recreational fun in the river has made them sick, Brown said, but swimming in polluted waters can cause numerous health problems, from ear infections to gastrointestinal illnesses.

Gatineau lags behind Ottawa in replacing combined sewer system

An added complication is that the Ottawa River separates Ottawa and Gatineau, Quebec, and the two municipalities are replacing their combined sewers at different paces.

Ottawa is in the fifth year of an Ottawa River Action Plan and a recent report to council said the sewer separation program is about 90 per cent complete, with an 80 per cent reduction in sewage spills from combined sewers. The city is also looking for matching funding from the federal and provincial governments for a $195-million plan for a combined sewage storage tunnel.

Progress has not kept up on the Gatineau side of the border, Brown said.

“They still release millions of litres of sewage into the river,” she said. “In Gatineau it happens almost every time it rains. It doesn’t even have to be heavy rain.”

Gatineau spokesperson Alain d’Entremont said the number of overflow events decreased to 992 last year from 1,500 in 2006. There are now 92 points where sewage can enter the river from combined pipes, down from 110 in 2009.

“We are replacing and redoing (pipes) in some of the old neighbourhoods and the new neighbourhoods don’t have combined sewage,” d’Entremont said.

Gatineau is proactive in ensuring it gets matching funds from other levels of government for infrastructure replacement, but they are expensive projects, he said.

For her part, Brown understands that money-squeezed municipalities are forced to chip away slowly at infrastructure replacement, but, especially as the contamination is ongoing, recreational river users need up-to-date information on beach pollution, she said.

SwimGuide app tracks beach pollution levels

Ottawa Riverkeeper, with sister riverkeeper organizations from across Canada and the U.S, have created the free SwimGuide app, which tells people about beach pollution levels — but information about Gatineau’s three city beaches is not always current.

Water at Ottawa’s five beaches is tested daily by the city’s public health department, but, in Quebec, provincial rules require water testing only three to five times during the summer.

Gatineau was already exceeding provincial rules by testing every second week and is now moving to weekly testing for the three beaches, d’Entremont said.

“This summer it seems to be a very sensitive issue and we are going over and above the regulations,” he said.

Unlike Ottawa, the Gatineau beaches are not downstream from a large sewage plant, he said.

Based on the test results, Quebec gives each beach a letter grade. An A grade means there are between zero and 20 coliform units per 100 ml of water. When water deteriorates to a D grade, meaning there are more than 200 coliform units in 100 ml of water, swimming or other recreational activities are not recommended and warning signs are erected at beaches.

In 2012, when Gatineau beaches were tested 12 times, the Parc Moussette beach received a D rating three times. In 2013, with eight test dates through the summer, the same beach was posted as unsafe for swimming once and this year, with seven tests completed so far, there have been no beach closures.

Health Canada estimates that, at the D-grade level, one or two per cent of swimmers will become ill from contamination. That means about 100,000 Canadians a year get sick from swimming in polluted waters.

Brown is hoping that the growing awareness of sewage contamination in the river will mean more public pressure, both for daily testing and for measures to stop the contamination.

“You can’t fix what you haven’t measured. That’s the first step,” she said.

Even if the health concerns don’t push governments to action, there is also a strong economic argument for cleaning up the river and ensuring people are kept informed about pollution levels, she said.

“The Ottawa River is the economic engine of the region. It’s a fantastic recreational river,” she said. Water quality also affects the tourism business in small communities around the Ottawa River, Brown said.

“People spend a lot of money to go places where they can swim in the water. If that is jeopardised, they start to lose business.”

This story was made possible through support from Mountain Equipment Co-op as part of its Homewaters campaign, which is dedicated to preserving Canada’s fresh water from coast to coast.

Image Credit: Ottawa Riverkeeper

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A new website launched today by the corporate accountability group SumofUs.org asks ordinary Canadians to take a closer look at oilsands major Suncor's latest ad campaign, "What Yes Can Do."

By launching their own version of the ad campaign at www.whatyescando.org, SumofUs.org is questioning the disparity between "what yes can do" as Suncor puts it, and "what yes has done" in the Alberta oilsands.

SumofUs.org points out Suncor's green ad campaign, which emphasizes the corporation's efforts to preserve "…an environment for generations to come," doesn't square with the company's own lobbying effort to limit protections for the Athabasca River. 

More than five years ago, a panel of experts recommended an end to water withdrawals from the Athabasca River during certain times of the year, when water levels are at their lowest. The cut-off would protect fish hatchlings and other aquatic life from dying off during low river flow.

All companies operating in the Alberta oilsands agreed to the recommended cut-off, but Suncor, along with Syncrude, are lobbying the Alberta government for an exemption. 

Suncor's overall water consumption continues to increase, as the SumofUs.org alternative "What Yes Can Do" website reports:

"Suncor claims it takes water consumption seriously and says it has drastically lowered its overall water withdrawals. In reality, its water consumption continues to climb. In 2012, its water use increased by 20 percent over…the previous year according to records contained in the Oil Sands Information Portal. By 2017, consumption is expected to further increase by 47 percent based on aggressive expansion plans."

Campaign video from official Suncor "What Yes Can Do" website.

Spoof "What Yes Can Do" video launched by SumofUs.org.

SumofUs.org's alternative campaign brings the pleasantries of corporate advertising into stark contrast with the difficult reality of oilsands development as it affects local water, the industrialization of the boreal forest, vanishing local caribou populations, and First Nation's treaty rights. 

It turns out what 'yes can do' is complex and acheiving our clean energy ambitions is going to involve meaningful carbon-emission reductions policies, responsible industrial growth that respects First Nations' rights and ways of life, and evidence-based decision making from the industrial to the governmental level. And it will take us a lot more than just saying 'yes' to get there.

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Two B.C. environmental groups are taking the B.C. Oil and Gas Commission to court next week over practices they argue unlawfully permit oil and gas companies to use water.

Sierra Club B.C. and Western Canada Wilderness Committee — in documents filed with the Supreme Court of B.C. — argue the Oil and Gas Commission has been engaged in a “systemic” practice of issuing back-to-back “short-term” water approvals and call for permits issued to Encana to be quashed.

The case will be heard in the Supreme Court of B.C. in Vancouver on March 17 and 18.

“Under the Water Act, if you want long-term access to water, you need a water licence,” says Caitlyn Vernon, campaigns director with Sierra Club B.C. “What the Oil and Gas Commission is doing is granting consecutive short-term approvals to oil and gas companies.”

The case centres around water approvals under Section 8 of B.C.’s Water Act, which governs short-term use and diversion of water for up to 24 months.

By requesting and analyzing Section 8 water approvals going back seven years, Sierra Club B.C. and the Wilderness Committee — represented by lawyers from Ecojustice — determined the approvals were being given to the same companies for consecutive terms.

“Multiple approvals are routinely granted over multiple years to the same company, for the same purposes, at the same locations and thereby violate s. 8 of the Water Act,” reads the groups’ petition to the court.

The groups argue this is illegal — that if a company requires water for more than one term or more than 24 months, they should have to obtain a water licence, not a short-term approval.

This is an important distinction, says Karen Campbell, the Ecojustice lawyer arguing the case. When a company applies for a water licence, its application has to be posted publicly and there’s opportunity for a public hearing. With a Section 8 approval, the public is not notified and there’s no chance for public input, she says.

83% of “short-term” approvals granted for more than one term

Sierra Club paid more than $1,000 to obtain copies of 1,352 Section 8 approvals — 83 per cent of which grant the right to use or divert water for more than one term to the same company, for the same purposes, from the same location.

Encana, along with other companies working in B.C.’s northeast gas fields, requires vast amounts of water to conduct hydraulic fracturing, or fracking — a process that involves injecting a mixture of water, sand and chemicals underground at pressure to fracture the rock and release the natural gas trapped inside. Afterward, some of the water is re-used, but much of it is contaminated and stored in tailings ponds or injected into deep wells underground, where it is removed from the hydrological cycle.

The Encana water approvals that could be revoked are in the Montney shale basin in the South Peace, near Dawson Creek.

“People in the north are already seeing their water depleted and contaminated by fracking and drilling,” Vernon says. “The case is about fixing the way water permits are handed out, so any long-term water withdrawals go through a review process with oversight.”

One lake, five “short-term” approvals

In an affidavit filed with the court, Eoin Madden of Western Canada Wilderness Committee notes Encana has five approvals at Wasp Lake, which allow Encana to use water for the same purpose for five years. Encana also has a water licence for the same lake.

The short-term approvals allow eight times more water to be drawn annually than the water licence does — up to 69,000 cubic metres per year, or enough water to fill 27 Olympic-sized swimming pools. The approvals also allow water to be drawn year-round, while the licence prohibits withdrawals between May and October.

If Encana withdrew the daily limit set out in the approval, it would take less than three days to withdraw the annual limit of their Wasp Lake water licence, says Morgan Blakley, a staff lawyer with Ecojustice.

“They’re violating the spirit of the legislation,” Blakley says.

The LNG connection

Image credit: Shell via Flickr

With all the talk of building liquefied natural gas (LNG) export facilities on B.C.’s coast, Vernon says it’s important for people to make the connection between fracking and LNG.

“Building any LNG terminals will require an increase in fracking, with associated impacts on water,” she says. “In a climate-changing world, freshwater is an increasingly scarce resource and we need to be managing it responsibly for communities, for agriculture, for our children’s future.”

In a recent blog in the Vancouver Sun, Ben Parfitt, a resource policy analyst with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, and David Hughes, a geoscientist, wrote that if even 70 per cent of the current LNG proposals go ahead, about 39,000 new wells would be required by 2040. If nine of ten of those wells were fracked, at least 582 billion litres of water would be polluted and removed from the hydrological cycle.

Encana, Oil and Gas Commission Respond

In an affidavit filed with the court, Cameron Buss of Encana Corporation says the company tends to rely on Section 8 water approvals during the exploratory phase.

“Encana’s use of water under Section 8 approvals is for discrete operations, which are short term in nature, but continue throughout the life of a play,” his statement reads.

Encana argues that if the Oil and Gas Commission’s practice of granting back-to-back short-term water approvals is declared unlawful, there will be significant harm to Encana and others.

“There are not readily available alternative water sources for Encana's ongoing operations in the Montney area,” Buss states.  “Many of these operations would cease if the order sought … is granted.”

The Oil and Gas Commission’s response to the petition says: “The Water Act contains no express prohibition on repeats of approvals under Section 8” and argues it interpreted the Water Act “reasonably.”

Main image: Jeremy Buckingham via Flickr

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The B.C. Liberal government released an energy awareness quiz Monday touting the benefits of B.C.'s fracked gas boom while failing to address the implications of gas development on the province's water and greenhouse gas emissions.

The LNG in B.C. Awareness Quiz is already being tagged as a promotional tool used to win public approval and downplay the negative side effects of the B.C. Liberal government's heavy push for liqueified natural gas (LNG). More than a dozen LNG export facilities are proposed for the B.C. coast to export gas to Asian markets. 

Athough directly related to fracking, the quiz makes no mention of the controversial industrial process and the wide range of social and ecological concerns arising in its wake.

The quiz is comprised of the ten following questions and extended answers:

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

What the quiz fails to mention is the fact that although natural gas extraction has occurred in B.C. for more than 50 years, the advent of modern multi-stage slickwater hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, has drastically changed the nature of the process. Advancements in drilling technologies, such as horizontal fracturing, have opened up previously inaccessible reserves.

Yet these technological advancements have also dramatically increased the amount of water required to frack a well, the amount of toxic chemicals used per well and threats to underground drinking water sources. Although natural gas is often labeled a 'cleaner' source of energy because it emits less carbon at power plants, the upstream environmental costs associated with the resource's production are significant.

Fracking requires enormous amounts of water, and B.C. officials are already struggling to keep pace with the increase in gas production. Just last month, several environmental groups filed a lawsuit against the B.C. Oil and Gas Commission for endangering the province's waterways and violating the Water Act. Argued by the environmental law firm Ecojustice, the suit claims the Commission granted hundreds of short-term water leases to natural gas companies, thereby allowing industry to avoid crucial environmental assessment.

Caitlyn Vernon, campaigner for the Sierra Club B.C. which participated in the suit, says the impacts of natural gas in B.C. aren't adequately taken into account. The B.C. Liberal government's attempt at increasing 'awareness' about LNG and fracking fails to meet the test, she said.

"It is insulting to British Columbians that our government is using tax dollars to spread such blatant industry propaganda, disrespecting the rights of British Columbians to consider all the facts and make informed decisions," she said. "When it comes to the environmental impacts of LNG, the full story is not, in fact, what industry would have us believe. This so-called quiz doesn't even mention fracking, which is not clean, can release as much carbon pollution as coal, and is already impacting the water of B.C.'s Northeast."

"Instead of being told what to think, B.C. families should have a say in deciding what the 'right' answer is for our communities," she added.

As DeSmog Canada previously reported, fugitive emissions from natural gas production are expected to be seven times greater than reported, increasing the province's carbon footprint by 25 per cent, or the equivalent of adding an additional three million cars to B.C.'s roads.

Marc Lee, senior energy economist with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, notes that, beyond the problems associated with fracking, liquefying natural gas is a carbon-intensive process. He writes for the Progressive Economics Forum that B.C.'s path to LNG riches has some serious climate obstacles:

"Clark’s predecessor, Gordon Campbell, brought in a range of climate action policies in 2007-08, including the province’s well-regarded carbon tax, and legislated greenhouse gas reduction targets. While some insider champions of LNG do not care about climate change, the province is wrestling with its own cognitive dissonance: how to stick to past commitments to reduce greenhouse gases, while substantially growing production of a key fossil fuel. B.C.’s media savvy Premier now talks about 'the cleanest natural gas' or 'cleanest LNG' in the world.

The problem is the math: in order to move ahead with LNG projects while still meeting the government’s own GHG targets, every other sector of the B.C. economy would need to make radical and unprecedented reductions in its emissions. One option under examination is purchasing carbon offsets, but this could be expensive and B.C.’s offset regime has been much criticized. Another issue is accounting conventions that do not count embodied GHG emissions in exports (instead, they count in the importing country’s GHG inventory). On a lifecycle basis, total GHG emissions into the air that originated below ground in B.C. would double or even triple, depending on the number of LNG plants. It would be the emissions equivalent of putting between 24 to 64 million cars on the roads of the world.

Related to, and compounding this, is that liquifying gas for export is itself massively energy intensive. B.C.’s 2010 Energy Plan committed to 93% of electricity production in the province coming from clean or renewable sources. Were it to be met by new renewable supply, B.C. Hydro modelled an increase in demand from three LNG equivalent to one-third of its total current production. Renewables are more expensive, and existing commitments to private power producers for new supply are already creating pressure for price hikes. To get around this, the B.C. government conveniently declared that burning natural gas for LNG production would be considered to be clean energy."

Lee adds that the estimate of 75,000 new jobs being advanced by the B.C. government is also not credible. Originally, the government claimed 800 permanent jobs would result from the construction of three new LNG plants, but eventually inflated this number to more than 75,000. According to plans from major players like Shell, however, pre-fab structures may be shipped to B.C. during the construction phase to limit costs. This, in addition to B.C.'s growing reliance on temporary foreign workers, suggests the permanent job estimate of 75,000 is grossly overblown.

If the B.C. Liberals hope to meaningfully increase the LNG knowledge of average British Columbians, relying on industry-style public relations and an incomplete portrait of the industry's impacts won't do.

As Rachel Carson wrote in her groundbreaking work Silent Spring, when it comes to industrial pollutants the public is often fed "little tranquilizing pills of half truths."

She adds, "We urgently need an end to these false assurances, to the sugar coating of unpalatable facts. It is the public that is being asked to assume the risks…The public must decide whether it wishes to continue on the present road, and it can do so only when in full possession of the facts."

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Sediment from the Chaudière River, near the site of the Lac-Mégantic train derailment four months ago, shows high levels of contaminants according to testing done by Greenpeace Quebec and the Société pour vaincre la pollution (SVP). Despite months of cleanup operations sediments collected from the river show higher-than-acceptable levels of several chemicals, including cancer-causing polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs).

Quebec Environment Minister Yves-François Blanchet said the department continues to monitor the safety of the water, reports the Montreal Gazette, and will take into consideration the two groups' test results.

In late September Quebec’s environment department lifted a drinking-water ban for several downstream communities who rely on the Chaudière River for water.

“Sampling has not stopped, analyses have not stopped, the teams are still on the ground,” Blanchet said in the National Assembly Wednesday. He added “information is still publicly available on the Environment Ministry’s website, such that we know that there is no immediate threat.”

Both Greenpeace Quebec and SVP say pollutant levels in samples taken 4.7km downstream of the lake are 27 times higher than accepted levels.

The Lac-Mégantic derailment resulted in the release of an estimated 5.9 million litres of oil that burned or spilled into the town’s lake and the Chaudière river.

Recently Quebec environment updated those oil spill figures from a previously estimated 5.6 million litres.

The precise amount of oil released into the lake and river is still under question. The environment department estimates around 100,000 litres of oil contaminated the river although Greenpeace’s Patrick Bonin questioned that amount given the high level of contamination present in their samples. Researchers could both see and smell oil in river at the time of testing.

According to Bonin this is the second round of testing the groups have undertaken. Results in both instances were sent to the environment department.

The groups are calling on Quebec to release the details of its water sampling to the public, including what methods are in use and all results.

In October the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives released a report claiming lax federal regulation over the transport of petroleum products by rail led to the deadly Lac-Mégantic accident that killed 47 people.

“In my view, the evidence points to a fundamentally flawed regulatory system, cost-cutting corporate behaviour that jeopardized public safety and the environment, and responsibility extending to the highest levels of corporate management and government policy making,” wrote author Bruce Campbell, the centre’s executive director.

Shipments of oil by rail have increased by 28,000 percent since 2009.

Image Credit: Greenpeace Quebec via Facebook

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A study has found evidence of rising mercury levels downstream from Northern Alberta’s oil sands extraction plants.

Researchers collected gull and tern eggs from nests in various locations around Alberta over several years. Eggs collected in the Athabasca Lake area, downstream of oil sands' development and refineries, showed much higher levels of mercury than those collected nearer to Calgary.

The Joint Oil Sands Monitoring (JOSM) Program, a partnership between federal and provincial governments, commissioned the peer-reviewed study, but it has yet to appear on their online portal. The Environmental Science and Technology Journal released the study online this September.

A similar study in 2011 by the same authors also found mercury levels in gulls from the Lake Athabasca area showed a 40% increase from 1977 to 2009.

The authors of both studies were reticent to make a direct connection between the eggs' proximity to oil sands operations and increased levels of mercury, saying more study is required to find the exact cause. “We can’t link the mercury levels we’re seeing in these bird eggs specifically to oil sands. Certainly that’s one possibility, but there are other possibilities as well,” author Dr. Hebert told the Globe & Mail. Other possible factors include mercury pollution from coal power plants in Asia.

In 2010, 824 kg of mercury were amongst the toxic materials found in oil sands tailings ponds, according to data from the National Pollutant Release Inventory compiled by the Pembina Institute. Between 2006 and 2010 the amount of mercury added to tailings ponds rose 80 per cent.

In June of this year, Alberta’s Energy Resources Conservation Board found that several oil sands companies weren’t hitting their targets for reducing toxic tailings ponds.

Neither article concludes that wildlife in the area are currently adversely affected by the mercury levels, but if those levels continue to rise, the results could be very serious.

Mercury is a bioaccumulative toxin, meaning it accumulates in the body of an organism for its entire lifespan. Bioaccumulated toxins are also passed up the food chain, leading to higher levels of toxins in more apex predators. Because the Peace-Athabasca Delta is an international staging area for wildlife, the mercury that birds ingest in the region could be spread through food chains all over the world.

Mercury poisoning can have devastating long-term effects on both humans and wildlife. A recent study by Japanese researcher Doctor Masazumi Harada found that two First Nations communities in Ontario that suffered mercury poisoning from nearby pulp and paper mills are still feeling the impacts nearly 50 years later.

Earlier this month, the government of Canada was one of 140 countries to sign the Minamata Treaty, a legally binding international agreement aimed at reducing mercury levels worldwide. Upon signing, Environment Minister Leona Aglukkaq acknowledged the global nature of the issue in an official statement.

“Signing this treaty reinforces Canada’s commitment to protecting the Arctic ecosystem, the health of our indigenous peoples, Northerners and the global population,” said Aglukkaq, who is also Minister of the Canadian Northern Economic Development Agency and Minister for the Arctic Council.

Mary Richardson, a spokesperson for the Keepers of the Athabasca, worries that the needs of the oil sands industry will outweigh Canada’s global commitments in this area, just as they did with tailings ponds. “Mercury levels have been going down in Canada for the last forty years and now it appears they’re going up in the tar sands area, which is absolutely unacceptable,” she said.

A professor emeritus in philosophy from the University of Athabasca, Richardson has been involved with environmental groups based in the region for more than 20 years. This year, she was tapped to be part of an environmental non-governmental organization advisory committee for the JOSM, but has only been called to one meeting to date and does not speak on the organization’s behalf.

“This article is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to what we need to know,” says Richardson. “The eggs were presumably analysed for a lot of other contaminants, but research has not been published for those levels.”

She would like to see numbers for hydrocarbons, arsenic, and other heavy metals, just to name a few of the toxic substances that are related to oil sands extraction.

Still, she is cautiously optimistic about the study, saying that being published in an independent, peer-reviewed journal lends it and the JOSM credibility. “My view is that this article does represent credible science done on the subject,” she says. “The article is careful both in its description of the analysis and in its conclusions.”

Transparency, she believes, is key to the process. “That’s why this program [the JOSM] is important,” she continues. “If in fact the results are open and there’s enough pressure from concerned members of the public, then perhaps something can be done.”

Image Credit: p.Gordon via flickr.

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More than a year after the program's supposed implementation, negotiations over the Alberta-Canada Joint Oil Sands Monitoring (JOSM) program were still ongoing between the federal government and the Government of Alberta, email correspondence shows.

In documents obtained by the Globe and Mail through the Access to Information Act, it’s clear that the conditions of the program changed throughout the last year. Though details are unclear due to redactions in the released emails, it’s evident that the final deal wasn’t signed until June of this year after significant back and forth and meetings between the Alberta government—who publicly resisted the creation of joint provincial-federal program—and Environment Canada officials.

Bob Hamilton, Environment Canada’s deputy minister, wrote on March 28 of this year, more than a full year after the program was announced, that they “have a green light to move forward with OS [oilsands] monitoring.”

The program was designed to increase monitoring of air, water and habitat quality from annual to monthly, with results available to the public to allow for independent scientific investigation. Full reports were to be issued annually.

After independently appointed panels at both the provincial and federal levels deemed Alberta’s monitoring systems inadequate, the Government of Alberta still balked at the prospect of the federal government implementing a new monitoring system.

The newly released emails indicate continued pushback from Alberta and an unwillingness to face the full extent of the gaps in existing environmental monitoring policy.

One email shows that Alberta’s Deputy Minister of Environment Dana Woodworth believed the province’s existing system left it “well-positioned” to implement a new monitoring regime, in spite of widespread criticism of that system.

The final agreement also states than while the program is intended to undergo a full review in 2015, three years from the time it was announced, either party can cancel the program with six months’ notice.

Given the program's internal disorder, it is unsurprising the first results commissioned by the monitoring program have only just been publicly released.

A study conducted by Environment Canada shows rising levels of mercury in bird eggs tested downstream from the Alberta tar sands. Some samples taken from the eggs of predatory birds showed traces of mercury that exceed the threshold of what’s considered dangerous. The findings indicate mercury levels could be rising in the fish the birds consume. The report was published online last month by the Environmental Science and Technology Journal.

In spite of what the study’s lead author called a trend of rising levels of mercury, spokeswoman for the Alberta government Jessica Potter told First Nations residents of Fort Chipewyan and Fort McKay that the bird eggs were still safe to eat.

“It’s one study. It doesn’t necessarily indicate a trend. It’s just important that we continue to look into it,” she told the Globe and Mail.

And while the Alberta Government shared the results with those communities and the study was published academically, the results weren't made publicly available on the JOSM Portal website. An agreement signed in June states that all data produced through the program will be publicly accessible via the portal. Although the website lists ongoing testing, many of the results tables state that results will be released in coming months.

Screen shot taken from the JOSM water monitoring page.

Environment Canada researchers said they couldn’t pinpoint the tar sands or any single factor as the cause of mercury increase, though one test revealed that mercury levels had risen two thirds since 1977 and the early days of tar sands' development. Dr. Craig Hebert said coal plants in Asia are a source of elemental gaseous mercury in North America and could possibly be a contributor to the increase.

The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP), Canada's largest oil and gas lobby body and the only non-government body involved in the development of the joint monitoring program, has declined to comment on the results of the latest study.

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