Day 1 (Part 2) Tar Sands Canoe Trip

Tuesday August 6    “No significant impact”

            At 7, we meet at the McMurray Aviation hangar at the Ft Mac airport. Nine of us (three per plane) go up in Cessna 172s for an hour to get an aerial view of some of the tar sand developments. While waiting we are handed glossy booklets on the tar sands industry. Among other things, I read that “studies have shown that the oil sands development have had no significant impact on the Athabasca River.” I already know that this is absolute fiction. David Schindler (U of Alberta) and co-workers’ studies on the river and the tar sands impact published in 2011, as well as more recent studies, show clearly that the impact is important and growing. They liken the amount of tar sands toxins, from aerial deposition over the winter on snow,  that go into the Athabasca River as the snow melts to a major oil spill in the river every spring. Important enough that their report caused the federal government  to initiate a high level scientific review panel. The panel’s report concurred with what Schindler and others have been saying for years: the government and industry have not been doing a serious job of  monitoring the air and water. What is not known, you cannot be blamed for.

                                  An aerial view of an outlet of used water flowing into a Tailings Pond. 

Companies now recycle water for the upgraders something like 10 times. However, when they are done with it, it is dirty as you can see. They wait for the gunk (some of it) to settle out. Some of the pollutants never will. In the meantime, a significant amount is leaking into the groundwater and the river.

 

            The main area of approved projects is approximately 400 km x 400 km: almost all of it has been given over to projects with more approved in the two smaller areas of tar sands: in the Peace River and Cold Lake areas. No matter how far we fly, there are more projects in the distance. What we see are the open pit mines and associated sandy desert landscapes left after mining, the many toxic lakes of highly polluted water euphemistically called tailings ponds, and the current mining and upgrading operations (separating the tar from the sand using natural gas and water from the Athabasca River). The gargantuan mining trucks crawling in long lines like Dinky Toys, the conveyor belts taking the dumped tar sand into the upgraders, the smoke stacks and the upgrader buildings: all icons of a dystopic future.

                                                                    Suncor upgrader

            We also see sulfur in neat yellow square piles perhaps 500 m in length extracted from the bitumen. Bitumen, the “tar” in tar sands, is 5% sulphur. We also see a reclamation site: small, with grass and a pond, and also an area of black ooze surfacing within it: clearly the 0.15% of the mining area already reclaimed still needs work.   

             We see empty bison paddocks. We have already heard that the bison, the showpiece of reclamation PR, cannot be left here too long as they become sick from the poisoned air. We also were told by a FMFN band member of a generous donation by one of the oil companies of bison meat from this herd, donated to local first nations. The meat had to be thrown away as it contained high levels of lead.

                                           Aerial view of empty bison paddock

            

Two interesting thing we learn from our pilot, whose father has worked for years in the tar sands. There is a Suncor oil refinery that was under construction here. He says that after spending $5 billion the company abandoned construction. I do not know why.

            He also tells us that the Crane Hill reclaimed area (where the Healing Walk in July began) is not actually reclaimed. It is a large pile of “overburden” which is the soil and subsoil scraped away before accessing the oil sands to be mined.

 

            After the flights, at Tim Horton’s in Ft Mac, we meet with Rod Hyde, the retired principal of the Ft McKay school who is the widower of the former chief of the Ft McKay FN, Dorothy McDonald. His daughter, Dayle, is the Band’s communication officer. Rod tells us how Dorothy and the Band took one of the oil companies to court for compensation for a major oil spill after the Alberta government refused to act, saying that it preferred to work with the oil companies so that it did not happen again. She was the chief when the band formed the Ft McKay Group of Companies, to perform tar sand industry services which are now grossing $100 million per year. The Community members are well off. Ft McKay therefore has an inherent conflict between the environmental damage being done to their ancestral lands and the huge profits they are reaping from the oil sands. This is a common theme we will hear about repeatedly.

            Rod also advises us about the latest Alberta Energy Regulator ruling. Today they approved a lease for a new SAGD (Steam assisted gravity drainage) tar sands project (the Dover Commercial Project).  It is adjacent to Ft McKay FN lands referred to as the Moose Lake Reserve, 50 km northwest of Ft McKay. The reserve contains Moose Lake where many FMFN members have built cabins and there are also band-owned cabins. According to the Ft McKay FN website:

“This particular area in our traditional territory is sacred to the community of Fort McKay and is the resting place of many of our ancestors.”

“Moose Lake is one of the only areas far enough away from oil sands development where the people of Fort McKay can hunt, trap, fish, and pick berries safely and in peace. Fort McKay First Nation is committed to the protection and preservation of Moose Lake in order to ensure our children and grandchildren have a clean, peaceful place to keep our traditions and culture alive.”

            Apparently this will soon no longer be the case. The Ft McKay Band had asked for a 20 km buffer zone around the lake for the above reasons. They are being granted 1.2 km. The lease holder is Brion Energy Corporation, a joint venture between Athabasca Oil Corp. and PetroChina Co. (now Pheonix Energy Holdings), promises to exploit the resource “in an environmentally acceptable manner”. The Dover project is expected to produce approximately 4.1 billion barrels of bitumen. At $50 per barrel of bitumen, that amounts to $200 billion. One quarter of that amount would have been lost if the Alberta Energy Regulator or Brion Energy could have dialed back their greed and given in to Ft McKay’s request. Ft McKay FN will appeal. 

            As if to highlight the risks involved in SAGD projects, we also learn from Rod and other sources today that there is currently a major underground and surface spill of bitumen from a SAGD operation in the Cold Lake area to the south. It has been going on for 2 weeks, and approximately 1 million liters of bitumen have so far leaked out. There is so far no known method to stop the flow. In a SAGD operation, tar sands deep underground are heated with hot water pipes and another series of deeper pipes, in theory, collects the melted tar.

            Spills are common. When I was in Ft Mac for the Healing Walk a month earlier there was a substantial pipeline spill south of Ft Mac. Three hundred people, mostly from the Fort McMurray FN, were involved in the clean-up efforts, we were told by a FMFN band member.

            We get back to our campsite late, make a campfire, eat a bit and to bed. The evening is cool and there are thankfully few mosquitoes.

Day 1 (Part 1) Tar Sands Canoe Trip

Tuesday August 6     “Don’t eat the fish”

            Tuesday morning at 7 AM, 7 of us drive from Edmonton to the Gregoire Lake campground just south of Ft McMurray (5 hours). Here we meet the three other canoeists who had driven from the Ministikiwan Indian Reserve in Saskatchewan. Now we are ten, all interested in finding out what is going on in the tar sands.

                                                                    Our group

              From here on, I am going to use the term “tar sands” which is much more accurate but out of favour with oil companies and the Harper and Alberta governments, who now call them "oil sands". “Tar sands” is the term used in the on-line Encyclopedia Britannica. Using the term "oil sands" is like calling a cattle ranch a "steak and leather ranch". If we are going to name things by the products we get from them, better to call it the "money and pollution sands".
 
            During our drive, we pass police cars surrounding a transport truck which is leaking yellow ooze: liquid sulfur from the tar sands. (The tar in tar sands is made of 5% Sulphur. The piles of it at the tar sands upgraders are Brobdingnagian in size.) The heavy truck traffic on Hwy 63 is more than I have ever seen. Semi-trailers can load only 8 of the tires for the tar sands trucks that carry the dug-up sands to the upgrader. They are that big.

                                                Kevin in front of a tar sands mining truck tire

            At the campground, we set up on two campsites. We have four vehicles. We are told by the private operators of the provincial campground (this is how provincial parks have been run in Alberta for a long time) that if there are more than two tents per site we will have to pay double ($64 instead of $32 per campsite). A sure sign that oil workers are often living at the campground. We take down some of our tents, double up, and Clifford and I sleep in the back of Kevin’s truck.

            Tuesday afternoon we visit the Oil Sands Discovery Centre in Ft Mac (Ft McMurray), a half hour drive. Here they have a good explanation of how the tar sands operations work. But also there are some red herring exhibits about the environment: one, for instance, about the fact that beavers almost became extinct in Canada by the early 1930s. Not sure the connection but can guess why they put it in. 

            Likewise there is a short film that quotes an elder, Fred MacDonald, from Ft McKay, now deceased. In the film he is quoted as saying that “things are bad and will get worse”. However, his words "are spun" by adding that Fred knew that you can’t exploit the oil sands without consequences.

                                            The big picture: Mackenzie R watershed in green

            Everywhere you go here and everyone you talk to has an opinion. There is clearly a conflict between the big money to be made by companies, governments and workers, and the big 7 problems (my list): 

11.  Contribution to climate change of increasing the supply of oil, and especially with oil which requires three times as much energy input to produce as conventional oil. 

22.  Heavy metal and PAH pollution of the water and drying out of the Mackenzie Arctic watershed which drains 20% of Canada’s land mass; and resulting effect on the fish and wildlife. 

33.  Distortion of the Canadian economy and social problems caused by the extremely rapid development and enormous influx of capital. 

44.  Lack of reasonable taxation of the oil companies in Alberta. 

55.   The lack of democracy and the deceit of  both the companies and the provincial and federal governments in overseeing (read NOT overseeing) the tar sands development.

66.  The lack of a serious reclamation effort in spite of the rhetoric.

77.  And the biggest one: the opportunity cost of NOT investing all this money in the major changes to Canadian society needed to avert catastrophic climate change and other growing environmental and societal problems.

  A map of all tar sands projects below. Note that only a small area north of Ft McMurray (bordered in pink) has deposits close enough to the surface to use open pit mining. The rest are all using SAGD (Steam Assisted Gravity Drainage): an experimental technology. According to this recent map, there are 128 active projects, 27 approved or under construction, and another 39 that have been announced and in the application process. This map comes from Alberta Energy, government of Alberta, updated July 2013.

               Four of us visit “the Snye”, the site where we will launch the canoes the next day. It is on the Clearwater River, a few hundred meters before its confluence with the Athabasca River within the Ft McMurray city limits. At the Snye (a word which means a side channel of a river), there are several people fishing. Asked if they eat the fish, they all answer no. I throw sticks for my dog, Willow, in the Clearwater. The current is strong and she is getting old. On the second throw, she gets pinned by the current against logs piled up from spring flooding. She keeps swimming but getting nowhere, and getting weaker by the minute. Finally, I empty my pockets, wade out and climb over the big pile of logs to haul her up onto the logs. True to form, she growls at me when I pull her out. She would have drowned but is still indignant about the whole thing. The four of us snack on peanuts and dried fruit. The others have gone to a restaurant to eat. We will meet up at the Ft Mac airport.

Healing Walk on July 6, 2013

The Healing Walk through the Tar Sands     July 6, 2013

                                               Traffic on Hwy 63

On Saturday, July 6, I participated in the 5^th annual Tar Sands Healing Walk organized mostly by the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation with some other First Nations and environmental groups helping out. Workshops and speeches the day before as well as camping for the 500 or so participants took place at the Gregoire Lake campground on the Ft McMurray First Nation. The theme of the walk was “Stop the Destruction, Start the Healing”.

Participants came from every part of the continent, and were of every age. There was even a baby born at midnight on July 4^th in a tipi set up for the purpose. The baby boy’s mother, Nitanis, Cree for “My daughter” and her husband and one of her children, were visiting her mother and grandmother on Ft McMurray First Nation. 

I talked to participants from all over Alberta including current and past Oil Sands workers. I talked to people from Vancouver and from several coastal First Nations including Stewart Phillip, the Grand Chief of theUnion of BC Chiefs, who is convinced that the federal government will try to push through the Northern Gateway Pipeline even if the Review Panel turns it down; and Brenda Sayers, a Band Councillor for  the Hupacasath First Nation in Port Alberni who is suing the federal government over the China Foreign Investment Promotion/Protection Agreement which will affect Canada’s sovereignty over jobs, environment and FN treaties.

                                             Dene drummers drummed the whole 7 hours.

 I talked to people  from Regina (including two members of the Muskowekwan First Nation which is negotiation over a potash mine on their territory, people from  Toronto, and a youth contingent from the Ammjiwanaang First Nation near Sarnia, which is home to more than 40 petrochemical companies and one of the most toxic environments on the continent.  I spoke to Chiefs and other dignitaries who had come from the NWT, which is further downstream of the Tar Sands development along the Mackenzie River and were also here to meet as members of an organization concerned about the entire Arctic watershed, called the Keepers of the Water. I spoke to people from Texas, California, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and even an American living in Japan. 

                                              A sea of tents of participants at Gregoire Lake

I spoke to John O’Connor and his wife Charlene, who both work for the Ft McKay Health authority, he a doctor and Director of Health Services and she a nurse and Ft McKay Health Services Manager.  John has spent five years fighting attacks from Health Canada and Alberta Health including complaints by both to Alberta College of Physicians over his concern over the high number of young adults with cardiovascular disease and cancer. Recently, the complaints were mysteriously dropped.

  

                                                 Visiting the Crane Lake Nature Trail

On both Friday and Saturday there were speeches. Winona LaDuke, the Native American activist and author who was Ralph Nader’s running mate in US Presidential elections in 1996 and 2000, gave her most memorable line when she said “I do not consider myself an activist. Just a reasonable person:  I want clean air and water.” My favourite advice that she gave was that the harder we fight, the more expensive it is for the companies and the more likely they are to give up. Tzepora Berman, a long-time activist for Greenpeace and co-founder of Forest Ethics, talked about her 11-year-old asking her why the government thought she was a terrorist after Joe Oliver’s infamous open letter about the Northern Gate Pipeline hearings last year.  Chief Allan Adam of the Athabasca Chipewyan FN expressed his disappointment that there are not more Canadians fighting the Tar Sands. Other speakers of note included Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org and Naomi Klein, the author of No Logos and Shock Doctrine. 

                           

  Chief Allan Adam of Athabasca Chipewyan FN addressing the crowd

The atmosphere was mostly highly charged. There was a sea of tents and some great local food. I could be seen the last evening gnawing on a deer knee joint (although they did have vegetarian food, I thought eating deer was vegetarian food: deer are vegetarians, aren’t they?)

One interesting thing about the whole region is that everyone is either directly or indirectly dependent on the Tar Sands. Everyone knows that shutting it down is going to bring difficult change and of course it is already highly contaminated. But everyone in the back of their minds seem to know that it is not a good thing. Same way that most addicts know that their addiction aint a good thing.

                     Land "under restoration" in the foreground. An upgrader in the background.

The trucks and equipment on the highways is gigantic, continuous, and overwhelming. How else to maintain the biggest industrial project on Earth??

                                                 Another upgrader

The walk started at a nature trail courtesy of Suncor. Ironic to call it a nature trail as many of the participants sported dusk masks to protect themselves from the toxic dust in the area. In previous years, many participants have reported severe headaches, sore throats, and respiratory problems after the walk.

While there were some areas of woodland either small token areas replanted or small areas between the various mining projects, most of the area was dominated by desolate sandy deserts where extraction was completed (with signs saying “Restoration in progress”, which appeared to be more hopeful than actual), and enormous upgrader plants with steaming smoke stacks which was where the sand and bitumen (tar) were being separated using hot water . There were also enormous lifeless bodies of water unlike anything I had ever seen, surrounded by fences and signs prohibiting entry. (Were the companies afraid of the liability if tourists were to go swimming here among the upgraders, and sink below the goo, or die a horrible death a few months later? Undoubtedly.) 

                         Ducks! Do not swim here! There. They have been warned. Not Suncor's fault now.

There were four stops both to rest and for Native elders to make prayers. On the last prayer stop, one of the elders was praying but she was also weeping openly as she talked to her Creator about all the destruction that she was seeing. It just brought home to me once more what a bad idea this whole thing is.

VI. Thanks to rapid tar sands development, Canada now produces more oil than Texas or Kuwait. Since 2001, Canada has surpassed Saudi Arabia as the largest single exporter of oil to the United States. Canadian crude now accounts for nearly one-fifth of all US oil imports. If development continues unabated, Canada will soon provide the fading US empire with nearly a third of its oil, while half of Canada’s own citizens remain dependent on insecure supplies from the Middle East.

  - "Declaration of a Political Emergency" in Tar Sands: Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent 
                                            by Andrew Nikiforuk 2010.