Cleaning up the Oilsands

Shawn Bell, May 26, 2009, Slave River Journal, Fort Smith--On the day Syncrude finishes mining bitumen from oilsands along the Athabasca River, there’s going to be a hell of a mess to clean up.

Casual estimates place the area under development at over 20,000 hectares, including overburden, tailings ponds, coke piles and open pits needing backfill. So Syncrude’s claim that all developed lands will be “reclaimed,” or put back into a natural state, seem questionable.

But talk to Ron Lewko, Syncrude’s environmental research team leader, and those claims seem not only feasible, but already well underway.

Lewko, who has been voted one of the “Rising Stars” of the oilsands industry by Oilweek magazine for his work on land reclamation, is adamant that the work Syncrude is doing on reclamation will result in natural, sustainable forests and wetlands that will mesh into the boreal forest for the long-term.

“Our research is proving when we reclaim this land, that yes, this is a sustainable forest,” Lewko said. “Our closure plan states we have to have a sustainable plan to re-establish land back into the landscape, a plan that brings the landscape back to the productivity of what it was before.”

The nuts and bolts of the operation are based on the closure plan: how will Syncrude leave the land once the oil is gone? Lewko assures that implementation of the closure plan started even before operations began, with extensive baseline environmental studies conducted between 1973, well before Syncrude started operations, and 1985. The baseline studies intended to determine the exact constitution of the land before Syncrude started removing the forest and digging open pits; consequently those studies now form guidelines for the work Lewko’s team is doing today.

“Reclamation work is happening progressively all along,” Lewko said. “Any area where operations cease, we’re on it. I wouldn’t expect (final reclamation) to take more than five years after Syncrude is all well and done.”

The publicly-touted example of Lewko’s work is the 104-hectare Gateway Hill site, the first land reclamation certificate awarded by the Alberta government. Gateway Hill is uplands, making it relatively easy to reclaim. Still, it has taken 15 years for pine trees to grow and the forest to re-establish itself on what was once overburden, so that researchers could project a reclamation trajectory to show government that in roughly 100 years the area will be just like the natural forest it once was.

Lewko points out that the reclamation trajectory his team has plotted includes a variety of vegetation and wildlife. In the past, he said, forest productivity was solely related to commercial viability. Now the approach involves creating a forest that will serve the needs of animals and the traditional practices of humans who used the land before oil was discovered.

“(In Gateway Hill) we’ve seen really good tracks, birds and squirrels and coyotes,” he said. “The only animals we haven’t seen are the big guys, the moose and caribou.” Gateway Hill is the only certified reclaimed land in the oilsands. But it is only one of many sites undergoing reclamation work at Syncrude.

Between 200 and 300 hectares are reclaimed each year, said Lewko, adding that the company is hesitant to have too much government certification because certification means the land reverts back to the Crown. In total, over 4600 hectares have been reclaimed, mostly uplands like Gateway Hill but also a few wetland areas, such as Bill’s Lake.
Syncrude will spend roughly $50 million on reclamation in 2008-2009.