I'm going to show you some photos and maps to illustrate the material that's in the briefs you have. I explain there the reason for our study.
This is a natural seep of oil sands, of which there are several along the Athabasca River. Of course, industry's position has been that all of the pollutants in the river come from such natural seeps. To me, as someone who works with watersheds and waters all the time, it's inconceivable that going from a footprint like that in 1974 to that on the same scale in 2008 would not cause a lot of chemical releases from the watershed to the river. We undertook to study that.
I pointed out in my brief the deficiencies of the regional aquatic monitoring program. What we did instead was to take 18 sites up and down the Athabasca River, from above Fort McMurray to the end of the river, and then a few, as you'll see, around Fort Chipewyan, and superimpose them on a geological map. The white area in the centre is the McMurray formation that is the focus of much of the oil sands activity. We also went to every major tributary in that stretch and sampled above the McMurray formation, in the McMurray formation but above oil sands mining, and at the river mouth below any activity. We had a few reference streams and a half dozen streams that ran through mined areas.
I'll just go through these in order to show you a general pattern. These are in the brief.
The black bars are winter flows, and the white bars are summer flows. In general, on this and subsequent slides, you'll see that there really is not much evidence of an oil sands effect during the wintertime. As you go from the Fort McMurray end at the bottom to the Fort Chipewyan end at the top, the little side panels represent the various tributaries. However, if you look at the summer panels, during the period that the river is ice-free you'll see a considerable effect, in this case, on dissolved polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. We chose to study this group of compounds because it contained several known carcinogens that we know are high in bitumen and were also high in previous studies, such as the Exxon Valdez spill and the notorious Wabamun Lake spill. I'm going to flick through these fairly quickly, but look for that consistency in pattern.
Aluminum is not necessarily such a toxic metal, but as you'll see by the red lines, there are some Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment guidelines that are exceeded in most of these samples. Again you'll see the levels pick up greatly going downstream, as you get into the oil sands area in summer, not in winter.
Arsenic has much the same pattern, with again about a doubling downstream of the mines during the summertime. For lead, again, a number of the summer values there exceed CCME guidelines. As for mercury, again you can see very little in the winter, but note the increase as you get into and beyond the oil sands during the summer.
Uranium is one about which there has been a fair amount of concern. In this case, you really see no influence of the oil sands either winter or summer. The pattern is pretty consistent, indicating that most of the source is upstream.
It's the same for cadmium. Note that cadmium, especially in summer, exceeds CCME guidelines by a considerable amount, but again, there's no clear evidence in this case of a contribution from the oil sands.
The reason for that winter to summer difference is that the river is encased in ice for about four months--and this winter for practically five months--during the winter season. So things entering tend to accumulate on the ice.
There has been a considerable amount of airborne input, which surprised us. This is a snow layer on the Muskeg River. It isn't the worst one we've seen, but you can see the black layers and the black surface on this snow as a result of airborne contamination.
At each of these sites, the same sites as shown in our earliest slide, we took a sample of the total snowpack, melted it down, and then filtered 900 millilitres of each snowpack. These filters were all white when we started. They're very fine--they have about half-micron pores. The yellow numbers are distances between the sites. In this case, Fort McMurray is at the left, going downstream to Fort Chipewyan on the right, and the little side legs are the six major tributaries. So you can see, visually even, a high contribution of suspended particulates in snow in the area for a considerable distance around the tar sands plants, but note tailing off quite a bit downstream.
In the next several panels, again, this is total PAH. In this case, we did a polycyclic aromatic analysis of both the filters, which you saw, and the filtered material, the dissolved portion. The dissolved portion is in red. The particulate portion on the filter is in black. The total concentration is represented by the end of the bar. Again, you can see this big contribution of airbornes in the vicinity of the tar sands and tailing off going downstream, with Fort Chipewyan at the top, and of course almost nothing upstream of Fort McMurray at the bottom.
Again, there is a very similar pattern for aluminum, except that more is in particulate form.
For arsenic, you see the same pattern. It is clearly an airborne contribution from the tar sands mining. Lead has much the same pattern.
All of these, again, show the CCME guidelines.
For mercury, there is a big contribution of mercury via airbornes, largely in the particulate fraction. Note that these values are very low. They're in parts per trillion. But this isn't where mercury is a problem. It biomagnifies up food chains up to a million-fold. Concentrations as high as these have been shown to result in serious contamination problems in other systems. Again, it indicates that there is some mercury coming from upstream, but a big contribution is from the mining to the airborne mercury loads to the snowpack.
Cadmium doesn't show any contribution. The one contribution it shows is just below the outfall for Fort McMurray, and it may represent some sort of urban influence. Cadmium, of course, is in various parts of automobiles, and so on. So that isn't too surprising. Again, note that most of these values are at or above CCME guidelines for cadmium in parts per billion.
There is accumulating evidence that the concentrations of polycyclic aromatics, particularly in their alkaloidal forms, which are very common in this river, are causing deformities in fish. I've given you two references. I could have given you a dozen. There is clear evidence of deformities in eggs and embryos in contact, particularly, with the particulate forms of PAH right at the sediment surface, which of course is where eggs are laid. This is a government study under the northern river ecosystem initiative, with some actual pictures of deformities.
The study also indicates that there were deformities in the Athabasca formation upstream of the mines, but that the incidences increased downstream of the mines, indicating that these particulate inputs from the mines are having an influence—up to 95% embryonic mortalities and a high incidence of deformities in the embryos that survived. The CCME has this covered with its interim sediment quality guidelines. But this same study indicates that both the regional aquatics monitoring program and the Peace-Athabasca Delta program, in measuring the same compounds, found fairly high incidences in which the CCME interim sediment quality guidelines were exceeded.
The big concern that I'm sure you heard yesterday in Fort Chipewyan is that some of the cancer rates noted in the community are attributed to some of the compounds, which are at least in part the result of mining activity.
We have found big northern pikes loaded with mercury. I don't think the water should be the sole focus of this program. If you look at all of the problems associated with the oil sands, this is clearly a black star program. You've heard a lot about in situ, and I think in situ has some big implications for water. It's already been shown to have big implications for wildlife. The northwest corner of Fort McMurray will be developed by Opti-Nexen, and this is the sort of developmental intensity that will be a part of these in situ things. High density of well pads and interconnecting roads and pipelines are very inhospitable to wildlife. Almost the whole corridor is alienated. But it's also big enough to vastly affect supplies of freshwater, both surface water and groundwater.
Of more concern than the average flow, in my opinion, is the winter low flows in the Athabasca. Industry is fond of saying that they use only 2% of the average flow of the Athabasca. That's an irrelevant factoid. We know there's lots of water in the Athabasca in summer. In winter, the flows are very low and decline very rapidly, and this is probably the most sensitive point in the river. At this point, industry uses 7% or 8% of the Athabasca's flow. The flows are declining and industry is increasing. You can see where all this is headed.
That's the end of my presentation.