Suncor is celebrating their new wetland reclamation project in the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo, north of Fort McMurray, Alberta. Dubbed Nikanotee, the Cree word for future, the fen represents a leap forward in cleaning up the multiple environmental scars that are the byproducts of tar sands extraction, or so the oil giant’s congratulatory press release claims. But are they celebrating too soon?

Planning for the fen on a site that was once an open pit mine began approximately eight years ago and has included collaboration with the Universities of Waterloo, Calgary and Colorado State. Construction of the fen’s underlying watershed was completed in January 2013 in time for planting in the spring.

On August 25 Suncor held an official opening ceremony that included the planting of sedge and speeches from Mark Little, Suncor’s vice president of oilsands and in situ operations, as well as Wood Buffalo mayor Melissa Blake and Fort McMurray Metis president Richard Dragon.

“Less than 500 metres away, truck engines roar and smokestacks billow as Canada’s largest oil company continues to dig bitumen out of the ground,” wrote Vincent McDermott of Fort McMurray Today.

An areal shot of oil sands mining in Northern Alberta illustrates the challenges of reclamation

Jennifer Grant, Director of Oil Sands at the Pembina Institute points out that peat bogs, or muskeg as the regions are often known, are vital ecological features for a number of reasons. They provide natural habitat to a “disproportionately large diversity of wildlife.” Caribou are particularly reliant on the areas and are currently threatened in Northwestern Alberta, largely due to the continued shrinkage of that habitat.

That diversity makes the land particularly important to local First Nations communities. As the land has been progressively taken up by open-pit bitumen mining, local communities have had to make changes to their traditional land use, causing a ripple effect of social issues.

Alberta’s wetlands also act as a filtration system for the water table and a carbon sink for the atmosphere. They additionally moderate storm and melt water run-off, leading some to suggest that their damage may have played a part in the spring’s flooding further south.

So any effort to restore the peat bogs can only be good, right?

The trouble is that scientific evidence has shown that reclamation of these vital and delicate ecosystems presents a significant challenge and lags far behind the destruction companies like Suncor create in pursuit of tar sands bitumen. According to their own data, Suncor alone has disturbed more than 21,000 hectares of land. As of 2012 only 1542 hectares or 7.2 per cent of that had been reclaimed.

The issue with fens like the one Suncor is seeking to recreate in Wood Buffalo is that the time required to reach sufficient peat depth is counted in centuries, not years. In a 2012 paper published in the journal Ecology and Society, University of Alberta professor Lee Foote argued that even under optimal conditions,it would take 100 to 300 years to achieve the minimum of 30 cm of cover required to qualify as peatland.

Suncor shipped in peat moss to kickstart the process, but whether that is an effective strategy in such a sophisticated ecosystem remains to be seen.

Another issue is location—Suncor has actually placed the new fen in what was once a river valley. Christine Daly, Suncor’s wetlands reclamation director told Fort McMurray Today that she wasn’t worried about relocating the wetland.  

“I don’t think it has an adverse effect on the area, as long as you’re creating the same ecosystems that were here before,” she said. “If you have a forest to our left or a forest to our right, what matters is we’re creating healthy forests once again. We just have to be putting the same ecosystems back on the landscape. They don’t have to be in the exact same place.”

Tar sands tailings ponds, pictured above, cover more than 170 km² of area around Fort McMurray.

Biologists Suzanne Bayley and Rebecca C. Rooney co-authored a paper that questioned that very attitude. They believe that location can have a massive impact on whether an ecosystem will be able to survive. 

“It makes us angry because they will put some kind of plants back on the landscape, but it will not look the way it was and it will not have the same type of functions,” Bayley, who has been studying the region for nearly two decades, told the Globe and Mail last year.

Furthermore, Grant points out that reclaiming areas used in mining is not simply a matter of putting back what was removed.

“When you dig up big holes in the ground, you take away the trees and the muskeg and the overburden, and you get at that oil sand, you’re going to have a lot more materials after mining that you had before mining,” she says. “All of those layers that took centuries to settle and to form, whether it be rock or wetland, they’re now disturbed and they create a lot more volume.”

The large amounts of new material has lead to a transformation in Northern Alberta from a low-lying wetland-dominated region into a hilly region that might not support wetland ecology.

Tailing ponds, which take up a massive amount of land in the region, also pose a danger to wetlands recovery.

“Over 840 billion liters of toxic fluid byproducts are currently held in 170 km² of open reservoirs without any known process to purify this water in meaningful time frames even as some of it leaches into adjacent lands and rivers,” wrote Foote.

Regardless of these enormous hurdles to wetlands reclamation, there remains no governmental policy in place regarding wetlands reclamation in Northern Alberta. The province’s current wetland policy, set out in 1993, acknowledges the importance of wetlands, but doesn’t even mention the effects of tar sands development.

Undisturbed muskeg is a vital feature of the ecosystem, acting as a water filter and a carbon sink

So perhaps the Nikanotee Fen does represent a future for the tar sands. But without a framework in place to oversee efforts like it, what exactly that future holds remains unclear.

Image Credit: Suncor Energy via Flickr Image Credit: The Pembina Institute via Flickr Image Credit: Kris Krug via Flickr Image Credit: Mark Elliot via Flickr

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A week and a half after its discovery, Apache Corporation estimates that a toxic water leak from a pipeline has affected 42 hectares of land near Zama City in Northern Alberta. The spill released 9.5 million litres of what the company called “produced water” from its operations there, making it the tenth largest in the province since 1975.

Neither Apache nor Alberta Environment have spoken officially on the exact chemical content of the water.

However, the Dene Tha First Nation who has been trapping in the area since the 1950s report detection of “hydrocarbons, high levels of salt, sulphurous compounds, metals and naturally occurring radioactive materials, along with chemical solvents and additives used by the oil industry.”

No estimates have been released regarding the duration of the leak, although locals say the evidence shows it could have be present for "months" before it was detected on June 1st.

Chief James Ahnassay told The Globe and Mail “‘Every plant and tree died’ in the area touched by the spill.”

Apache spill from the air. Photo provided by Dene Tha to Globe and Mail reporter Nathan Vanderklippe and made available on twitter.

Images of the spill, released by the Dene Tha to Nathan Vanderklippe, show the high-oil content of the release. According to the ERCB roughly 2000 litres of oil were released in the 9.5 million gallon spill. 

The Hay-Zama Lakes have been designated an "Area of International Importance" since 1982, by the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands. Both lakes are connected by networked waterways.

The Dene Tha has provided the first photos of the affected area, which show wide swaths of brown evergreens and black swampy fields where once there was marshland. The area around Zama City is protected as a Wildland Provincial Park and is a critical habitat for migrating waterfowl and prized for its interlocking waterways, muskeg and wetlands noted for their biological diversity.

Although the leak was reported on June 1st, it was not acknowledged publicly until a week later when a local resident reported it to a newscaster. On Monday, a spokesperson from Alberta Environment said both they and the Energy Recourses Conservation Board had staff on the ground near the spill. But the agency refused to give any estimates about the size until today, saying they were still assessing the situation.

Globe and Mail reporter Nathan Vanderklippe, who has been persuing the story since at least June 10th, has received very little information from either Apache or the Alberta government. Although Apache noted the duration of the release is under investigation.

Q: How much spilled? A: "Don't have a volume. That's part of the investigation." Spill happened June 1, btw. #apachespill

— Nathan VanderKlippe (@nvanderklippe) June 10, 2013

Q: What spilled? A: Produced water. Q: Were they hydrocarbons? A: "Water sampling is being taken daily." But no answer. #apachespill

— Nathan VanderKlippe (@nvanderklippe) June 10, 2013

Q: What size of pipeline spilled, and how old was it? A: "I don't have a diameter or age." #apachespill

— Nathan VanderKlippe (@nvanderklippe) June 10, 2013

Q: How long was it spilling? A: "That's part of our investigation." #apachespill

— Nathan VanderKlippe (@nvanderklippe) June 10, 2013

Q: Does this area produce oil or gas? A: Both. #apachespill

— Nathan VanderKlippe (@nvanderklippe) June 10, 2013

Q: Has any of the leak made it to water? A: No. Q: Have there been any impacts to wildlife? A: "Not at this time." #apachespill

— Nathan VanderKlippe (@nvanderklippe) June 10, 2013

Dene Tha: "every plant and tree" touched by #apachespill is dead. Dene Tha also suspect waterfowl died, although Apache says they haven't.

— Nathan VanderKlippe (@nvanderklippe) June 12, 2013  

Greenpeace campaigner Mike Hudema is questioning the Alberta government’s motive in keeping quiet on the details of the spill:

“With a spill so large why did the Alberta government not report it to the public? Was the Redford government hoping that because of the remoteness of the area that they could just cover it up because no one would notice?”

This is a very chilling question because a yes answer means that Alberta has a government willing to go to almost any length to control it’s image regardless of the truth, the impacts on the environment or the public’s right to timely and accurate information.”

Apache characterizes its operations near Zama as using “a novel enhanced oil recovery method to produce oil from what were once thought to be exhausted wells.”

It is unclear whether this spill comes directly from their fracking operation or from another operation in the area.

Globe News reports there were “23,484 of produced water spills in Alberta between Jan. 1, 1975 and Feb. 4, 2013.”

Apache Corporation has had 949 spills in that time, 575 of which were produced water. None of the companies three media relations personnel were available for comment on this story.

Image Credit: Dene Tha

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