- A picture of the tailing ponds, right next to a river (Athabasca or Mackenzie perhaps?). Photo is by Edward Burtynsky.
I would assume that most people who visit this blog know that Alberta's tar sands are an ecological disaster. The biggest problem, other than the vast amount of fresh water it uses and ghg's it produces, is the fact that the byproduct of the process of turning oil sands into oil creates toxic tailing ponds, some so big that you can see them from space. Some of these toxic tailing ponds are separated from rivers using earthen dikes. That's right - if one of those dikes collapses, thousands of litres of toxic water would spill into the water source for millions of humans and non-humans, if not more.
According to the Dominion:As of 2006, tailing ponds covered 50-square kilometers of former boreal forest. By 2010, according to the Oil Sands Tailings Research Facility, the industry will have generated 8 billion tons of waste sand and 1 billion cubic metres of waste water--enough to fill 400,000 olympic-sized swimming pools. Today, the largest human-made dam by volume of materials is the Syncrude tailing pond, a few kilometres from the Athabasca river.
Just how toxic is this stuff? It's so toxic that 500 migrating ducks are now dead because they dared to land on the ponds. And this is what we call sustainable development? Does anyone have any clue how to dispose of this shit? Now I know that some people will say so what? It's just a bunch of dead ducks. But besides the callousness of such statements, people who would dare to think this need to be reminded that if landing on partially frozen ponds ends up in dead ducks, what would it mean for humans if we dared to ingest some through our drinking water? We already have evidence of rare cancers being found in clusters in communities downstream and that is probably just the result of leaching, so just imagine what would happen if there was a full fledged break of one of those damns? If we can't dispose of the stuff and it's so damn toxic, why the hell are we creating this mess in the first place?
In response to this tragedy, the Alberta Environment Minister stated the following:It's a real blow to our messaging that we are working very, very hard ensure that we do have sustainable development.
You don't think? Now let's be honest Mr. Minister, all you have is a message because the reality is that in practice the tar sands are not sustainable - digging up millions of tonnes of earth, using billions of litres of water, releasing millions of tonnes of greenhouse gases, and producing billions of litres of toxic water that no-one has any idea to dispose is in no way, shape or form sustainable. It might be delusional and suicidal, but it's not sustainable. So save us the rhetoric and shut the fuck up. Seriously.
Again, I ask the question - at what cost? At what cost do we continue to maintain our addiction to oil? How many dead ducks? How many dead humans?
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1 comments:
Everyone should be upset about the careless behavior of corporations as it relates to the environment but unless you are prepared to stop heating your home, using electricity, driving a car, taking the bus or even drinking from a disposable cup then you better get used to it. Wind Turbines kill ten of thousands of migratory birds and bats all over the word each day but somehow no one takes notice! Fundamental change from every man, women and child is required to really evolve our environment but I don't see anyone who really wants change bad enough to give up their daily comforts.
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