Alberta tailings ponds leaking contaminants into water supply

EDMONTON - The toxic tailings ponds from Alberta's oilsands mines leak enough contaminated water into the region's aquifers every day to almost fill five Olympic-sized swimming pools, according to a new analysis by two environmental groups.

And if all the oilsands projects now on the books are constructed, that contamination could grow nearly sevenfold and potentially leave a massive legacy of poisoned groundwater.

"This is one of the ominous parts of this," said Matt Price of Environmental Defence, who authored the report being released Tuesday.

"It could very well take a generation for this stuff to show up. And by that time, you can't stop it."

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Oilsands tailings are created as hot water is used to separate bitumen from the sand and clay that holds it. Between 2,000 and 2,500 litres of tailings are produced for every barrel of bitumen. Tailings ponds now cover about 130 square kilometres in the Fort McMurray area.

Those "ponds" are held in place by earthen dikes. Most of the leakage is captured by ditches, barriers or wells, but some water still escapes.

Price and analysts from the environmental think-tank Pembina Consulting collected data from oilsands companies themselves on how much water they expect is leaking from their tailings ponds.

The total was just over 11 million litres a day. Over the course of a year, that's enough water to fill the Toronto Skydome 2 1/2 times.

The tailings are known to be harmful, containing chemicals that are both toxic and carcinogenic.

Studies have shown that wetlands irrigated with tailings water suffer increased mortality for birds and slower growth for plants. Last April, about 500 ducks died when they landed on one of the ponds.

Price says not enough is known about the flow of water once it seeps into the ground or whether it finds its way into the Athabasca River system.

"The joint panels (reviewing the oilsands project applications) keep on saying, 'We need more information on groundwater. We don't have it, but here's your approval anyway.'

"This stuff will eventually make its way down river. You might be building up this massive pulse of contaminants into the groundwater now that are going to show up."

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December 2, 2008 at 4:27 AM EST

The development of the tar sands could lead to the loss of more than 160 million birds over the next 30 to 50 years because of the elimination of habitat and deaths from drowning in tailings ponds, according to a report being released today.

The impact of the oil sands on birds has been in the spotlight,especially since a flock of 500 mallards landed in a Syncrude Canada Ltd. tailings pond near Fort McMurray, Alta., in late April. Images of the dead ducks spread around the world and became a public-relations nightmare for the petroleum industry and the Alberta government.

But the new report, compiled by the Natural Resources Defence Council and the Boreal Songbird Initiative in the United States, and the Pembina Institute in Canada, says relatively few birds are likely to be lost because of accidental drowning in the ponds, perhaps only8,000 to 300,000.

The far greater threat arises, the report says, from the destruction of habitat due to tar sands strip mining, along with habitat fragmentation and degradation in areas where the thick bitumen will be extracted in situ using wells.

The estimate of bird losses, when habitat effects are included,ranges from a low of six million to a high of 166 million, spread over the 30- to 50-year period of oil extraction. The oil sands lie within what is known as the boreal forest, the vast band of wilderness that stretches across northern Canada. About half of all birds in the U.S.nest in the boreal forest and depend on it for their survival.Estimates of breeding pairs in the forest are as high as 500 birds in every 2.5 square kilometres.

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