Environment Committee on May 12th, 2009

[Peter Braid, Conservative, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

Your paper indicates that precipitation has decreased as well over that time period.

[William F. Donahue]

I believe at four of the stations there was a 20% to 30% decline in precipitation, and at the other ones there was no significant change over that 35-year period.

[Peter Braid, Conservative, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

I'm just trying to understand what the root causes of the changes in flow may have been. Is it decreased precipitation, or are there root causes beneath that?

[William F. Donahue]

Ultimately, the amount of water that's flowing in a river will at some point be tied to the balance between precipitation and evaporation in its basin. So depending on what the groundwater flow is, there may be lags between what goes on.

I would suggest in the glaciated Rocky Mountain headwaters there's going to be a very short time lag between snow melt or big precipitation events and what happens in the river. You see that in very periodic and big changes in river flow. Somewhere down in the Fort McMurray area there may be a greater lag because, as Dr. Schindler said, you have these vast wetland complexes that act as sponges. They dampen fluctuations that you might otherwise see over a short period. At some point, it's going to be tied to precipitation--snow melt, that sort of thing.

[Peter Braid, Conservative, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

In your mind, then, what's the single key factor affecting the flow of the Athabasca River?

[William F. Donahue]

It's hard to say. What I've presented for the most part has been descriptive, what has happened in flow, what has happened in things such as precipitation, snowpack, and temperatures. The model I put together, which ties together climate variables and flow, isn't what would be described as a mechanistic model. It's not something where you absolutely understand the interactions between the different variables and the outcome. It's more a correlative model where I've put together a bunch of variables, created some formulas and a way of putting them together that fairly accurately predicted the outcome. But in terms of what the most critical factor is, it's hard to say.

[Peter Braid, Conservative, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

I'd like to ask Dr. Schindler a question if I have time, but have you compared the Athabasca River to any other rivers?

[William F. Donahue]

Certainly. Dr. Schindler and I published a couple of papers in the last few years that looked at river flow throughout the prairies.

River flow throughout the prairies has been on a dramatic downswing. River flow in the South Saskatchewan at Saskatoon is down over 80% since the beginning of the 20th century.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you.

Mr. Calkins.

[William F. Donahue]

That's summer flow that I looked at, in terms of river flows all over the place.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Would you like to go ahead?

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Wetaskiwin, AB]

Yes, Mr. Chair. Thank you,

It's certainly a pleasure to have an opportunity to have you here to testify and to rekindle some old connections.

Dr. Schindler, I'm looking at the slides here. When I look at cadmium and at surface water in comparison to the snowpack, the Athabasca River 2 and the Muskeg River 2 sites seem to have very high amounts of cadmium in relation to the snowpack. In terms of surface water, at Beaver River, Steepbank River, and basically throughout all the various testing points on the Athabasca River there are elevated amounts.

I don't know if it's filtered out or if it settles out, but for example if you look at AR17, which is downstream of Fort McMurray, it has a higher rate of cadmium than Athabasca River 3, which is significantly lower. Then we go up to Athabasca River 12, and the rate is quite high again. Could you explain to me how, in that flow, the cadmium levels can change or alter so dramatically, given the same testing cycles, the same testing techniques?

What happens with cadmium? Does it settle out?

[Dr. David Schindler]

I think the reason is, as you saw, a lot of it is connected with that particulate fraction that will settle, but also, water is added by the tributaries downstream. If the downstream tributaries don't have much cadmium in them, they're going to dilute the upstream sources.

I think the only interpretation I could make of that entire pattern is that there's a considerable variation in sources of cadmium. There must be small deposits of high-cadmium soils in some of those tributaries. One thing that stood out, though, is that there is no clear relation to industry, as there is for some of the other metals.

I think those high values, regardless of the source, are of some concern. They're at levels where there has been demonstrated toxicity to aquatic invertebrates, for example.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Wetaskiwin, AB]

You've been quite articulate in your presentation in regard to the reality that most of the stuff is naturally occurring there. That's not really much in dispute, but the question remains, how much is the current level of activity one of disturbance, of removing the overburden, of just moving things around, changing stream flows, changing the natural habitat that has existed there for so long?

In your work, have you been able to look at anything for the region of airshed monitoring? When we look at this, I'm assuming that with the mining activity we're obviously going to see wind. We're going to see these trucks moving up. We watched it yesterday from the helicopters. There are these dust plumes that follow the trucks around. We're going to see some airborne particulate matter obviously created simply because of the open pit mining activity. Have you been able to link any of the airshed monitoring of any of the particulate matter with any of your findings in the various testing locations that you have?

[Dr. David Schindler]

So far we haven't. We started to analyze regional airborne patterns, but we've only had the results for a few weeks now and we're just beginning that work. It's clear there are a few metals that don't seem to be related to the industrial activity at all—most notably uranium and cadmium. With some of the others, such as mercury, aluminum, and arsenic, clearly there is a fair contribution from the mining.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Wetaskiwin, AB]

I have a great interest in fish. That's what I took when I was at the University of Alberta; I took most of the fisheries and aquatic sciences courses that I could. I'm concerned about what we're seeing. I heard anecdotally yesterday, talking to a commercial fisherman on Lake Athabasca, that he's seeing some semblance of deformity, disease, or whatever the case might be, in about one in a hundred fish that they're taking out of there.

That's not uncommon. I worked as a fisheries technician for Alberta Fish and Wildlife for a number of years, and it's not actually uncommon, when you look at the Lakeland area or other parts of the province that I've worked in, to find a few fish with deformations or various diseases. Particularly with walleye in the spring, you'll have the various diseases and so on that simply go away as the summer progresses.

I'm wondering if there's anything being done through your study. Is it going to leverage any further research? This is an important commercial fishery on Lake Athabasca. I'm actually quite concerned about what I've heard insofar as some of the problems you've noted here.

[Dr. David Schindler]

We aren't doing any studies of that sort of thing ourselves, but I know there are programs now that are beginning to collect some actual statistics on deformities of fish, rather than just collecting anecdotes.

I should point out something you may know. There was already one significant spill from the oil sands plants to the Athabasca. It occurred under winter ice in 1982. It was enough to close the fishery, at least at the western end of the lake, for a couple of years. There has been a long history of at least some industrial effect. The fact that this spill occurred under winter ice meant it was impossible to clean up. It made its way down the 250-some kilometres of river and into the lake. I think it's fair to say that scenario could repeat itself.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

We'll have to go to Mr. Watson now.

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Vice-Chair.

I thank our witnesses for appearing today.

Let me start with Dr. Schindler.

Looking at your results with respect to heavy metals, for example, how do they compare with other types of minings and tailings? Have you done any comparative work, or can you point us to some comparative work between what's going on in this particular watershed and what's going on in other watersheds or in different mining operations? Can you give a sense of some of the differences? Is this worse, better, or the same as what you'd expect with other mining operations? Can you give us some sort of qualitative or quantitative indication on that?

[Dr. David Schindler]

I'd say with respect to trace metals, it's probably better than something like a lead-zinc mine or a gold mine, because those are mining areas where metals are concentrated. One area where it's significantly worse is polycyclic aromatics and other organic compounds, because this area is much higher in those sorts of compounds than a typical base metal mine would be, for example. Of course, it's the reason why there's mining activity there, so it's really not a surprise that would be the case.

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

With respect to PAH's ability to be transported airborne, what are the prevailing winds? Are they typically westerly? In different areas it depends, as there may be micro-climates and things like that.

[Dr. David Schindler]

I'd say both. The prevailing directions are northwest and southwest, but I've also noticed when I've been in the area that you'll often see smoke plumes channelled right down the Athabasca River, either to the north or to the south. So I think the micro-climate around that steep valley does affect a lot of the patterns in the area.

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

Okay.

With respect to your study, do you expect to replicate the monitoring at various locations, or is this your one-time snapshot and you're hoping others, perhaps governments, will pick up and do continuous monitoring, understanding that to some degree, if I do a political poll or something, it's a snapshot in time of a particular thing? Is there any intention to do that, or are you moving on to different areas of study that will build on this? In other words, are you satisfied with your conclusions? Can you give me a sense of where your work is going?

[Dr. David Schindler]

We designed it, at this point, for a snapshot. Since we've demonstrated that you can pick up clear effects with a well-designed monitoring program, I'm hoping that someone, whether it be a federal government or a provincial government, will step in and see that this type of program is maintained.

One area I'd like to do more on--and, again, it will be a snapshot--will be the contribution of what's in the snowpack to the river at spring melt, when four months of deposition could potentially be dumped into the river.

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

I want to open this one up to everybody here on the panel too. It's my last question, and it's with respect to the issue of reclamation.

This was my first chance to see the oil sands. I traveled half a continent, from as far south as you can go in Canada, right down on Lake Erie, and there were a number of things that I found very interesting in a flyover of the area. They were pointing out spots where reclamation is going on. What I also found very interesting was the natural topography as it exists in areas where there hasn't been any extraction yet, but will be.

Can you weigh in a little bit on concerns about the change in topography, the interrelationship between surface water and groundwater through changing topography, and those types of things? There's been some talk that on some projects there's the idea of compensation lakes or compensation wetlands. Is that a satisfactory mechanism?

I think what we're accepting in that principle, if we go that route, is that there will be changes in habitats, drainage, and things like that. I don't know if that will change the interrelationships between surface water and groundwater access. Can you comment on that for the committee?