Water Depletion

Is mutant goldeye pulled from lake an ugly warning?

jessie — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 12:20:52 -0700

Is mutant goldeye pulled from lake an ugly warning?

Lindsay O'Reilly, August 24, 2008, Calgary Sun -- It's a really ugly fish.

The lumpy, cancerous-looking body, the glazed-over eyes -- it's not even one of those "it's so ugly it's cute" faces.

And yeah, the second mouth doesn't help.

This is the goldeye fish some kids pulled from Lake Athabasca last week, before shouting, with the enthusiasm kids have: "Hey, this fish has two mouths!"

And so, the fish became a star. Its un-beautiful image has been gracing news websites and newspaper pages across the country, another smudge on the oilsands' already-tarnished reputation.

So why is the mutant fish a big deal?

Because it was caught in an area downstream from some of the oilsands' most prominent operations.

An area where residents have been talking for years about high cancer rates and strange growths on the wildlife they hunt and eat.

This is an area where a doctor once spoke out about the unusual cancer rates in patients at Fort Chipewyan and subsequently had his medical licence threatened by government bigwigs.

A place where, it came to light in May, millions of litres of toxic tailings pond water have leached into the soil along the Athabasca River.

George Poitras, of the Mikisew First Nation, froze the deformed fish and put it on display at the Keepers of the Water Conference in Fort Chipewyan last Sunday, to draw the world's attention to what his people have been saying all along.

"We suspect this fish is very much linked to tarsands development and contamination of the Athabasca River," Poitras told reporters.

He went on to say his community's elders warned what happened to fish and animals is "a sign of what will happen to human life."

The residents are calling for a moratorium on new oilsands development approvals until more research is done and safeguards are in place.

Janice Linehan, chairwoman for Alberta's Regional Aquatics Monitoring Program (RAMP), said the program had been keeping an eye on fish downstream from the oilsands for about 12 years.

She said other deformities had been observed, but never an extra mouth.

The deformities, she said, were usually chalked up to "parasites and fin erosion," and that there has "never been a scientific link between fish deformities and oilsands activity."

But an extra mouth?

Clear link or not, you'd think the media frenzy surrounding this mutant fish would be bad for the oilsands' stock.

Especially given that, earlier this week, three environmental groups quit an oilsands advisory group that included government and industry reps, saying it had lost legitimacy.

And these might have been a blow, had Bill Gates and Warren Buffett -- No. 1 and No. 3, respectively, on Forbes' world's richest people list -- not chosen this very week to make a surprise oilsands visit.

While the reason for the visit hasn't been made public, the very fact these savvy tycoons stepped foot on our oily soil has sent oilsands stocks soaring.

Apparently, Gates trumps mutant fish.

People want to believe in this resource, they really do. There are so many reasons to want it to be harmless.

We keep hearing it's the lifeblood keeping Canada's economy out of recession. It's both our meal ticket and the skeleton in our closet.

But it's up to us to control it. To monitor it. To make sure this resource, which buys us so many nice things, isn't allowed to run along so recklessly that we pay for our success with the health of our citizens and environment.

It could be that this ugly fish is a big, ugly warning sign.

Buffett, Gates, Mutant Fish Frame Oil Sands Debate

jessie — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 12:13:31 -0700

Buffett, Gates, Mutant Fish Frame Oil Sands Debate

Jeffrey Jones, August 22, 2008, REUTERS -- In the high-stakes battle between the oil industry and environmentalists over the image of Canada's oil sands, it appears a pair of multibillionaires beats a two-mouthed fish.

The week started out tough for oil sands producers, whose shares had been beaten down as crude prices skidded and projects suffered more cost overruns.

Three environmental groups quit a northern Alberta oil sands development advisory body that also includes government and industry representatives, saying it had lost legitimacy.

Then reports surfaced that children had reeled in a fish with two jaws from a lake downstream from where tens of billions of dollars worth of projects are pumping synthetic oil.

But by midweek, the mood changed. A stealth visit to Canadian Natural Resources' new Horizon oil sands mining project by two of the world's richest men, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, overshadowed all.

Shares of such major players as Canadian Natural, Suncor Energy Inc and Canadian Oil Sands Trust took off. Interest by the Microsoft co-founder and Berkshire Hathaway chairman was cited as a factor.

"They are some pretty astute guys; they've done fairly well. And for them to come up here and take a look, this is interesting," said William Lacey, an analyst with Calgary-based FirstEnergy Capital Corp. "But it always surprises me, frankly, what gets a market going."

It has not been made public why Gates and Buffett toured the C$9.3 billion (US$8.9 billion) project north of Fort McMurray, Alberta. But local media trumpeted it as a show of support for oil sands development.

The industry and Alberta government had become used to being on the defensive over oil sands' impact on water, land and air quality and strains on local communities.

"I don't think that the Buffett-Gates visit changes too much on the environmental concern side," said Joseph Doucet, a professor of energy policy at the University of Alberta.

"But I do think it is one more data point, suggesting the interest in investment in the oil sands continues to be there for many reasons that are not going to go away."

Such high-profile curiosity shows the need for the industry and government to better understand what the environmental and social costs are, Doucet said.

TONE HAS SHIFTED

Until this year, the story of the oil sands, the largest deposit of crude oil outside the Middle East, centred on billions of dollars in investments, fast-growing production and Canada being a secure supplier to the huge US market.

But the tone shifted. Greenpeace, the Natural Resources Defence Council and other green groups have mounted a offensive to tell Canadians and Americans that development of Alberta's "dirty oil" is worsening global warming, destruction of boreal forest and water pollution.

The battle reached a fever pitch in the spring when 500 ducks died when they landed on a Syncrude Canada Ltd tailings pond, a lake of toxic by-products from oil sands processing.

Then this week, the mutated two-jawed fish from Lake Athabasca, downstream from the oil sands developments, made headlines after it was shown at a Keepers of the Water conference in the northern Alberta community of Fort Chipewyan.

There, native elders have long said water pollution is behind a high incidence of cancer and other ailments.

To date, there is no evidence tying the fish mutation to oil sands production.

In the face of environmental criticism, Alberta's government has launched a C$25 million communications push to protect the province's "brand" around the world, and explain that the oil sands are being developed responsibly.

The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers started its own campaign to get out the message that oil sands firms are doing all they can to cut emissions, lower water use and limit damage to the northern forest, and are willing to discuss such issues with the public.

This is why the uber-tycoons' interest is seen as so welcome, even if they have no immediate plans to invest.

"It may have been an interest thing, where they say 'Well, I've heard a lot about this and energy is a very important part of the world going forward. No matter what I invest in, I need to understand this'," Lacey said.

Activists embarking on 1,000 kilometre bicycle trip to protest Alberta oilsands

jessie — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 11:47:00 -0700

Activists embarking on 1,000 kilometre bicycle trip to protest Alberta oilsands

The Canadian Press, August 12, 2008 -- A group of oilsands activists is setting out from Alberta´s oilsands on a 1,000-kilometre bicycle trip with hopes of presenting a toxic souvenir of their trip to policy-makers in Calgary.

"We´ll be delivering bottles of polluted Athabasca River water to CEOs and politicians," said event co-ordinator Marya Folinsbee.

"I really believe in living your beliefs and this is a really interesting opportunity to do that."

Reading a statement in front of the Alberta legislature on Tuesday, the Sierra Youth Coalition members said they´d like to see better communication with First Nations communities, and a stop to oilsands development until better regional planning is in place.

The organization staged a similar event last year where cyclists travelled 1,600 kilometres from Waterton National Park in southern Alberta to Fort McKay.

They stopped in a number of communities, talking to people about their experiences and opinions about oilsands development. Now coalition members say it´s taking that information and putting it towards more involved public discussions.

They plan to attend the Keepers of the Water Conference in Fort Chipewyan, a First Nations community that believes oilsands pollution is killing local wildlife, and causing higher rates of cancer and other illnesses.

Aftab Erfan, a Vancouver-based climate activist, said last year´s trip was received rather well.

"Even in some of the northern communities where a lot of the population is depending on the oil industry, we found that a lot of people were inviting us into their homes and wanted to talk about what we wanted to talk about," she said.

She said it´s important for young activists to develop a culture of "knowing what you´re talking about before you speak."

And that´s why Folinsbee wants to go to the oilsands.

"I´m from Edmonton but I´ve never seen the tarsands," she said. "For me that will be very important in itself, to sort of understand the wider context."

The group _ which includes people from as far away as California _ plan to end the trip on Aug. 28.

"Ideally no one would have to go on these kinds of urgent protests," Folinsbee said.

"As long as the tarsands are here there will be people speaking out against them."

Brazen protesters tag Syncrude pond; Greenpeace activists ticketed for trespassing on oilsands site

jessie — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 11:44:15 -0700

Brazen protesters tag Syncrude pond; Greenpeace activists ticketed for trespassing on oilsands site

Alexandra Zabjek, July 25, 2008, The Edmonton Journal -- A new chapter in activism against Alberta's oilsands was opened Thursday when a group of protesters entered Syncrude's Aurora mine site north of Fort McMurray and unfurled banners on the edge of a controversial tailings pond.

"To actually go onto the (oilsands) sites themselves, that's a new thing and I think we can expect to see more of that in the future as greater awareness is brought to what's going on up north," said Paul Joosse, a University of Alberta PhD student who studies environmental social movements.

Eleven Greenpeace activists entered the remote Syncrude site with the intention of unfurling banners near the tailings pond where 500 water fowl died earlier this year. The activists also planned to cap a pipe to stop the flow of effluent into the five-square-kilometre pond, which holds waste materials that result from the oilsands extraction process.

The group did not cap the pipe, but succeeded in affixing a giant banner on a sandy berm that surrounds the tailings pond. One activist walked onto the edge of a gushing pipe while holding a banner emblazoned with a skull. Photographs of the stunts were posted on the Greenpeace website.

"I think it's of absolute importance to take the struggle of the tarsands right to the belly of the beast," said Dave Martin, a Greenpeace activist who was among those at the Syncrude site.

"It's a largely symbolic gesture but we're here to say that the tarsands are a disaster on a scale we haven't seen before."

RCMP have issued $287 fines for trespassing to each of the 11 protesters. There is currently no evidence of actions meriting criminal charges, said Const. Ali Fayad of Fort McMurray RCMP.

Syncrude will be reviewing its security operations in light of Thursday's activities, said company spokesman Mark Kruger.

"Our biggest reaction is to focus on the fact that the protesters did put themselves at a risk to their safety," said Kruger. "The Syncrude site is a large, industrial and complex site and for people who are unfamiliar with the area, there can be a safety risk. So we're thankful no one got hurt."

The Greenpeace activists said they accessed the site with few problems and without contacting any security personnel.

Syncrude believes the group broke through a gate to enter the operation.

Dirty and wasteful to the last drop; Oil sands development is one of the most environmentally wrong-headed ideas ever

jessie — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 09:46:01 -0700

Dirty and wasteful to the last drop; Oil sands development is one of the most environmentally wrong-headed ideas ever

William Marsden, July 10, 2008, The Montreal Gazette -- In some ways, shipping 61 per cent of our oil and gas production to a foreign country while both Canada and the world is running out of the stuff might be considered a good thing, but you would have to be fairly twisted - or just plain stupid - to go along with the reasoning.

Which just about sums up where Canadians are today when it comes to managing their most vital resource: fossil fuel energy.

In a nutshell, we continue to expand our fossil fuel exports into the United States while our conventional natural gas and crude oil supplies begin to dry up.

According to the U.S. Energy Information Agency, which keeps track of world supplies, at its present rate of production Canada could be out of conventional natural gas in six years. That doesn't mean every well will have run dry by 2014. That just means we will no longer have enough production to supply our needs. That will pose a horrendous situation both for the millions of Canadians who rely on natural gas to heat their homes and for the industrial sector that uses it to manufacture a wide variety of products, including fertilizer to help grow the cheap food to which we have become perhaps too blithely accustomed.

Because the world is running out of fossil fuels even as consumption increases, major oil companies have almost all flocked to Alberta's oil sands.

With about 174 billion barrels of proven reserves - second only to Saudi Arabia - it is a source that will allow the party to continue in a business-as-usual manner for at least a few more decades.

The long-term consequences of this attitude, however, will be punishing and will worsen as we expand the tar sands operations.

The mining of the sands has already created the worst environmental calamity this country has seen, and only about two per cent of the sands have been exploited.

With the permission of both the Alberta and federal governments, oil companies are in the process of destroying an area of the boreal forest stretching about 140,000 square kilometres. It's larger than the state of Florida.

In the process of producing a carbon-heavy oil that is up to five times more greenhouse gas (GHG) intensive than conventional crude, they are destroying a forest that acts as a carbon sink. It constitutes as sort of double body blow to the Earth.

As an energy source for extracting the bitumen from the sands, oil-sand extraction is using an amount of natural gas - a much cleaner fuel - equivalent to that which would heat about one million homes a year. This largely wasteful use of natural gas is slated to increase over the next 10 years by almost 250 per cent - if, of course, they can find enough of the stuff.

Extracting and upgrading bitumen has created tailings ponds that measure, according to Canadian Press, more than 130 square kilometres. They are so large they can been seen from space.

Essentially, they are lakes that contain a combination of water, sand, clay and a host of toxic polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, naphthenic acids and high levels of salt, toxic heavy metals like lead and large amounts of sulphur. They are themselves a source of "fugitive" GHGs through the process of evaporation while at the same time leaching their chemical soup into ground water and the Athabasca River.

The oil sands operations emit about 29.5 megatonnes of greenhouse gases each year, which is equivalent to about five million cars and represents four per cent of Canada's emissions. Those numbers are increasing every year as new projects are brought online and old projects expand. Suncor alone estimates its GHG emissions will more than double by 2012, to 25 megatonnes.

You might think that as a reward for this destruction we would at least be putting a little money aside for a desolate rainy day. Not a chance. We charge the lowest royalties in the world, even with the recent average 20 per cent increases. The lion's share of profits goes to private investors, most of whom are foreign. What little Alberta and Canada earns from its non-renewable resources is spent as fast as we make it with no consideration for posterity. The sands may be creating jobs and multibillion-dollar capital investments, but the owners of the resource - Canadians - aren't getting their share of the profits.

So when a study came out last month that showed the U.S. was modifying, expanding and building new refineries to accept 1.9 million barrels a day of raw Canadian bitumen from the oil sands (which is larger than our current tar sands production), it just seemed par for the course. What's more, Canadian firms are building the pipelines that will transport the bitumen south.

The U.S. will refine our oil and sell back to us and the rest of the world the finished, value-added products. Seems fitting in a world gone mad. The U.S. consumes more oil per day than Canada, Mexico, Brazil, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy and Russia combined.

Yet we continue feeding a beast whose insatiable appetite will ultimately drag us down.

Canadians are living in a fool's paradise believing the tar sands reflect an abundance of resource and wealth. They don't. They reflect the reality of climate change, global chemical pollution and the end of the age of fossil fuels.

It's time we faced this reality. It's time we notified the Americans that we will no longer feed their voracious demands. It's time we stopped destroying our environment to extract every last drop of oil. It's time we prepared for a world without oil.

William Marsden is author of Stupid to the Last Drop: How Alberta Is Bringing Environmental Armageddon to Canada (and Doesn't Seem to Care).

Toxic tailings from the tar sands; Alberta Environmental Resources Conservation Board's new directive worse than useless.

jessie — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 09:42:54 -0700

Toxic tailings from the tar sands; Alberta Environmental Resources Conservation Board's new directive worse than useless.

Ricardo Acuña, July 7, 2008, Vue Weekly -- The Alberta Government, along with their friends in the oil industry, have recently embarked on a major campaign to educate Canadians and Americans about the fact that extraction of oil from Northern Alberta's bituminous sands is actually an environmentally friendly and ecologically sound process.

This is no easy task. Especially given that the science, statistics and pictures reflecting what is happening in Northern Alberta tend to speak for themselves. From Syncrude's dead ducks to tailings leaks into the Athabasca River to aerial pictures of the area, the giant tailings lakes attached to these operations have, of late, become one of the most visible manifestations of all that is wrong with bituminous sands projects and a political hot potato for both government and industry in terms of their "education" campaigns.

The real issue with tailings is that they are incredibly toxic and pose a significant threat to human life and the ecosystem in general.

Last week the Alberta Environmental Resources Conservation Board (ERCB) released a draft of a new directive which is ultimately meant to demonstrate that the government is serious about addressing this most visible of problems. Unfortunately, however, the only thing that the directive — entitled Tailings Performance Criteria and Requirements for Oil Sands Mining Schemes — shows is just how negligent the provincial government has been in terms of the environment over the last 40 years.

Tailings are a byproduct of the tar sands extraction process. As the oil is separated from the sand, what is left behind is a mix of sand, water, silt, clay, hydrocarbons and toxic chemicals. Because provincial legislation dictates that tar sands operations cannot discharge any materials into the environment, they must be stored on site. To date, this has meant that they are pumped into big containment sites where the coarser sands settles to the bottom and the fine particles settle into the water.

These containment sites are what we have come to know as "tailings ponds." According to a recent report by the Pembina Institute, there are currently about 5.5 billion cubic metres of impounded tailings, with some of the lakes being as big as 13 square kilometres.

To date, the storage and management of tailings has been virtually unregulated and unmonitored by the provincial government. Despite the fact that some 2.0 m3 to 2.5 m3 are currently produced per barrel of bitumen, the government has relied entirely on the voluntary good will of industry in terms of what they do with that byproduct.

Every tar sands outfit in operation has been required to submit plans for reclamation of their operations site. Within those reclamation plans are plans for dealing with and handling tailings over the long term. For the most part these plans rely on two technologies: the creation of end pit lakes (which essentially means covering them up with a "reclaimed lake"), and turning them into consolidated tailings (tailings thickened by some agent which would make them transportable so they can be "integrated" into the landscape).

The problem with these proposed technologies is that after 40 years they still exist exclusively in the realm of the theoretical, and have not been proven anywhere to be viable or safe. In other words, there is no evidence anywhere that industry's "plans" for tailings reclamation will actually work.

So now, after 500 dead ducks, after public outcry from around North America, after reports that tailings have been leaking into the Athabasca River all along and after getting their knuckles rapped by a joint federal-provincial review panel, the provincial government has decided that maybe relying entirely on industry to manage tailings on a voluntary basis may not be a good idea.

What last week's ERCB draft directive does is set enforceable guidelines and performance measurements by which government can ensure that industry is actually making progress on their long-term tailings management plans. In other words, after 40 years the government has decided it has some responsibility for ensuring that industry does what it said it would do.

What the ERCB directive does not deal with, however, is the real problem with tailings in the tar sands. Whether they are being stored in tailings lakes, buried in end pit lakes or thickened and spread over the landscape, the real issue with tailings is that they are incredibly toxic and pose a significant threat to human life and the ecosystem in general.

The problem is not what form the tailings are in, but the fact that there are tailings at all. The ERCB directive forces industry to start working toward development and implementation of technology that is not proven. In the meantime, the industry continues to produce these toxic tailings at an alarming rate, with no guarantee that the human and environmental risk from these tailings will ever be eliminated.

Imagine if someone discovered that there were high levels of poison in the water coming out of our taps. Would you be okay with the government simply setting guidelines and timelines for the development of technology, which may or may not eventually remove the poison from our drinking water with the poisonous water continuing to flow in the interim?

Some analysts have referred to the ERCB's move as a baby step in the right direction, but it is not. It is actually a huge step in the wrong direction. Until industry can show scientifically — and beyond a shadow of a doubt — that they have technology in place, which will make tailings safe over the long term, no new tailings should be allowed. If that means shutting production entirely, then so be it. There can be no greater motivator for industry to innovate and change their practices than the risk of permanently losing the golden goose.

Tailings are toxic and dangerous, and there's currently no technology which can change that — why is government looking the other way while their production continues to increase? It's time this government stopped making it so easy for industry to poison Albertans and destroy our landscape. It's time they remembered their primary responsibility and started governing in the interest of Albertans, not Syncrude and Suncor.

Ricardo Acuña is Executive Director of the Parkland Institute, a non-partisan public policy research institute housed at the University of Alberta.

Website: http://www.ualberta.ca/parkland/.

Activists rally to clean up river

jessie — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 09:36:30 -0700

Activists rally to clean up river

Brigitte Petersen, July 9, 2008, Jasper Booster -- First Nations speakers, drummers and singers were some of those working to raise awareness about the health of the Athabasca River and the people who live along it during Keepers Day events Sunday (July 6).

About 30 people gathered under cloudy skies at Old Fort Point for introductory prayers, discussion and music.

Alice Martin, a member of the Mikisew Cree First Nation in northern Alberta, said emotional prayers in Cree and in English asking for help in saving the Athabasca River, people and wildlife from health and environmental problems many claim to be caused by pulp mills and the Athabasca oil sands.

“There are people along the river who are very concerned about what is happening and want to do something,” said Martin.
In her prayers, Martin asked people to respect each other and the environment. She prayed for protection, for this generation and for those living in the future.

“We ask you to open the hearts of the government and the industries,” said Martin.

Cleo Reece, a member of the Fort McMurray First Nation, videotaped events throughout the day to make a documentary.
“The water is sacred and it’s very important to us,” said Reece. “How we look after it now is going to impact us for generations to come.”

Peter Cyprien of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation, said many residents of his northern community believe the oilsands are polluting the river.

“People are dying of rare cancers,” said Cyprien. “We can’t drink the water. I can see Fort Chipewyan being destroyed.”
Harvey Scott, a retired university professor who lives in Athabasca, encouraged people to lodge complaints with the government, to report environmental problems and to lobby for action.

“We’re looking for groups along the river who are fed up with what’s happening to our watersheds,” said Scott. “If you haven’t seen the tar ponds, you haven’t seen anything yet.”

After the gathering at Old Fort Point, about 40 participants went to the Jasper Airport group site for more events that continued until about 9 p.m. Some travelled to the airport site on the river in canoes and rafts.

Events included water quality demonstrations, discussions about the river, First Nations drumming and singing, presentations and storytelling. Husband and wife singer-songwriters Laura Vinson and Dave Martineau of Brule also performed.

Members of the Keepers of the Athabasca Watershed Council, a new non-profit group, have organized Keepers Day events in communities along the river to get people involved. Reece, Cyprien and Scott are co-chairs of the council.

The Athabasca Basin Council of the Arctic Basin Keepers of the Water is made up of First Nations people, environmental groups and citizens concerned about watersheds who work together to help protect the environment along the river.

The organization, formed last October, is hoping to create a river-long network of “water keepers” to promote the river’s health and the well-being of people.

The river has five pulp mills along it, as well as sewage treatment plants, and it runs north up through the Athabasca Oilsands.

“In Jasper, the river’s in pretty good shape, but after the park, it basically falls apart,” said Connie Bresnahan, co-ordinator of Keepers of the Athabasca.

Keepers Day events were also held in Hinton on Tuesday, July 8 at the Old Entrance off Brule Road.

New tailings rules 40 years too late, some say

jessie — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 09:22:30 -0700

New tailings rules 40 years too late, some say

Carol Christian, June 30, 2008, Fort McMurray Today -- A planned crackdown by provincial regulators on oilsands tailings ponds is leaving environmentalists underwhelmed, with most wondering why its taken 40 years for the government to realize industry self-regulation hasn’t worked.

The Alberta Energy Resources Conservation Board (ERCB) released a draft directive, Tailings Performance Criteria and Requirements for Oil Sands Mining Schemes, Thursday. The plan calls for new industry-wide criteria for managing oilsands tailings, and specific enforcement actions if tailings performance targets are not met. That includes the ERCB stepping in and shutting down the operation. Under the proposal, companies must specify dates for pond construction, pond use, pond closure and other milestones, and file these dates with the ERCB by Dec. 31, 2009.

Industry and interested stakeholders will have the opportunity to provide input on the draft until Sept. 15. The ERCB plans to have the finalized directive in effect shortly after.

The Pembina Institute said while the ERCB’s new draft directive will, for the first time, require operators to submit plans and schedules for tailings ponds, it does not address the risks posed by the production of tailings waste.

“Albertans will be justifiably surprised to learn that for the past 40 years, oilsands companies have been allowed to manage their tailings waste on their own accord, without any strict government regulation around benchmarks, timelines or performance standards,” said Jennifer Grant, policy analyst with Pembina. “While it’s encouraging that the ERCB is now moving to assume more responsibility for addressing the production of toxic tailings waste, this policy falls short of addressing the risks and uncertainties around how tailings waste will be reclaimed into something resembling a boreal forest.”

Simon Dyer, Pembina’s oilsands program director, said the policy is a baby step.

“What we need is a giant leap, which means implementing policies that prohibit the creation of mature fine tailings for new projects,” he added.

He wondered whether we’re (now) going to see acknowledgment from government we have substantial problems in other problems of oilsands now.”

Acknowledging the 40 years of self-regulation, Dyer said it begs the question: why now? Part of that could be attributed to recent international news coverage on incidents of dead wildlife involving tailings ponds.

“It’s really baby steps when bigger steps are needed,” said Mike Huddema of Greenpeace Canada. “While we’re grateful the province, for the first time in 40 years is taking some steps to start to regulate this industry, it’s not going nearly are enough in terms of really dealings with the fact these tailings ponds can’t be reclaimed.”

Greenpeace wants to see a time, sooner rather than later, where no tailings ponds are required. The group prefers dry tailings as opposed to the “continued nightmare we’re seeing with the tailings lakes.”

Tailings describes waste from oilsands extraction processes. This waste is generally composed of water, sands, silt, clay and residual bitumen. Alberta’s inventory of fluid fine tailings that require long term containment is now 720 million cubic metres. Questions surrounding how long some ponds take to settle is still unanswered

The ERCB, the primary regulator, introduced this draft directive realizing companies were not meeting targets outlined in their regulatory applications.

“It’s kind of ironic the ERCB is having to implement directive which say were going to pass new guidelines which will actually require industry to do what they told us they were going to do,” noted Ricardo Acuna, executive director of the Parkland Institute.

“Shouldn’t we have been making sure industry was doing what they said they would all along?”

Politically, this comes out of the fact all these tailings management techniques that industry has been talking about haven’t been moving forward.

“They still remain largely theoretical,” he said. Acuna noted even at the recent hearings for Imperial Oil’s Kearl project, it was noted that these technologies needed to be moved forward. “The tailings ponds are politically sensitive right now, so releasing this in a high profile way kind of tells people ‘Well, we’re dealing with this,’ when really, there’s no guarantee any of this will actually move forward,” said Acuna.

Rick Bennett, director of industry relations for the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation IRC, the incident involving several hundred ducks at Syncrude Canada raised a lot of concerns, becoming a “precise focal point for a much more general concern.

“We will looking at this very closely,” said Bennett.

After a preliminary review of the draft directive, he admitted he has his doubts about “how much teeth this thing would really have, but we’ll have to review it, make some submissions and see what the result actually is.”

Website says visit Canada for an oily vacation

jessie — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 08:46:55 -0700

Website says visit Canada for an oily vacation

Reuters, June 27, 2008, CALGARY, Alberta -- If it's sand you crave on your vacation, then Greenpeace might have just the travel idea for you.

But you could have some hefty cleaning bills by the time you get home.

In an increasingly heated debate over the ecological impact of Canadian oil sands production, the environmental group has launched a tongue-in-cheek website promoting the huge northern Alberta energy projects as vacation destinations.

Using Alberta's logo, the site, www.travellingalberta.com, invites tourists to laze on black-sand beaches surrounding tailings ponds, hang-glide on "the unique coal bed methane and sour gas updrafts," then ride on one of the gargantuan dump trucks that trundle around the oil sands mines.

"Welcome to Alberta. Canada's Rocky Mountain Playground -- a carbon-based energy powerhouse!" the site says.

Greenpeace, one of several groups that have seized on the environmental impact of booming oil sands development, developed the site in response to public relations campaigns by the Alberta government and the oil industry, Mike Hudema, its tar sands campaigner, said on Thursday.

Earlier this year, Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach announced a C$25 million (12.42 million) communications push to protect Alberta's "brand" and "perception" around the world from environmental critics.

This week, the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers launched its own site, www.canadasoilsands.ca, to get its message out that oil sands producers are doing all they can to cut greenhouse gas emissions, lower water use and limit damage to the northern forest, and are willing to discuss issues with the public.

"Both of those are really giving a very limited picture of what the tar sands are, so we decided to launch this site to add a little bit of humour to the discussion, but also show the other side of the picture, which is definitely not a very pretty one," Hudema said.

Alberta's oil sands rival Saudi Arabia's conventional oil reserves in size and oil companies, prompted by record crude prices and shrinking opportunities in other countries, are rushing to develop the unconventional crude to meet North American demand for secure energy supplies.

CAPP was not amused by the bogus tourism campaign.

"I think industry is more focused on the serious issues," Travis Davies, a spokesman for the association, said.

Alberta Tourism Minister Cindy Ady said she was disappointed in the website because it gives an inaccurate impression of the province, also known for its mountains and Western culture.

"I think the millions of people who come to visit us here have seen it, and know it, and we don't have anything to apologize for. We have some of the most stunning vistas in the world," Ady said.

Ad mockingly invites U.S. governors to watch Alta. 'dirty oil' destroy forests

jessie — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 08:45:44 -0700

Ad mockingly invites U.S. governors to watch Alta. 'dirty oil' destroy forests

Canadian Press, June 29, 2008 -- A Washington-based coalition of environmental groups is taking another tongue-in-cheek shot at the Alberta government with a newspaper ad targeting oilsands development.

The ad from the Natural Resources Defence Council features a faux postcard from Premier Ed Stelmach inviting western U.S. governors - who begin meetings Sunday with western premiers in Jackson Hole, Wyo. - to hold their next get-together near the tarsands.

"We can watch as pristine boreal forests and wetlands are destroyed to produce some of the dirtiest oil," reads the postcard, which sits atop two vacation-style snapshots of an open-pit mine and an oil plant spewing smoke.

"Sunsets over the giant toxic waste lagoons are spectacular - just hope the ducks don't land as they fly over looking for a place to nest!"

The ad is scheduled to run Monday in the Casper Star-Tribune, Wyoming's largest newspaper, and is timed to coincide with the meeting in Jackson Hole.

It's the latest attack on the environmental record of the Alberta oil industry, which made international news in April when 500 ducks died after landing in an oilsands tailings pond.

Earlier this week, Greenpeace put up a new satirical website offering mock tours of the province's industrial northeast, tempting travellers with black sand beaches, toxic lakes and clearcut forests.

It recommends starting the day with a "propane cannon wake-up call" and suggests a little open-pit paragliding over the vast oilsands mines.

Susan Casey-Lefkowitz of the Washington-based coalition said the two campaigns were developed separately but she was "thrilled" at their timing.

"We certainly talk to each other, but I wouldn't go so far as to say we're co-ordinated," she said in an interview from Washington. "I think what you're seeing is that a lot of groups on both sides of the border are very concerned about the tarsands."

Casey-Lefkowitz said in addition to the ad, the defence council has sent a more serious letter to the governors and premiers, explaining their concerns.

"The oilsands development is expanding at a rate that's too high for environmental protection to keep up," she explained. "What we're seeing is that the boreal forest eco-system is being destroyed and huge toxic tailings ponds are being created that are indeed proving a hazard to wildlife."

She said there have also been health concerns expressed by many in aboriginal communities near the development.

"What Alberta's leaders are not focusing enough on is that there is a real desire to have oil development done in a way that doesn't hurt the environment," she said.

"Alberta is so far behind right now in really getting a grip on cleaning up the tarsands. It's important for them right now to be focusing not on public relations, but focusing on actually cleaning up the situation."

Before leaving for the Wyoming conference, Stelmach admitted Alberta is "now in the cross-hairs" of various environmental groups and other agencies around North America that are denouncing the huge volume of greenhouse gas emissions from the province's massive oilsands plants.

And it isn't just environmental groups.

The U.S. government is currently drafting a law that could limit American agencies from using oilsands fuels because of the large volume of emissions created in their production.

Presidential hopeful Barack Obama is also talking about curbing imports of "dirty" oil from various sources, including Canada's oilsands.

America's big-city mayors also recently passed a resolution urging a ban on the use of fuel from the oilsands in municipal vehicles in the U.S.

Stelmach said he would try and convince the U.S. governors to stay onside with Alberta by reminding them how Canada has "protected the backs" of Americans in several wars.