The future of Alberta’s sprawling tailings ponds is in serious crisis.

As of right now, there is no clear understanding if or how oilsands companies are going to clean up the 1.2 trillion litres of toxic petrochemical waste covering over 220 square kilometres in the province’s northeast.

On Monday, Environmental Defence and the U.S.’s Natural Resources Defense Council published a report that pegged potential costs for cleanup and reclamation at a staggering $51.3 billion: $44.5 billion for cleanup, with an additional $6.8 billion for rehabilitation and monitoring.

That amount exceeds the $41.3 billion in royalties collected by the province of Alberta between 1970 and 2016.

“Increasingly, as an Albertan, I am concerned that these will become public liabilities,” Martin Olszynski, law professor at the University of Calgary and expert in environmental law, tells DeSmog Canada.

“In my view, at this point, it’s more likely than not that they will become public liabilities.”

The two organizations behind the new research called on the Alberta government to reject any new tailings ponds applications and require existing tailings be cleaned up faster than they’re produced.

Hot waste fills a Suncor tailings pond facility. Photo: Alex MacLean

No Tailings Management Plans Approved So Far

With no rules restricting the creation of tailings, oilsands waste ponds grew unabated for over 50 years.

The first rules, introduced in 2009, mandated companies create targets “to minimize and eventually eliminate long-term storage of fluid tailings in the reclamation landscape” but were a complete failure. Every single oilsands company failed to meet their own targets under the new guidelines.

And while the Alberta Energy Regulator (AER) introduced Directive 085 in mid-2016 in an attempt to deal with such issues, the effort has so far failed to produce tangible results.

Case in point: Suncor.

Oilsands giant Suncor’s tailings management plan, submitted under the new directive, was rejected by the AER in March.

According to the regulator the plan failed on three accounts: 1) the technology of choice to treat the tailings was allegedly unproven; 2) Suncor “did not provide adequate information” on the proposed alternative; and 3) the actual timeline for reclamation was unproven.

In a surprise move, the AER recently decided to re-review Suncor’s plan, although it is unclear if Suncor has addressed those major issues.

“In the original denial from the AER, [Pembina] agreed with essentially all of those concerns and didn’t feel like Suncor addressed them,” Nina Lothian, senior analyst at Pembina Institute, tells DeSmog Canada.

In its application for reconsideration, Suncor claimed the company didn’t provide proprietary information on new technology. That proprietary information has not been made available to the public.

A spokesperson for the AER tells DeSmog Canada that companies may request confidentiality concerning their application information.

“Confidentiality is rarely requested and only granted in compelling circumstances.”

Smoke, steam, and gas flares rise from the Suncor upgrading facility. Reclamation efforts seen to the right, on what was once a tailing pond. Suncor has reclaimed only 7 per cent of their total land disturbance. Photo: Alex MacLean

Industry Organization Hasn’t Provided Any Info On Tailings Experiment

The undisclosed nature of Suncor’s plans follows a long history of secrecy surrounding industry’s plans for tailings cleanup.

For years, the industry-funded Canada’s Oil Sands Innovation Alliance (COSIA) has pledged to work on a massive tailings cleanup facility called the Demonstration Pit Lakes Project.

COSIA has previous said the facility would potentially begin operation in 2017. The outcome of the Pit Lakes Project was meant to help inform the viability of tailings management for decades to come.

But as previously reported by DeSmog Canada, it’s unclear if COSIA has even started on the project.

When contacted for comment, COSIA referred DeSmog to a Syncrude spokesperson who couldn’t account for COSIA’s progress on the file.

Olszynski says Albertans deserve to know if COSIA is working on tailings management.

“The whole point of COSIA was to drive collaboration between oilsands producers recognizing there should be an economy of scale if they work together on some of these major environmental issues because they’re all dealing with the same issues,” he says.

“To then find out there’s some kind of proprietary issue that prevented Suncor from being fully transparent in its application is perplexing.”

When asked if the AER would integrate COSIA’s progress into the re-review of the Suncor plan, a spokesperson for the regulator wrote: “If information about COSIA’s Demonstration Pit Lake project is submitted as part of the application, then we will include it as part of our review.”

At this point, there is no public information about COSIA’s Demonstration Pit Lake project.

Earthen wall to a tailings pond at a Suncor mining site. Photo: Alex MacLean

Tailings Technology Can Take Over Decade To Prove

A key concern for critics of the AER’s decision about the Suncor plan is that of timelines.

Lothian of the Pembina Institute says that many of the tailings management plans that are being presented by proponents have fairly extensive timelines to get the landscape to the point of “ready to reclaim.” That would require a reasonably aggressive treatment in order to reduce the liability on the landscape.

“The plans that have been presented in aggregate are showing that tailings are continuing to accumulate,” she says. “We’re not seeing that sort of treatment and reclamation that we were hoping for.”

According to the AER, Directive 085 “specifies that the risks, benefits, and trade-offs associated with the proposed tailings treatment technology must be understood, have contingencies identified, and risks mitigated.”

But Olszynski says that process to understand if a tailings technology works can take between 10 and 15 years of monitoring. He adds that either COSIA should update its website to indicate that it won’t be able to reach its 2017 target or be forthright with the regulator and Albertans.

The AER didn’t make it clear how it intends to evaluate Suncor’s plan without that information.

Another Seven Tailings Management Plans Being Reviewed By Regulator

At the end of this month, the AER will host an “enhanced review process” of Suncor’s proposed tailings management plan using existing dispute resolution processes, according to an AER spokesperson.

This will be the very first time such a process has ever occurred.

Lothian says the review will be “an opportunity to have a much more constructive, open dialogue with both the proponent and those that have submitted statements of concern.”

It will involve organizations which have filed statements of concern, including the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation, Fort McKay Métis Community Association, McMurray Métis Local 1935, the Oilsands Environmental Coalition (Pembina and Fort McMurray Environmental Association) and Joslyn Energy Development.

The AER is also reviewing seven other tailings management plans, including from Syncrude, Shell, Imperial Oil and CNRL.

But the outcome of the AER’s reconsideration of the Suncor plan could very well set the tone for the remainder of the process, especially given that it represents the largest oilsands player and the first to receive a verdict.

“We were hopeful under the tailings management framework that we would see much more progressive treatment of tailings, and see that liability reduced on the landscape in the near term,” Lothian concludes.

“The plans that have been presented in aggregate are showing that tailings are continuing to accumulate. We’re not seeing that sort of treatment and reclamation that we were hoping for.”

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It’s been almost two months since the Alberta Energy Regulator (AER) released a new management framework to deal with the province’s growing legacy of oilsands tailings ponds that hold a toxic mixture of waste water, bitumen, solvents and sand.

But we’re really no closer to knowing if Directive 085 — quietly made effective on July 14 — will provide the necessary financial pressures for companies to start dealing with the almost one trillion litres of tailings that cover some 220 square kilometres of the province’s northeast.

“We really feel like this could be strike three for Alberta dealing with tailings,” says Chris Severson-Baker, managing director of the Pembina Institute.

The previous version, Directive 074, established prescriptive regulations for companies that were almost completely ignored. The new framework requires oilsands companies to submit project-specific applications that will be reviewed and approved or rejected by the regulator, a process which Severson-Baker suggests could lead to greater overall efficiency.

In addition, the inclusion of “indirect” stakeholders such as Pembina and Indigenous organizations in the process may add to the quality of requirements around transparency and reporting.

But given recent history on the tailings management front, there’s good reason to be skeptical.

Original Tailings Directive Lacked Enforcement, Penalties

Directive 074 was first introduced in February 2009 by the Alberta Energy Regulator (then titled the Energy Resources Conservation Board).

It was significant at the time given the complete lack of action by the provincial government up to that point: the previous approach had effectively been to grant approvals to open-pit mines and hope technology would be developed to deal with the waste.

The first long-term objective listed for Directive 074 was “to minimize and eventually eliminate long-term storage of fluid tailings in the reclamation landscape,” although the technology to do so did not — and still does not — exist.

Directive 074 included a very specific requirement, however, that by 2013, half of all oilsands waste must be captured and dried, a technique favoured in the mineral mining industry for long-term storage.

For the first time ever, there were specific rules and a timeline for tailings management.

In the long term, the hope was such regulations could promote investments in research and development, resulting in innovations that could eventually be applied industry-wide. Kyle Fawcett, the previous environment minister, consistently suggested the energy companies would come up with their own solutions to such problems.

That push for innovation “was seen as a positive,” Severson-Baker said. But when that new rule was implemented “companies just didn’t comply with it.”

“They submitted reports that explained why it was impossible for them to meet the requirements and so on. Eventually, the regulator — the Energy Resources Conservation Board — stopped keeping up with its regular reporting schedule.”

It was a familiar story of inept environmental regulation in Alberta that seemed to mirror the  failed attempted to establish an arm's length oilsands monitoring program.

The intent was there but the regulatory rigour was not.

#Alberta’s New Rules May be Insufficient for Dealing with Sprawling #Oilsands #TailingsPonds #cdnpoli #ableg https://t.co/esxJGKfOpD

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) September 7, 2016

Previous System Failed to Collect and Report Tailings Data

By 2013, none of the companies were complying with the rules established by Directive 074.

For instance, the rules mandated companies had to capture 30 per cent of fine particles in tailings for dry storage by 2012, and 50 per cent by 2013.

Suncor — the largest oilsands producer — only achieved a fine tailings capture rate of 8.5 per cent in 2011-12. Syncrude, which negotiated for a 12 per cent rate, only achieved an 8.8 per cent capture rate.

The Energy Resources Conservation Board set into a pattern of excusing major oilsands producers like Suncor, Syncrude and Shell for continually failing to meet regulatory requirements.

Data wasn’t being collected and reported. While the rules required companies to reduce tailings and establish plans for when the mines were either closed or abandoned, there were no financial repercussions for not doing so.

This allowed for tailings to continue to grow unchecked. In 2013, the Pembina Institute calculated that 1.5 barrels of tailings waste was produced for every one barrel of oil. There’s a chance that could change with the processing of the new plans.

But it might also miss the opportunity.

“I think something that could happen is when we see all the individual plans, it’s fairly likely if you take them all together it doesn’t match what was promised when the tailings management framework came out a couple of years ago in terms of peak and decline,” Severson-Baker says.

“That’s where it’s going to take some really tough leadership on the part of the regulator and the province to push back and say ‘look, this is not good enough, we’re running out of time to deal with these tailings.’ That’s something that’s yet to come.”

Limited Funds to Deal with Unchecked Tailings Growth

Unfortunately, there’s been a big gap in time between the announcement of the tailings framework in March 2015 and the actual implementation of the directive: while Directive 085 was announced in July, responses from oilsands companies aren’t due until early November and the finalized version of the plan won’t be released until spring 2017.

“During that time period, tailings have just continued to grow and the problem is getting more severe and we’re getting closer and closer everyday to the period that mines typically enter into — which is heading towards sunsetting,” Severson-Baker says.

“There isn’t as much future revenue expected and there’s less money as time goes on to actually pay for the cost of cleaning things up.”

There are countless examples of mining operations that don’t deal with their legacy issues. It’s an issue that’s become even more prescient with the spike in abandoned wells in Alberta since the downturn.

The delay also impacts the reporting process: Severson-Baker notes that it’s going to take years before we really know if the plans are working, meaning that results of the new directive may not be clearly understood for a while.

“We really can’t afford to have a delay in several years of not knowing only to find out that there’s a bigger problem here,” he says.

Tailings ‘A Challenge That This Government Is Facing’

All of these factors have led some organizations to actively campaign against oilsands expansion until tailings growth can be addressed.

In late 2014, Pembina suggested that new projects shouldn’t receive the green light until they can guarantee their plans for tailings recovery will work and deal with the dumping of wet tailings.

“It’s a key issue for some groups: until there’s a solution to those tailings ponds — a plan to actually deal with that waste — some organizations argue you shouldn’t add to the problem by approving further projects or allowing the industry an opportunity to increase production,” Severson-Baker says.

There are even bigger picture problems cropping up that may impact the plan: in February, a government report noted the Lower Athabasca Regional Plan — which encompasses oilsands operations and tailings ponds — represents a deeply flawed approach to Indigenous rights. In late August, University of Ottawa researchers published results of water quality testing indicating a significant spike in toxic chemicals in a lake near in-situ oilsands operations.

Severson-Baker emphasizes there’s a real sense of urgency on this issue as it’s one of the most visible impacts of oilsands operations.

A careful and consistently monitored tailings solution is what this government likely needs to address this issue, and look beyond to other concerns, including the revelation in late May that the oilsands area is one of the biggest emitters of “organic aerosol air pollution” in North America.

“We’re fighting the clock because so many legacy tailings have already been created,” Severson-Baker concludes. “That is definitely a challenge that this government is facing.”

Image: Alex MacLean

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