No one ever accused Ed Stelmach of being the best informed premier in Canada.
So it comes as little surprise that a day after the premier announced he would “force an end to tailings ponds,” Alberta’s oilsands regulator approved two new tailings ponds.
The Alberta Energy and Resources Conservation Board (ERCB) conditionally approved two tailing ponds for oilsands projects at Fort Hills and Syncrude on Friday.
Stelmach promised on Earth Day (Thursday) to eliminate tailings ponds within “a few years.”
For the record, tailings ponds are huge man-made lakes that hold water, leftover bitumen, clay and heavy metals from the oilsands process.
Environmental groups say such ponds are leaching contaminants into both surface and groundwater in the Athabasca watershed.
Anyone who has paid any attention to Alberta’s environment in recent years recognizes that the use of tailings ponds is risky and must be stopped.
Simon Dyer, oilsands program director for the Pembina Institute, told this newspaper on Monday that’s he’s encouraged by the fact that Stelmach wants to get rid of tailings ponds. However, he added, companies extracting bitumen are being allowed to build tailings ponds because “the current approach is the cheapest approach.”
Some entrepreneurs claim to have developed solutions to the tailings ponds problem, but whether such technology will work in the real world remains to be seen, Dyer adds.
He points out that the ERCB itself reports that Alberta’s tailings ponds — lakes really — have grown by 40 square km in the past year and now cover 170 square km.
It’s outrageous that tailings ponds are still being approved here in Alberta.
As Greenpeace has noted, the approval of the two latest tailings ponds makes a mockery of the government’s plan to get rid of such blights on our planet.
News of the approval of the two ponds in question comes just two years after the death of 1,600 ducks on a Syncrude tailings pond.
That incident was particularly disturbing given the fact that Syncrude apparently knew 1,600 ducks had perished, but chose not to correct media reports suggesting only 500 had died.
Amazingly, Stelmach says Alberta must get rid of tailings pond not because they are poisoning our planet, but rather because they are damaging Alberta’s international image.
He obviously still doesn’t get it.
Instead of sticking up for the environment, his administration is running interference for the oil companies — allowing them to poison our land and water while they pocket the profits.
Filmmaker James Cameron says Alberta’s oilsands development is a “black eye” on Canada’s environmental record. He’s right.
And no visit to Alberta, carefully stage-managed by the premier’s public relations staff, is likely to change Cameron’s opinion.
Tailings ponds are a part of our past but they should not be part of our future.
Lee Giles is an Advocate editor.