As production in Alberta's oilsands continues to expand, waste byproducts continue to build up as well, from petcoke piles to tailing ponds. Now the energy companies behind the oilsands boom are planning to dump their growing volumes of toxic wastewater into man-made lakes, in the hope that they eventually become natural habitats.

Jeremy van Loon of Business Week writes that Syncrude Canada, Royal Dutch Shell, and ExxonMobil affiliate Imperial Oil "are running out of room to store the contaminated water that is a byproduct of the process used to turn bitumen–a highly viscous form of petroleum–into diesel and other fuels."

By 2022 the monthly output of wastewater from these companies "could turn New York's Central Park into a toxic reservoir 11 feet deep, according to the Pembina Institute," writes van Loon.

To accommodate the growing volume of byproduct, the energy companies have reportedly "obtained permission from provincial authorities to flood abandoned tar sand mines with a mix of tailings and fresh water." According to van Loon, this would "transform northern Alberta into the largest man-made lake district on earth."

Syncrude's Base Mine Lake, on which work began last summer, will measure 2,000 acres when complete, and is expected by the company to "eventually replicate a natural habitat, complete with fish and waterfowl."

Non-profit environmental group Pembina describes these end pit lakes as "high-risk and experimental," noting that "historical data about using end pit lakes as toxic waste dumps are insufficient to determine whether or not they are a safe, long-term tool for reclaiming tailings waste as no example of a functional end pit lake currently exists."

There are about 30 end pit lakes planned for the Athabasca Boreal region, according to Alberta's Cumulative Environment Management Association.

"There's no way to tell how the ecology of these lakes will evolve over time," said Jennifer Grant, director of oilsands at Pembina. "It's all guesswork at this point. It's reckless."

"We're playing Russian roulette with a big part of an important ecosystem," said David Schindler, an ecology professor at the University of Alberta. "Nothing is going to grow in that soup of toxic elements except perhaps a few hydrosulfide bacteria. And all of the unforeseen events are being downplayed."

Syncrude began creating an end pit lake 30 miles north of Fort McMurray this summer, filling in a mine with fresh water from a dam to a depth of 16 feet to keep toxic tailings down at the bottom. According to company spokeswoman Cheryl Robb, trials involving "test ponds" resulted in naturally occurring ecosystems, with microbes helping to break down pollutants.

However, van Loon writes that the "largest test pond was 4 hectares–roughly 1/200th the size of Syncrude's lake."

"The big question we have is how long will it take before the water is clean, how long is it going to take before the littoral zones develop and the shoreline vegetation builds up?" said Robb. "But we're confident in the technology."

One of the major concerns surrounding end pit lakes is the possibility of contaminated water seeping into the boreal ecosystem. In October, "communities bordering Canada's Athabasca River were cautioned not to drink from the waterway after a breach in a coal tailings storage pond dumped 1 billion liters (264 million gallons) of contaminated water into an area west of Edmonton."

According to Pembina, the exact amount of seepage from tailings in Alberta is "either not known or has not been made public," but modelled estimates suggest that "11 to 12.6 million litres of tailings leak from tailings ponds each day."

Image Credit: WhitneyH / Flickr

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On September 10 Alberta Environment Minister Diana McQueen announced Alberta’s new wetland policy at the Clifford E. Lee Nature Sanctuary, a protected marshland near Devon, Alberta.

Eight years in the making, the policy would be a step in the right direction if the timeline didn’t allow for the destruction of thousands more hectares of environmentally precious land before it goes into effect in 2015.

According to environmental groups, the approximately 195 projects currently underway or awaiting approval would be exempt from the new policy, including tens of thousands of hectares of wetlands destroyed without recourse. This would be on top of the approximately 28,000 hectares of wetland already destroyed by tar sands mining.

Wetlands make up 60 per cent of the 4750 square kilometers of mineable land in Northern Alberta. The lands are home to a diverse number of species, including Caribou, which are currently endangered in Northern Alberta. They act as a water filter and moderate spring run off. They are also important to traditional land use for indigenous communities.

The vast swaths of wetlands in Northern Alberta come in diverse forms, including peat lands, which act as a powerful carbon trap. Because their delicate ecosystems have developed over centuries, they will be difficult and costly to replace.

Mining equipment clears the "overburden" at a mining project in a wetland rich boreal forest in Northern Alberta

Like much of the environmental legislation in Alberta, the publically visible bill is light on specifics.

Oilsands director at the Pembina Institute Jennifer Grant points out that one of the worrisome questions in the policy as it’s written is the issue of “non-replacement mitigation” of wetland destruction. Rather than forcing companies to replace the wetlands they destroy, the policy allows them to put money into research and development or wetlands education.

“They could just pay into a fund that promotes the values of wetlands, which is ironic,” she says.

From the beginning, the environmental think tank and many other environmental groups in Alberta have advocated for a “no-net-loss” policy, which means that industry would have to replace every hectare it damages.

The original draft of the policy put forth in 2008 by environmental consulting firm Aquality recommended that “no-net-loss” policy.

However, two members of the 25-member water council objected: the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP) and the Alberta Chamber of Resources (ACR). They wrote a letter to the Ministry of Environment stating that the proposed policy would cost the companies they represent “billions of dollars” and urged the Alberta government to delay introduction of any policy. The province capitulated and went back to the drawing board.

“We are very much concerned that [the policy] has been significantly undermined,” Carolyn Campbell of the Alberta Wilderness Association told Canadian Press at the time. “We are worried that by caving in to one sector’s request, we would weaken our wetland policy across the province.”

With new policy, Grant worries that the government’s implementation of this policy might be as lax as their implementation of tailings ponds legislation they made in 2009.

“They were talking some tough talk, saying if companies don’t meet these rules, they’re not going to be able to operate in this province,” she remembers. “When you look at the lack of compliance over time, it’s actually gotten worse, not better.”

In June, the Energy Resources Conservation Board released a report saying that companies in Northern Alberta have “failed to meet their commitments” in dealing with the dangerous liquid waste reservoirs that are a key feature of tar sands mining.

“The regulator said, you know what? That’s okay,” says Grant. “We don’t want to put too many onerous conditions on companies. We’re going to choose not to enforce right now and we’ll consider enforcing in 2015.”

Image Credit: Mark Elliot via Flickr

Image Credit: The Pembina Institute via Flickr

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Provincial auditor general Merwan Saher has agreed to conduct an audit of oil pipeline safety in Alberta, responding to requests from a coalition of 54 public interest groups dissatisfied with the provincial government's third-party report released in August.

"We will be auditing the government's monitoring systems to ensure compliance with Alberta's pipeline regulations. Our audit would include inspection and enforcement processes," Saher wrote in a letter to Alberta's Opposition parties Wildrose and the NDP, which were among the groups demanding the review.

The government-commissioned pipeline safety review, conducted by Group 10 Engineering, was announced by Energy Minister Ken Hughes in July 2012 after several major pipeline oil spills in the province, including a 475,000 litre leak from a Plains Midstream Canada pipeline in Central Alberta in June. The final report was made public a year later, in August 2013.

Following the release of the report last month, a coalition representing 54 environmental, First Nations, labour and landowner groups wrote to Premier Alison Redford requesting another review. The letter stated that "Albertans deserve to know the real scope of the province's pipeline problems and they deserve real solutions," leaving the group "no choice but to begin to petition the Alberta auditor general to take on such an examination."  

Eriel Deranger, Communications Coordinator for the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation said “Oil spills pose a major threat to our community, which depends on clean air, water and soil to sustain our way of life. We are pleased that the Auditor General will be looking into pipeline safety, as we feel the provincial government hasn’t been doing enough to prevent spills from happening.”

“It’s been a long road pushing for this review but hopefully the Auditor General will finally give Albertan’s some answers to Alberta’s pipeline woes because the Redford government definitely hasn’t,” said Mike Hudema, Greenpeace Canada’s climate and energy campaigner. “Groups from across the political spectrum joined together to push for this review because of the growing threats pipeline spills are posing to Alberta’s communities and environment. I hope this review will give the government time to pause on its pipeline-pushing ways because all is not well in Alberta.”

Jennifer Grant, director of the oilsands program at the Pembina Institute, applauded Saher for "showing leadership on this important issue," saying that the "audit presents an opportunity to restore Albertans' confidence in the provincial regulator's ability to manage pipelines and the associated risks."

"With 400,000 square kilometres of pipelines crisscrossing the province, and an average of two crude oil spills a day for the past 37 years, ensuring the integrity and safety of Alberta's pipeline network is absolutely critical and could set an important precedent for other jurisdictions," Grant said in a news release.

Global News reports that the auditor general "has been considering a pipeline safety audit for much of the past year" according to spokeswoman Kim Nishikaze. Nishikaze added that they "will be looking at pipeline safety in the foreseeable future" but "can't say when."

Saher wrote in his letter that the pipeline safety audit would be undertaken "as soon as reasonably possible."

Image Credit: Jasonwoodhead23 / Flickr

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