“There has always been naturally occurring pollution of the Athabasca River.” June 11, 2013

   American Environmental "Wisdom" from the Past 
 

"A tree is a tree. How many more do you have to look at?" --- Ronald Reagan, 1966, opposing expansion    of  Redwood National Park as governor of California

 "Trees cause more pollution than automobiles do." --- US President Ronald Reagan, 1981

   "Facts are stupid things." --- US President Ronald Reagan, 1988

“We will mine more, drill more, cut more timber.”

                --- James Watt, US Secretary of the Interior,  1981-1983

“That is the delicate balance the Secretary of the Interior must have: to be steward for the natural resources for this generation as well as future generations. I do not know how many future generations we can count on before the Lord returns; whatever it is we have to manage with a skill to leave the resources needed for future generations.”

--- James Watt, in testimony before the House Interior Committee, February 1981

Here is what the Oil Industry says in 2013 about water pollution due to the Oil Sands development:

Oil Sands Developers’ Group publication: Upstream Dialogue – The Facts on Oil Sands                             (Current as of May 2013 !! according to their website)

• The quality of the surface waters in the region has always been impacted by the naturally occurring bitumen from the ground. Ground water that has been in natural contact with oil sands seeps naturally into local rivers and has done so for millennia.  
• The Regional Aquatics Monitoring Program (RAMP) is the multiparty environmental monitoring program that assesses the health of rivers and lakes in the region
• RAMP has concluded that there has been no significant impact from oil sands development on the Athabasca River.

Here is what the science said in 2010 and  2011:

         1.  U of A scientific report August  2010 

University of Alberta studies by scientists Erin Kelly and David Schindler demonstrated that pollution on the Athabasca River is no longer natural. Contrary to what industry and government officals are saying, the oil sands ARE dumping huge amounts of pollutants into the Athabasca River. In fact, one of the lead researchers calls for RAMP (Regional Aquatics Monitoring Program) to be completely dismantled, saying that their failure to find the increased levels of toxins in the water and snow pack proves that they are 'incompetent'.

See the following publications:

EN Kelly, DW Schindler, PV Hodson, JW Short, R Radmanovich and CC Nielsen. "Oil sands development contributes toxic elements at low concentrations to the Athabasca River and its tributaries." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 107(2010):16178-16183.

DW Schindler. "Tar sands need solid science." Invited Comment. Nature 468(2010):499-501.

EN Kelly, JW Short, DW Schindler, PV Hodson, M Ma, AK Kwan and BL Fortin. "Oil sands development contributes polycyclic aromatic compounds to the Athabasca River and its tributarie." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 106 (2009): 22346-22351.

2.    Royal Society of Canada's Oil Sands Study  Dec 2010, (abridged from a report by Andrew Nikiforuk in the Tyee).

Bill Donahue, an independent Edmonton-based expert on water policy and science, clearly summed up the essence of the report: "It is a scathing indictment of the failure of Alberta to regulate." Period.
As discreet communicators, the scientists found, for example, that environmental assessment process had "serious deficiencies in relation to international best practice."
Moreover the capacity of Alberta regulators to protect the public interest with skilled scientific analysis remained a real "concern" while the federal government (and you guessed it) maintained "a very low profile" on oil sands development.

(Just last week the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development disclosed how low that profile has sunk: Ottawa has but one long-term monitoring station on the Athabasca River downstream of the oil sands, and as of June 2010 it wasn’t even measuring oil sands pollutants.)

Moreover the scientists weren't impressed with the shenanigans of petro politicians in Alberta where all pollution tends to be natural because all bitumen must be ethical.

The report also found it odd that two key regulators, Alberta Environment and Sustainable Development, no longer participate in public hearings on oil sands. In other words decisions are being made "without the benefit of the public input from Alberta's primary environmental regulators." 

The expert panel, too, strongly echoed a growing and vocal chorus on the inadequate state of water monitoring on the Athabasca River. Valid concerns about the industry-funded Regional Aquatic Monitoring Program, say the report, "must be addressed." (Numerous reports, including a 2004 federal study, have squarely questioned the integrity of RAMP.)

Contrary to industry and government claims of no worries, the scientists found "considerable uncertainty" about water quality and recommended prompt action to deal "with the wide range of monitoring challenges that RAMP faces for identifying any impacts of oil sands development." The Department of Fisheries and Oceans has found nothing but uncertainties too.

 

 3.  Separate panels commissioned by the federal and Alberta governments in 2011 

 found that the current environmental monitoring regime, which is backed by oil sands producers, is not capable of assessing the effect of oil sands production on the environment.

 

4.    Here is what the Pembina Institute’s website says.

Individual oil sands projects do not operate in isolation. Every new project that is approved adds to the cumulative environmental impacts associated with development in northeastern Alberta.

• The Royal Society of Canada noted that a lack of provincial and federal regulatory capacity has failed to effectively assess cumulative impacts of oil sands development.
• A lack of reliable data makes it difficult to set, monitor and enforce ecosystem capacity limits.

The 2012 budget bill (Bill C-38) further weakens federal oversight (e.g., weakened protection for fish and species at risk and a less comprehensive environmental assessment law) of how oil sands development proceeds by changing Canada’s most important environmental laws.

Over 66% of the total oil sands area has been leased to companies for extraction.

• As of January 2013, the Alberta government had granted 93,000 square kilometres of oilsands leases.
• The government grants oilsands leases without an environmental assessment.

My conclusion: The federal and Alberta governments as well as the industry are spinning a combination of partial lies, half-truths, and omissions of important details to avoid having to deal with what a toxic mess this industry is creating in the north. The governments and industry do not want to know how bad it really is because it makes it easier to deny it and approve new projects. 

 If you look at the quotes from the US Administration in the 1980s at the top of the page, from an administration who is currently deified by the US Republicans, you see a mindset which does not see or understand nature at all. There is a combination of blindness to nature and, in some quarters, trust that God is going to end things soon so that it really does not matter anyway. All they do see are the dollar signs. This same mindset appears to be pervasive in the Oil Industry as well as the Harper Conservatives.