Water Depletion

Industry to pay for oilsands monitor: federal official says

jessie — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 09:24:28 -0700

Industry to pay for oilsands monitor: federal official says

Mike De Souza, Postmedia News, OTTAWA — The oilsands sector will be expected to pay up for a new water quality monitoring system that was to be unveiled on Thursday by Environment Minister Peter Kent.

"Clearly we'll move on the monitoring issue and it's going to have to be paid for one way or the other," said Kent's spokesman, Bill Rodgers.

The measures to be announced follow up on a pledge made in late December by former environment minister John Baird to address "significant" flaws in the monitoring system for water pollution from the oilsands sector.

At the time, Baird said the government would deliver its plan within 90 days after a panel of independent experts said that the existing industry-led system was inadequate on the heels of other independent reports that said regulators and industry were failing to address environmental and health concerns linked to pollution from the oilsands industry.

"We believe that unless these shortcomings are addressed, the debate on the environmental performance in the oilsands will continue to revolve around the adequacy of the data collected and not, as it should be, on data interpretation and implications," said the panel in its report.

"Until this situation is fixed there will continue to be uncertainty and public distrust in the environmental performance of the oilsands industry and government oversight."

No details about government funding for inspections and enforcement, related to the new plan were unveiled this week in Finance Minister Jim Flaherty's budget. Rodgers said Kent would address the funding issues on Thursday afternoon.

Conservative MPs accused of killing damaging committee report on oil sands

jessie — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 08:40:33 -0700

Conservative MPs accused of killing damaging committee report on oil sands

Kristen Shane, Hill Times, July 26, 2010 - The House of Commons Environment Committee killed a report it was drafting on the oil sands last month because Conservative members wanted to hide testimony showing the government has failed to live up to its environmental protection responsibilities and the opposition parties were too poisoned by partisanship to reach consensus, say some witnesses who testified during the study.

But Conservative MPs say their government is acting on its obligations and the testimony is public knowledge.

"I think it's a total coverup," said University of Alberta ecology professor and water expert David Schindler last week of the Environment and Sustainable Development Standing Committee's decision to scrap tabling a formal report to the House on its more than two years of study of how Alberta oil sands projects affect the quantity and quality of surrounding water bodies.

Prof. Schindler was one of about 60 witnesses to testify before the committee during meetings in Ottawa, Ont., Edmonton, Alta., and Calgary, Alta., held as far back as June 2008, before the last election. He told the committee that work he has done indicates the oil sands industry activities are adding largely to airborne and waterborne contaminants in the Athabasca River, which cuts through the heart of the oil sands region northeast of Edmonton.

Downstream from oil sands sites, he said he found high contamination of cancer-causing substances in melted snow.

His research team also found high concentrations of contaminants known to be in tailings ponds, which hold liquid mining waste. That indicates tailings ponds have leaked, he said.

"Oil sands companies should be charged under the [federal] Fisheries Act. Clearly, they're discharging deleterious substances into fish-bearing waters. One wonders where the enforcement of this act is," he told the committee in March.

Other industry and federal government witnesses offered contradictory testimony, saying, for instance, that tailings ponds don't leak or that the small amount of seepage could be retrieved and funnelled back into the ponds without causing environmental harm.

A joint presentation by the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers and the Oil Sands Developers Group to the committee in May 2009 indicated that many environmental impact assessments and independent studies of oil sands projects have said the projects don't effect water or sediment quality in the Athabasca River area. Tailings ponds are designed to block the flow of contaminated water into surrounding soil and water. Contaminants come from natural sources, the Alberta government has maintained.

Whether oil sands developers were using too much water was also an area of disagreement.

In any case, "I listened to some other people the same day I spoke and I know [the committee] got a lot of negative material. I'm sure that's why there's no write-up," said Prof. Schindler last week from his Edmonton office. "To me that's a violation of the principles of democracy, and I'm very angry about it."

He said: "I think that the Conservatives don't want any negative side cast on the tar sands because they're afraid now that the U.S. will shut them down now because of their policies on dirty oil."

Another witness, Andrew Nikiforuk author of Tar Sands: Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent, also blamed the Conservatives.

"I think the Tory government was afraid of what U.S. Congress, what U.S. customers, oil customers in general, investors and Canadian taxpayers might have to say about our record of regulatory neglect in the tar sands," he said.

Several laws, including the Fisheries Act, Environmental Protection Act and Environmental Assessment Act empower the federal government to act to protect wildlife and the environment, he said.

In poring over 300 pages of committee evidence to summarize what he believes are its key findings for an online magazine column on TheTyee.ca, Mr. Nikiforuk said he found that "The general assessment was Ottawa is not doing what it should be doing."

But the government is acting, said the committee's Conservative chair James Bezan (Selkirk-Interlake, Man.).

"We want to make sure the current facilities and any future expansion of the industry is done in a way that is more sustainable and better for our environment and protects the health of our citizens in the area," he said.

Environment Canada is investing in new equipment that may help scientists analyse the chemical fingerprint of water samples taken near the oil sands to determine whether contaminants found within them are of natural or industrial origin, a key point of contention among industry, government and environmentalists. Environment Canada is also stepping up groundwater monitoring fourfold to more than 100 sites, mostly along the Athabasca River, said Mr. Bezan, and specifically near tailings ponds where the Alberta government has traditionally led monitoring. The federal government is a partner in a national air monitoring network that measures pollutants in western Canada, he said, responding to Prof. Schindler's concerns that some contaminants are getting into waterways by air.

"On the enforcement side of it, [Environment Canada is] looking at issues of groundwater monitoring [to see if they] are in compliance with not only the Fisheries Act but other water quality acts that we have to handle," he said.

In the wake of the committee's lack of consensus on the drafting of a communal report, Mr. Bezan said the Conservative committee members would write their own, to be released in the next few weeks.

Fellow Conservative member Mark Warawa (Langley, B.C.) said they "may" write their own report.

Mr. Warawa emphasized that while the governing Conservatives and combined opposition parties each have six committee members, the chair usually doesn't vote, meaning the Conservatives represent a minority.

Who voted for and against the final report's release is unknown. Since testimony wrapped up in March, the committee has been working behind closed doors, as Parliamentary procedure allows, to draft a final report. Committee proceedings, including vote results, are to stay private. As are the draft report's contents, until it is tabled in the House. Since minutes show the committee agreed on June 17 to stop its oil sands and water study and destroy all copies of its draft report except one in the clerk's office, the report's contents are not likely to ever be made public.

But Bloc Québécois MP Christian Ouellet (Brome-Missisquoi, Que.) said this is not so.

"It's not finished," he told The Hill Times last week. "We haven't been through revising it."

The committee may have stopped its oil sands work for the summer, but it could still decide to send a report to the House in the fall, Mr. Ouellet said. He wouldn't commit to re-opening the issue though.

The lone NDP committee member, Linda Duncan (Edmonton-Strathcona, Alta.), said she is doubtful the report will see the light of day again. She and other members noted that, procedurally, a committee-generated study like the oil sands issue takes a backseat to statutory reviews referred to the committee by the House. Several of those are piling up before the committee, with Parliamentary-imposed deadlines attached, Ms. Duncan said.

"The likelihood of [reopening the oil sands report], with everything else on our plate, at this juncture—I don't see any value in it," said Ms. Duncan.

Ms. Duncan recognized that witnesses such as Mr. Nikiforuk and Prof. Schindler are disappointed in the study's result.

Ms. Duncan said she approached other opposition members about writing a report together but was turned down.

Liberal member Francis Scarpaleggia's (Lac-Saint-Louis, Que.) assistant Gweneth Thirlwell told The Hill Times that he said his party would write its own, to be finished likely before fall. Mr. Scarpaleggia was the MP who originally called for the study in January 2008, and last month accused the Conservative committee members of blocking the final report so as not to release a document that could include information on the negative effects of the oil sands that could hurt the government.

"I think Francis Scarpaleggia and probably Linda Duncan actually have very similar views on what's wrong. I think partisan politics has separated them," said Mr. Nikiforuk.

Mr. Scarpaleggia did not respond to questions verbally, but in a statement to The Hill Times said "Other parties are free to [write their own reports]. Nothing is lost from that perspective."

For his part, Mr. Bezan said environmental groups such as the Pembina Institute have released their own reports based on the publicly-available testimony included in the oil sands and water hearings.

"It's not like the testimony and the work of the committee is all for naught."

But Mr. Nikiforuk estimated few other Canadians would take the time to read through the 300 pages of raw testimony he read for his opinion piece, headlined, 'What those who killed the tar sands report don't want you to know.'

"What the citizens pay their MPs for, and elected them for, is to produce concise reports on matters of tremendous public interest." Mr. Nikiforuk said this time that didn't happen.

The Hill Times

http://hilltimes.com/page/printpage/environment-07-26-2010

Why did a parliamentary committee suddenly destroy drafts of a final report on tar sands pollution? Here's what they knew.

jessie — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 07:31:10 -0700

Why did a parliamentary committee suddenly destroy drafts of a final report on tar sands pollution? Here's what they knew.

Andrew Nikiforuk, Today, TheTyee.ca, July 15, 2010--Just two weeks ago the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development abruptly cancelled a big report on the tar sands and the project's extreme water impacts. The parliamentarians even destroyed draft copies of their final report.

After listening to testimony from scores of scientists, bureaucrats, lobbyists, aboriginal chiefs and environmental groups, the committee dropped the whole affair like a bucket of tar. (For the record, the Alberta government, a petro-state with Saudi visions of grandeur, refused to show up and testify.)

Killing reports paid for by Canadian taxpayers on a $200-billion backyard development is not the sort of behavior one associates with a "responsible energy producer," but there you have it. While federal panjandrums argue that the tar sands may be key to our economic prosperity, our politicians couldn't put aside their partisan views long enough to complete a national report on the project's formidable water liabilities.

Fortunately, civilians can do what politicians can't. In the interests of accountability and transparency, I read through 300 pages of evidence and pulled out the sort of uncomfortable revelations that Ottawa doesn't want U.S. oil customers, industry investors or Canadian taxpayers to know.

The evidence, of course, all points to one embarrassing conclusion: Ottawa has managed its mandate in the tar sands as irresponsibly as the U.S.
Mineral Management Services oversaw the safety of deep sea drilling in the Gulf.

Failing to regulate

Let's begin with the sorry testimony of federal regulators. They all agreed that Environment Canada has responsibilities in the tar sands under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, the Species at Risk Act, the Migratory Bird Convention and the Fisheries Act.

But nobody appears to be standing on guard. Even though Environment Canada has a clear mandate to protect fish from tar sands pollutants, the agency has completed but one fish study on an industrial development with a geographical footprint larger than 40 Calgaries or 17 Berlins.

Fred Wrona, Environment Canada's acting director general for Water Science and Technology, even admitted that a 2003 study found that oil-sand pollutants did indeed poison wild fish. "Beyond that, we have actually done no additional in-field studies looking at fish health effects."
Incredible.

Asked if the government knew much about the hydrogeology of the region, Ian Matheson, director general for Habitat Management Directorate at Fisheries and Oceans, didn't reach for words like responsible, safe or
secure: "I guess we know more than we used to and not as much as we want to.... There's a lot to be learned yet."

Leaking and seeping

Cynthia Wright, acting assistant deputy minister of Environmental Stewardship branch, explained that Environment Canada was not involved in the design of tailing ponds holding six-billion barrels of toxic fish-killing and cancer-making mining waste that cover an 170 square kilometre area along the Athabasca River because the ponds don't contain fish. Wright also claimed the ponds don't leak.

But two University of Waterloo scientists, who study tailings pollution and groundwater for living, gave evidence proving that Environment Canada was out to lunch. James Barker, an earth science professor at the University of Waterloo, testified that the tailing ponds do leak and seep.
In particular "seepage of process affected water is occurring from the
(Suncor's) Tar Island dike into the sediments of the Athabasca River" at a rate of 67 litres per second.

Moreover the risk of more toxic seepage from the expanding tailing ponds into groundwater would escalate as mining projects increase bitumen production. "Newer oil sands tailings operations are forced really by geography to be located closer to or on top of sandy aquifers... the risk of local groundwater contamination is fairly high."

George Dixon, an expert on toxins such as naphthenic acids created by bitumen mining, also testified that he knew of at least two leaks from the tailing ponds into groundwater. He also told the committee that the Athabasca River now receives "chemical inputs" from natural bitumen deposits along the river as well as pollution from industrial mining activity.

"We don't know that the relative contributions from each are. We don't know whether or not the system can accept any further loading of oil sands type materials beyond what is naturally occurring." He added, "I don't really think we have a fully integrated sustainable management strategy for water in the Athabasca drainage."

Both the availability and accessibility of water information remain a critical concern for scientists: "I've been working there for 15 years...
and I have difficulty pulling data together."

Dixon concluded that the research needs of the oil sands may have exceeded available human scientific resources in Canada. "It's a discomfort in that there are probably more questions that need to be asked than we're fully drawing our attention to at the present time."

Climate change? What's that?

Although industry folks claim, with the earnestness of BP executives, that city-scaled water withdrawals from the Athabasca River for bitumen processing are safely managed, committee witnesses gave a different story.

William Donahue, an Alberta research scientist and lawyer, characterized the controversial Lower Athabasca River Management Framework, a tool for policing industry withdrawals, as inadequate for the job. In particular the framework failed to incorporate a predicted 50 per cent decline in water flows in the river basin due to climate change. The federal and provincial designers of the framework, "arbitrarily decided that 90 per cent of the time, there would be no ecological effect and no need to limit flow extractions." By 2020, mining companies will either have to use 50 per cent less water or find it elsewhere warned Donahue.

Arlene Kwasniak, professor of law at the University of Calgary, pointed out even more flaws in the framework. The voluntary agreement, which directs companies to suck out less water during low river flows to save the fish, is probably unenforceable under Alberta's Water Act. "There is nothing that would require compliance, nor is that anything under predecessor legislation.... If we're going to protect the river, we're going to have to have some effective legislated control." But it doesn't exist. Even though industry has now dug up 80,000 hectares of critical peatlands and wetlands, Alberta still has no wetland policy either, said Kwasniak.

Yes, it's a huge polluter

Contrary to Environment Canada's fairy tale presentations, David Schindler, one of world's most respected water ecologists, told the committee that the project was directly polluting the Athabasca River. In particular, industry emissions were now depositing substantial volumes of bitumen, heavy metals and fish-killing polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons on the landscape which then run-off into the river. (After his appearance, Schindler published a peer-reviewed paper in the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences showing that air pollution alone created the equivalent of an annual 5,000-barrel oil spill on the Athabasca River.)

Schindler also told the committee that once upon a time the federal government did good monitoring on the river but then turned it over to Alberta which "turned a lot of it over to industry itself. As a result we have a database that's not available to independent scientists to use."

Schindler also poked holes in claims made by Don Thompson, the president of the Oil Sands Developer's Group. Thompson told the committee there is no pollution in the Athabasca River because an industry funded multi-stakeholder group, the Regional Aquatic Monitoring Program (RAMP), couldn't find any. But Schindler described RAMP as a secretive, inconsistent and "unsuccessful" program. He noted that three federal scientists offered a scathing critique of RAMP in 2004.

The scientists found that RAMP repeatedly changed what pollutants it studied and where and how it sampled them..."all the things that violate the first principles of monitoring programs."

'A pretty unsustainable situation'

Although industry claims that in situ projects, which steam bitumen out of the ground, will be more water friendly than mining, that's not what the committee heard. Expert after expert all warned that the steam plants could impact a region the size of Florida by withdrawing almost as much water from the ground as the mines were now taking from the Athabasca River. Some unmapped underground aquifers in the region may even extend as far away as the Northwest Territories and Manitoba.

James Bruce, an acclaimed climate scientist and former director of Environment Canada's now defunct Inland Waters Directorate, testified that reports by the Alberta Research Council and the Council of Canadian Academies pointedly concluded that in situ projects have "gone ahead with a completely inadequate understanding of the groundwater regime in the area and they are having significant impacts on water.... We considered it a pretty unsustainable situation."

Alfonso Rivera, manager of Natural Resources Groundwater Mapping Program, then confirmed the terrible accuracy of Bruce's testimony. Asked if the government of Canada had studied the impact of the tar sands on groundwater Rivera replied that "The short answer is no. We are not able to provide facts."

In fact, the government did not even know "the sustainable safe yield" for Athabasca aquifers.

Nor did they know where or what contaminants might be transported by aquifers or how aquifers connected with surface water in the region. David Boerner, an administrator with the Geological Survey of Canada, explained that Canada had only mapped 12 of 30 critical aquifers in the country and that "lack of information is the real problem."

The view from downstream

Everyone living downstream from the project (more than 40,000 people) bitterly told the committee that the federal government had repeatedly neglected its duties. Chief Bill Erasmus, regional chief of the Assembly of First Nations for the Northwest Territories, called for an immediate halt to tar sands expansion until the government prepared emergency plans in case of catastrophic breaches in some 20 tailing ponds. (At least one is as large as the Aswan Dam on the Nile River.) He also called for a dry tailing process as well as a 10-year plan to immediately clean up six billion barrels of mining waste in the region.

Michael Miltenberger, environment and natural resources minister for the Northwest Territories, wondered why the federal government had abandoned the Mackenzie River Basin Transboundary Waters Master Agreement. After 25 years of negotiations ,the federal government, four provinces and two territories finally agreed to protect the world's third largest watershed in 1997. But ever since the world's largest energy project started to fill up Ottawa coffers, the federal government ignored an agreement.

Miltenberger asked why the transboundary board, with an annual budget of $250,000, was sitting "almost in neutral" and hadn't met for a decade?
"Our futures and fates are inextricably linked in the Mackenzie River Basin and we have to recognize that." He also asked why "there's no national water strategy that allows the federal government to play a clear leadership role."

J. Owen Saunders, executive director of the Canadian Institute of Resources Law, called the abandonment of the basin's future a grave mistake. "There are important federal interests here and a clear need for federal leadership which has largely been abdicated by the federal government over the last three decades."

Chief Jim Boucher of the Fort McKay First Nation eloquently put his finger on the whole ugly problem: "Oil sands development has proceeded on an ad hoc, project-by-project basis within a fiscal and environmental regulatory framework that is seriously out of date. Lacking a coherent and overall plan and strategy, there is only an ineffective, reactive, piecemeal approach to environmental issues such as water management."

Boucher knows: his people live in the middle of four mining projects just
75 kilometres north of Fort McMurray.

A very bad report

So there you have it: some of the dismal evidence that the federal government didn't want to share with the world. The facts show that Canadian regulators have not behaved responsibly, honorably or prudently.

Ottawa has squandered surface and groundwater resources in the region.

It has failed to collect baseline data making the project both unsafe and insecure.

The ponds are leaking and the project is polluting the river.

The federal government has failed to issue national standards for regulating tar-sands pollutants such as naphthenic acids.

It, too, has neglected to transparently monitor water quality and quantity in the world's third largest watershed.

This evidence partly explains why the committee destroyed its final report. Tory MPs that behave like wannabe bitumen salesmen explain the rest.

Linda Duncan, an NDP MP who served on the querulous committee studying water and bitumen, promises to soon write her own report. Francis Scarpaleggia, the vice chair and Liberal MP, says he'll do the same.

But what stuns Duncan (and should anger every blue-blooded Canadian) is simply this: "The federal government has failed to properly regulate the oil sands and in so doing they've put the resource at risk."

Isn't that what corrupt U.S. oil regulators did in the Gulf?

Andrew Nikiforuk begins today his "Energy and Equity" column for The Tyee, where he is writer in residence. Nikiforuk is author of Tar Sands: Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent, winner of the The City of Calgary W.O.
Mitchell Book Prize.

Politicians cancel oilsands pollution probe, tear up draft reports

jessie — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 09:24:37 -0700

Politicians cancel oilsands pollution probe, tear up draft reports

By MIKE DE SOUZA, Canwest News Service Tuesday, July 06, 2010

OTTAWA - Federal politicians from the government and opposition benches have mysteriously cancelled an 18-month investigation into oilsands pollution in water and opted to destroy draft copies of their final report, Canwest News Service has learned.

The aborted investigation comes as new questions are being raised about the Harper government's decision to exempt a primary toxic pollutant found in oilsands tailings ponds from a regulatory agenda.

The government is in the process of categorizing industry-produced substances that could either be toxic or harmful, but has excluded naphthenic acid - a toxin from oilsands operations - from the list, and left it off another list of substances that companies are required to track and report.

The exclusion is "alarming" according to a letter sent Tuesday to Environment Minister Jim Prentice and Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq, since the federal and Alberta governments have already identified it as a primary source of pollution in liquid waste dumped into ponds after companies extract oil from the region.

"Naphthenic acids are one of the main pollutants responsible for the toxicity of tarsands tailings to aquatic organisms, and have been shown to harm liver, heart and brain function in mammals," wrote Matt Price, the policy director at Environmental Defence, an independent research organization based in Toronto. "Naphthenic acids are also very long-lived, taking decades to break down."

Price also said in the letter that the federal and provincial governments are already allowing some of the toxins to leak into groundwater and surface water.

"It is therefore urgent that all tailings pollutants, and naphthenic acid in particular, be properly assessed and managed to minimize the risk to human and environmental health," he wrote.

Environment Canada said that a variety of acids from the oilsands are on a medium priorities list of its chemical-management plan, but have not yet been assessed. A spokeswoman explained in an e-mail that the government would also consider adding naphthenic acids to a list of substances that companies would be required to report following further study.

The petroleum sector is the only industry with its own stream of substances to be evaluated under the government's plan.

Meantime, Price added that the United States had moved forward with specific reporting requirements for the substance, urging the Harper government to follow suit, especially following the cancelled investigation in Parliament.

"The recent decision of the federal environment committee to abandon its work on a report regarding water and the oilsands industry heightens the need for the federal government to properly deal with oilsands pollution, or risk further undermining public trust in responsible oversight of the industry," Price wrote.

The MPs made the decision to terminate their investigation and destroy copies of their report in a meeting behind closed doors on June 17, and they have all declined to provide details on what happened apart from explaining that they failed to reach a consensus.

Liberal MP Francis Scarpaleggia, who spearheaded the parliamentary investigation on water pollution from the oilsands, blamed the government for dragging its feet on regulating the industry. He said he was working on his own report based on evidence and testimony gathered during parliamentary hearings.

"I . . . have no intention of letting go this subject that should be part and parcel of the true national water strategy Canadians demand and deserve," Scarpaleggia said. "The Conservative government has a lot of answering to do for its persistent lack of leadership on water in general and on oilsands and water in particular. The Conservative government's record on water and oilsands has been one of constant denial and foot-dragging."

Conservative MP James Bezan, who chairs the House of Commons environment committee, said he was disappointed that MPs were unable to agree on the final report, but believes the investigation has still brought important information into the public domain through the hearings and testimony from expert witnesses that have resulted in several independent reports and commentary.

"Over the next few weeks, I expect that you'll see the opposition parties and the government responding with their own considerations and recommendations on what we heard," Bezan said.

Environment Minister Jim Prentice has also recently announced that his department was investing $1.6 million in new technology to identify chemical fingerprints of toxins in the water to determine whether they are originating from specific oilsands operations.

And NDP environment critic Linda Duncan confirmed that she plans to produce her own report based on the committee's investigation. But she noted that some of the delays were caused by the government's decision to shut down Parliament at the end of last year.

"I'm very, very upset that it's dragged on this long," said Duncan. "It's absolutely shameful that the federal government is sitting on its hands."

In its investigation, MPs on the committee also travelled to hear from witnesses in Calgary, Edmonton and Fort McMurray in Alberta, but figures on their budget were not immediately available.

c. Nanaimo Daily News

Gulf spill a new factor in Canada pipeline fight

jessie — Thu, 27 May 2010 14:01:33 -0700

Gulf spill a new factor in Canada pipeline fight

Allan Dowd , May 26, 2010, Reuters, VANCOUVER- The oil spill fouling the Gulf of Mexico has handed a public relations weapon, and possibly some legal ammunition, to opponents of a plan to export crude oil by tanker from a port on Canada's rugged Pacific Coast.

Enbridge Inc is expected to ask regulators in the next few weeks to approve its Northern Gateway pipeline, which could move up to 525,000 barrels a day of oil produced from Canada's vast oil sands in northern Alberta to the port of Kitimat, British Columbia, by 2016.

Opponents of the C$5.5 billion ($5.1 billion) project aimed at exporting oil sands crude to world markets, especially Asia, say it creates the risk of a major spill in a sensitive coastal region that attracts tourists from around the world and is often referred to as the Great Bear Rainforest.

The accident off the Louisiana coast involved a drilling rig, not a tanker, but opponents have been quick to cite the BP Plc spill in their campaign.

"It just reinforces what we have been saying all along," said Art Sterritt of the Coastal First Nations, a coalition of aboriginal nations fighting Enbridge.

Opponents released a survey on Wednesday that they said showed that 80 percent of British Columbians oppose tanker traffic on the coast in the wake of the Gulf of Mexico incident.

Sterritt says the Gulf spill also gives Canadian aboriginal groups a new legal card to play in the court fight that is likely to erupt if regulators eventually approve Enbridge's plan.

Canada's courts have ruled that government and industry have a legal duty to consult aboriginal communities whose territorial rights might be infringed by developments such as a pipeline.

While the aboriginal groups do not have blanket veto power over projects they oppose, regulators and developers can be required to make changes or provide compensation to address their concerns.

The amount of consultation and accommodation that might be required depends, in part, on how much those territorial rights might be infringed, said Doug Harris, an expert on aboriginal law at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.

"What the Gulf spill did was demonstrate that oil and gas development has the potential to catastrophically effect a claim right," Harris said. "Any judge is going to have the Gulf incident in the back of their mind."

Oil from the pipeline would be loaded onto ships at Kitimat, a small industrial community at the tip of the Douglas Channel, about 640 km (400 miles) northwest of Vancouver.

Enbridge says that fears of a disaster are unfounded, because Kitimat has been visited safely by more than 1,500 ships carrying petrochemical products over the past 25 years..

Modern tankers are built to withstand accidents such as the grounding of the Exxon Valdez, which helped prompt restrictions on offshore energy development on Canada's West Coast, the company and supporters say.

Enbridge said while the Gulf incident is of "tremendous concern" to the entire industry, it would have no impact on its pipeline project.

"The incident is not affecting our preparations to file our Northern Gateway regulatory application, which is in the process of being finalized," spokesman Alan Roth said in an email statement.

Enbridge hopes to win regulatory approval for the project by 2012, but a report this week by the Eurasia Group, a risk assessment think tank, warned that the Gulf of Mexico accident would lead to increased scrutiny by Canadian authorities.

"The review process could easily exceed three years, although industry pressure, supported in all likelihood by the Alberta government, on federal regulators to approve the pipeline will be intense," the Eurasia Group wrote.

Indeed, Kinder Morgan Energy Partners, which has proposed a competing pipeline project to ship Canadian crude from the oil sands to a Pacific Coast tanker terminal, said the BP incident could complicate efforts.

"It could have an impact. It could increase opposition to the project, but that's just something that will have to be dealt with," Kinder Morgan President Park Shaper told Reuters on Tuesday.

($1=$1.07 Canadian)

(With additional reporting by Jeffrey Jones; editing by Peter Galloway and Rob Wilson)

Alberta’s dirty water hazard; Getting rid of oil-sands tailings ponds is easier said than done

jessie — Wed, 05 May 2010 11:39:02 -0700

Alberta’s dirty water hazard; Getting rid of oil-sands tailings ponds is easier said than done

Chris Sorensen May 4, 2010, Macleans.ca--Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach marked Earth Day by talking tough about the oil sands. He called on oil companies to eliminate, within a “few years,” the murky man-made lakes, or tailings ponds, that hold contaminated water (leftover bitumen, sand and various heavy metals) from the extraction process. The vast ponds, which collectively cover about 130 square kilometres—bigger than the city of Vancouver—have become a focal point for environmentalists and are the subject of a lawsuit after 1,600 ducks died on one of Syncrude’s ponds two years ago.

But Stelmach’s vision was overshadowed the following day when Alberta’s energy regulator approved tailings-pond plans for two oil sands projects, including one that has yet to be built. While the approvals were granted in accordance with new guidelines that require ponds to be treated and drained more quickly so they can be planted with vegetation, it’s still a far cry from having no ponds whatsoever—a goal the industry says will likely require significant investments in new technologies.

One of the plans approved by the Energy Resources Conservation Board is for the yet-to-be-sanctioned Fort Hills project to be operated by Suncor, UTS Energy and Teck Resources. It includes a 322-million-cubic-metre pond that will operate for 22 years. The others relate to ponds operated by Syncrude that are scheduled to be replaced with a “trafficable surface” (hard enough to walk or drive vehicles on) between 2014 and 2037.

Meanwhile, the pressure on producers continues to ratchet up. Environmental groups recently launched a complaint under NAFTA, arguing Canada has failed to enforce anti-pollution rules for tailings ponds. But with Alberta’s energy watchdog reviewing tailings-pond plans for several other projects, it’s unlikely that the grey lakes of northern Alberta will be disappearing anytime soon.

Alberta Chamber of Resources says Alberta to change wetlands plan

jessie — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 10:50:20 -0700

Alberta Chamber of Resources says Alberta to change wetlands plan

John Cotter, Canadian Press, March 10 2010--A group representing oilsands and other resource companies says it has convinced the Alberta government to change a plan that would force corporations to spend big money to restore wetlands ruined by mining projects.

Conservationists say if the statement by the Alberta Chamber of Resources is true, it would make a mockery of the province's promise to develop the oilsands in an environmentally responsible manner.

"The province has agreed to three of the four changes to the proposed wetlands policy that (the chamber) suggested in a letter ... we delivered to the Ministry of Environment," says a report posted on the chamber's website.

"While the wetlands policy has not yet been implemented, these changes may save literally billions of dollars for our members in the future." Alberta currently has no policy to protect or restore wetlands that are ruined by resource development in the northern half of the province, including the wetlands-rich oilsands region. After years of study, the Alberta Water Council submitted a report to the province saying that vacuum could no longer continue. The council said wetlands are vital to migrating ducks and waterfowl, songbirds, caribou and the overall environmental health of the Athabasca River basin.

The report, submitted 18 months ago, called for a "no-net-loss" policy for wetlands. It recommended that companies that destroy such areas should be required to either restore them, bolster a nearby depleted wetland or build a new one somewhere else in the province. The government was supposed to have rolled out the policy last spring.

But two organizations in the 25-member water council opposed the recommendation for mandatory action - the Alberta Chamber of Resources and the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers. Together they wrote dissenting letters in 2008 asking the province to making wetlands restoration discretionary. In its letter, the chamber also said it opposed the concept of "no-net-loss" and suggested the government delay taking action. It also recommended the province not include any existing oilsands projects in any wetlands policy.

The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers in its letter said the cost of such a policy "could exceed billions of dollars." Some members of the water council say they are worried the industry's lobbying efforts have won over a government eager to appease Alberta's slumping resource sector. "We are very much concerned that it has been significantly undermined," said Carolyn Campbell of the Alberta Wilderness Association.

"We are worried that by caving in to one sector's request, we would weaken our wetland policy across the province."

Other members of the council share those concerns. They're also unhappy over the delay of a policy that has been in the works for four years.

"We are hoping it won't be watered down, but we are getting some signals from industry. The Alberta Chamber of Resources is claiming victory over the policy," said Pat Kehoe, manager of conservation programs for Ducks Unlimited.

"Any change that would lessen the imperative of the policy or weaken the application of the policy would be of great concern to us. We have huge wetland resources in this province, but we also have had huge wetlands impacts. We need wetlands protected and restored."

Brad Anderson, executive director of the resources chamber, says its position on wetlands was posted on the group's website last year to update members and may now be out of date - even though it remains posted. "We don't know where the government is going with this wetlands policy or when it is going to come out," he said.

Environment Minister Rob Renner says the province hasn't made a final decision. He wouldn't commit to an announcement this year even though the policy is already at least one year overdue. Renner said balancing the need to protect the environment without thwarting resource development is so complex it will take more time for the plan to wind its way through the government before anything is approved.

"It is a misrepresentation to say that Alberta Environment has agreed (to change the proposed policy). We accept arguments that some have made. We take those arguments and we try and maintain that balance," he said. "At the end of the day, there needs to be a clear policy that says that there are consequences that have to be acknowledged and have to be dealt with when wetlands are destroyed."

Syncrude duck death trial underway

jessie — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 15:10:42 -0800

Syncrude duck death trial underway

CBC News, March 1, 2010--Oilsands giant Syncrude returned to court Monday morning to face charges laid in the deaths of 1,600 ducks in a northern Alberta tailings pond in April 2008. Dozens of binders full of background material were stacked on tables and cabinets in the St. Albert, Alta., courtroom.

Prosecutors say it could take months to get through the evidence. Two months have been set aside for the trial. During the first week, the Crown plans to call to the stand the first responders after the ducks landed on the pond. The Crown also plans to call scientists to testify about what is in the tailings ponds and how harmful it is to wildlife.

The Crown is expected to establish what the industry standards are and what other companies do to avoid these types of incidents. 'Tailings ponds themselves are on trial,' says environmentalist

Speaking outside the courthouse on Monday, Sierra Club Prairie director Lindsay Telfer said the case goes far beyond the ducks and the "tailings ponds themselves are on trial." "I think that this incident specifically showed the world just how toxic the tailings ponds are," she said.

"We know now that the waters have killed 1,600 ducks, we know that those waters are leaking into the Athabasca [River] and we know downstream communities have significant health problems."

Telfer the government needs to hold companies like Syncrude responsible.

"This case specifically has skyrocketed the tar sands into the international global spotlight and I think it will continue to do so." Robert White, the lawyer representing Syncrude, also spoke to reporters outside the courthouse. "You will find it both distressing because you will hear a great deal about what happened to these ducks but also enlightening as you learn why it happened and why it won't ever again," he said.

Defence asks judge to consider recusal

The trial was briefly delayed Monday morning as White filed a motion requesting the judge consider removing himself from the case. White said provincial court Judge Ken Tjosveld was a senior Alberta Crown prosecutor and worked with prosecutors now involved in the trial. White said he didn't believe Tjosveld was biased, but that it was important there be no perception of bias. Tjosveld dismissed the application.

Case could set precedent

Syncrude is facing charges under federal and provincial laws in relation to the deaths of 1,600 ducks in a northern Alberta tailings pond in April 2008. The migrating ducks landed on the pond, north of Fort McMurray, and sank to the bottom after being coated in toxic sludge.

Air cannons used to scare migratory birds away from the tailings pond were not in place. The company has pleaded not guilty. It doesn't dispute that the ducks perished in the tailings pond, but says charges won't accomplish anything. Syncrude also says it did everything it could to keep birds away from the tailings pond. The company says a late winter storm prevented them from putting bird deterrents in place and the birds migrated earlier than usual. Environmentalists and those in the oil industry are watching the trial closely because it could set a precedent for tailings pond operators.

The federal charge Syncrude is facing falls under the Migratory Birds Convention Act. The law is generally applied only to hunters and companies that dump hazardous chemicals or oil into the water. It has never been applied to a tailings pond operator. If found guilty, Syncrude could face fines of up to $1 million.

Poisonous hydrogen sulphide gas bubbles up in oilsands tailings pond during company reclamation efforts

jessie — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 10:51:47 -0800

Poisonous hydrogen sulphide gas bubbles up in oilsands tailings pond during company reclamation efforts

Hanneke Brooymans, Edmonton Journal, February 21, 2010--The industry is working on ways to reduce the size of tailings ponds. Shown here is the Base Mine Lake tailings pond at Syncrude's extraction and upgrading facility at Mildred Lake, taken in 2008. Efforts to clean up one of northern Alberta's biggest environmental messes -- oilsands tailings ponds -- have created another problem: air pollution that includes a deadly poisonous gas. Air emissions monitors in the area around the Fort McMurray oilsands have been picking up a steady increase in sulphur-based pollutants, including poisonous hydrogen sulphide.

Officials from industry and Alberta Environment have many theories about why emissions are increasing, but by far the most surprising is the link to the ongoing reclamation of a Suncor tailings pond. "It's like when you step into a wetland, all these bubbles come up because you disturbed the bottom," says Preston McEachern, head of science, research and innovation for Alberta Environment.

The Journal recently checked the statistics for hydrogen sulphide emissions in the Fort McMurray area, and checked in with government, industry and affected residents about what is happening and how they feel.

Q: How did the increase in hydrogen sulphide emissions come to light?

A: In 2006, the monitoring network in the area started picking up spikes of hydrogen sulphide in the air that passed the concentration level the government considers acceptable. In the last five years, the number of times hydrogen sulphide levels have exceeded the guidelines has skyrocketed. The worst station counted four infractions of the province's daily concentration guideline five years ago. Last year, there were 76 days in which the air concentration broke the guideline. (For more details, see table that details the infractions.)

Q: Should this be a concern for the people working and living in the Fort McMurray area?

A: The provincial government and the companies in the area note the concentrations are well below occupational health and safety exposure limits. The guideline being broken is set at what's called a nuisance level, which is approximately the level at which the gas can be smelled. However, there continues to be a debate about the effects of long-term exposure to low concentrations of the gas.

Sheldon Roth, a neuroscientist in the University of Calgary's toxicology division, has studied hydrogen sulphide. "My bottom line," he says, "would be there's not enough information whatsoever. We just don't know. And there's not a lot of research in that area."

Alberta Health and Wellness has just started a review of the scientific literature investigating health effects associated with low-level, chronic hydrogen sulphide exposure. The ministry says it's doing the review in response to concerns expressed about low-level exposure.

Q: What do local residents think of the problem?

A: Fort McKay, a community of about 600, sits about 15 kilometres north of Syncrude and about 30 kilometres north of Suncor. More than half the time, the wind is blowing from the south-southeast, so people in the community smell odours on a fairly regular basis, said Lisa Schaldemose, executive director of Fort McKay's Industry Relations Corporation. She said community members noticed an increase in odour incidents last spring. One day this past summer her office received 60 calls from upset residents. "The community's very concerned about their air quality and particularly how it relates to their health and how it's relating to the health of the land, because these people are still, to some extent, living off the land." Schaldemose said though they have good relationships with companies in the area, the community has its own air quality expert analyzing data from monitors in the area. He will be giving the community a briefing on his findings this spring.

Q: What is being done about this issue?

A: The provincial government began investigating the issue in 2006 when it noticed the upward trend, says Al Montpellier, Alberta Environment's regional compliance manager for the northern region. "That's when we started to look at the different sources in the area and really started to work with the companies and say, 'Where is this coming from?' " he says.

In 2007, the province issued two environmental protection orders, one against Syncrude in August and one against Suncor in December, in an attempt to get hydrogen sulphide emissions under control.

Syncrude closed its order last year, says company spokeswoman Cheryl Robb. That order was related to hydrogen sulphide emissions that came from an effluent pond, not a tailings pond. The pond is used for waste water during an unexpected shutdown, not a tailings pond used during regular operations. Suncor's order is still open. Montpellier says the company handed in its report in January, but the ministry still has to go through it to decide if the company has done enough.

The federal government requires companies to report their emissions each year, but the actual regulation of air quality is in the hands of the province. However, the National Pollutant Registry Inventory, which is available to the public online, showed a dramatic increase in the amount of hydrogen sulphide emissions reported by Suncor -- from 31 tonnes in 2007 to 708 tonnes in 2008, the latest available year. Syncrude, on the other hand, reduced its hydrogen sulphide from 129 tonnes to 62 tonnes.

Q: Why is Suncor reporting so much more hydrogen sulphide?

A: There have been no actual increases in hydrogen sulphide emissions between 2007 and 2008 by the company, says spokeswoman Sneh Seetal. Instead, when the company took samples of emissions from the ponds and had them tested, it discovered it had previously under-reported the hydrogen sulphide emissions. What they previously thought was largely a group of compounds called volatile organic compounds turned out largely to be hydrogen sulphide.

Q: Why is Suncor allowed to emit that much more hydrogen sulphide than Syncrude?

A: Alberta Environment doesn't actually put a limit on hydrogen sulphide emissions in the approvals obtained by the companies. Instead, it relies on the air monitoring network to pick up problems with pollutants, and then it acts on that information. Suncor is not convinced the air monitors are picking up strictly hydrogen sulphide. It turns out that the monitors can be fooled by other chemicals that also contain sulphur.

Alberta Environment acknowledges this fact, but it says it's equally concerned about these other chemicals as well, since they also have unpleasant smells. The Wood Buffalo Environmental Association, which runs the air monitoring stations, says it had special equipment installed at one of the stations last October to help sort out how much hydrogen sulphide there is compared to other sulphur compounds. However, Montpellier, from Alberta Environment, says the majority of the odour issues related to sulphur compounds are Suncor's, based on wind direction and other meteorological conditions.

Q: How does tailings pond cleanup fit into all of this?

A: Both Suncor and Alberta Environment think these emissions, whatever their exact composition, are coming from a tailings pond that is being reclaimed. A tailings pond contains a mixture of water, fine tailings, heavy metals and other chemicals. Gas bubbles in this mixture are trapped by the pressure of the water on top. But once you start to remove the water cap, the pressure is released and the gas bubbles up into the air." And the kicker is that as you reduce the cap, wind starts to have a huge effect on turbulent mixing," says Preston McEachern, head of science, research and innovation for Alberta Environment. "It's like when you step into a wetland, all these bubbles come up because you disturbed the bottom."
Suncor says reclamation on one of its ponds began in earnest in 2007. The water cap was completely removed as of last November.

McEachern says removing the water cap is one step that has to happen to turn the pond back into a surface that can be replanted with vegetation. At the end of the day the government has to balance its concerns, he says. They want to get rid of the old tailings ponds, but they want to do it on days or periods when the possible implications of gas release will be low, he says.

SD commission approves Keystone XL oil pipeline

jessie — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 09:13:51 -0800

SD commission approves Keystone XL oil pipeline

Associated Press, Pierre, South Dakota, Feb. 18, 2010— A state commission voted unanimously Thursday to approve a construction permit for the crude oil pipeline TransCanada Keystone wants to build across western South Dakota.

After setting conditions requiring the company to protect the environment and reimburse landowners for any damage caused by the project, the three-member Public Utilities Commission approved the portion of the Keystone XL pipeline that would run about 313 miles through South Dakota.

In public hearings in November, landowners along the route said they were worried about oil spills and damage to their land, water and roads. PUC Chairman Dusty Johnson said the commission, its staff and representatives of landowners have done much to add language to the permit to protect landowners.

Spills from oil pipelines are rare, and the average spill across the nation in recent years has been about three barrels, Johnson said. Emergency response crews can respond to spills and other problems quickly, he said.

"When you put that all together, you realize that this project can be done in a way that is sensitive to the needs of South Dakota, her land and her people," Johnson said.

Paul Seamans of Dakota Rural Action, a nonprofit group that has helped landowners, said he would prefer the project not be built, but he praised the PUC for its work on the construction permit. Landowners are mostly worried about environmental issues that will be handled in pending federal permits, he said.

The proposed pipeline would deliver up to 900,000 barrels of crude oil each day from tar sands near Hardisty, Alberta, to Gulf Coast terminals and refineries in Texas. It would enter South Dakota from Montana in Harding County and run through Butte, Perkins, Meade, Pennington, Haakon, Jones, Lyman and Tripp counties before entering Nebraska.

The South Dakota portion is estimated to cost $920 million, and the company wants to being construction in 2011.

TransCanada is already building another pipeline through eastern South Dakota to deliver Canadian crude oil to refineries in Illinois and Oklahoma.

Some opponents have criticized the PUC for approving the construction permit before a federal environmental study is completed, but commissioners said a state law set a deadline that required them to make their decision now. TransCanada Keystone XL needs a presidential permit from the U.S. State Department, and the state permit approved Thursday requires the company to comply with all requirements of the State Department's environmental impact statement.

The permit conditions approved by the PUC cover 13 pages. They include requirements for a public liaison officer to deal with landowner complaints, the repair of any damage caused to property by construction or operation of the pipeline, and the protection of water supplies.

Commissioner Steve Kolbeck also succeeded in adding a provision that would require a paleontologist to be on site during construction if a landowner requests it in a portion of the route where dinosaur fossils are commonly found. Landowners need protection against the loss of fossils of dinosaurs such as Tyrannosaurus Rex, which can be very valuable, he said.