Environment Committee on May 12th, 2009

[Dr. David Schindler]

The monitoring of the river was actually started in a very good fashion by the federal government, but over the years they've gradually turned the monitoring over to the province of Alberta, which in turn has turned a lot of it over to industry itself. As a result, we have a database that's not available to independent scientists to see. We have no public transparency in the database.

I think there's a clear role for the federal government indicated simply by how close this development is to the Northwest Territories, which is clearly within federal jurisdiction. Those huge tailings ponds and, as I showed, input pollutants to the Athabasca River going downstream clearly pose a threat to the territories. If the federal government doesn't have a clear role in Alberta, it clearly has one in the Northwest Territories.

That being said, on the compounds like the polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons that I showed, the best experts in Canada belong to the federal Department of the Environment and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. I find it rather scandalous that those people are not involved in this area. The reason they're not involved is that they have insufficient budget to allow them to operate.

[Christian Ouellet, Bloc, Brome—Missisquoi, QC]

Thank you.

Mr. Donahue, may I ask you the same question?

[William F. Donahue]

I would say yes, the federal government does have a role. The climate data, especially, that I showed as an example was from Environment Canada. One of the things I noticed when I was going through the climate data was that starting from the 1970s, going up to the mid-1990s or before that, in many of these monitoring sites there was data going back almost a century; but in the mid-1990s, I can only presume that budget cuts were the reason there began to be bigger and bigger gaps in the data.

For example, regarding the snowpack for much of the prairie, if you look at historical data, it's there, it's regular, it's always there, and it's a great database. Starting in the mid-1990s, for increasingly more and more stations, there was data missing. What I thought was ironic was that in some cases there would be data for the summer for snowpack but not for the winter. So you'd have no data for the winter and then a bunch of zeros for the summer. Is that a monitoring program? Maybe, but ultimately you can't really get to conclusions if you don't have the data.

The currency of scientists is data. Routine monitoring of things such as climate and river flow aren't exciting. It's a constant cost, and I assume there are bean-counters in bureaucracies who wonder if we're getting a bang for our buck with this. So in many cases that's the first thing that gets cut.

I showed the data on the river flows. You'll notice that the data for the Sunwapta River stopped around 1995-96. Again, that was because that station was pulled. It's the only station from which we had substantial data for glacial meltwater in the Rockies. After two or three decades, you begin to be able to interpret trends and the data becomes more and more valuable. If you cut it off, you're left with a vacuum. That station has since been put back in—two years ago, I think.

At a critical point, all these long-term data sets are becoming more and more valuable. Unfortunately, over the last 10 to 15 years, the data sets have become more and more spotty. So for me in terms of this kind of work, that's the simplest recommendation.

In terms of other things, there has been almost an evisceration of freshwater research capacity in the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and Environment Canada. Why is that? I assume it's a budgetary thing, but I don't know.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you very much. I'm sure there will be follow-up questions.

We have to move on now to Ms. Duncan for seven minutes.

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I thank all three of you for your time. I'm sure Dr. Schindler would rather be in the field. It's very appreciated that you would take the time to be before us instead.

Dr. Schindler, you're an incredibly modest man, but you are an internationally renowned ecologist. We're fortunate to have you at the University of Alberta.

We heard in earlier presentations from the engineering side that the innovation centre is getting tens of millions of dollars. Are you and your scientists getting similar volumes of money from the federal government and from industry to look at the ecological impacts of the tar sands?

[Dr. David Schindler]

No, we're not. I haven't really applied for any in industry for 20 years. They funded some of my research 30 years ago in the early days of the oil sands. It's not a place I want to go for money. I want to maintain my independence to do the research and publish the research that I think is necessary.

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Has the federal government been providing substantial amounts of funds for your science work?

[Dr. David Schindler]

A small part of it has come from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council. Most of the rest of it I've raised from foundations such as Ducks Unlimited and the Walter and Duncan Gordon Foundation.

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

If we were to recommend that there be more substantial money towards looking at this side, would that be helpful in moving forward the research, improving the monitoring, and so forth?

[Dr. David Schindler]

It would, but there are also some aspects of the federal funding that I don't like. For example, for anything bigger than an ordinary discovery grant, they want letters of endorsement from clients such as oil sands companies to say how great your research is. Well, if four or five times you've found out bad things about the industry, it's hard to get those letters. Also, at my age, I want to do the research, not run around schmoozing people to get letters of support.

With foundations, you can usually raise the same money with a simple letter outlining what you want to do, and that's what I've chosen to do.

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

We had a helicopter tour over the tar sands yesterday, which was really helpful. From that and from having read your presentations, something that really struck me and that I hadn't thought of before is the impact of the mining and the loss of streams. In one of your presentations, somebody showed us how, just over a four-year or five-year period recently, the streams that feed into the river are gone. I know from my work in the Wabamun area the impact of the mining on the lake regime and the water table.

I'm wondering whether that is being factored into these water models, not just climate change and so forth. Does this have any impact on the ecology and on the eventual water levels of the river?

[Dr. David Schindler]

I'm sure it has. About 50% of that area is underlain by peatlands, including the forested areas, probably at a mean depth of three or four metres. These have taken 3,000 or 4,000 years to accumulate. They act like a giant sponge, absorbing snowpack and the rainfall that falls in thunderstorms and releasing the moisture slowly over time. Industry knows full well, based on research that they have funded by a number of consultants, that they can't restore that sort of ecosystem, not unless they wait 3,000 or 4,000 years. There's no hope of reconstructing the hydrology of those systems, or for that matter the aquifers, because the layers are dug up and put in a pile; there's no attempt to put them back in strata that would restore the aquifers.

This probably wouldn't be a big concern if it were in a small area, but of course it's no longer a small area. I predict it will disrupt the whole hydrology of that lower Athabasca system.

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

So it basically can't be reclaimed to serve the watershed.

[Dr. David Schindler]

I don't believe it can, and I think it's so unrealistic to expect it that it's time for some new restoration goals. We have a history in this country of never having enough money put aside to reclaim after mining. We have several cases that have been outlined in the 2002 Auditor General's report. All of them were tiny compared with this operation.

The cost of the small part that has been certified reclaimed—Syncrude's Buffalo site—was ten times what's being put aside, and yet it's acknowledged that it was an easy site to reclaim. I really fear that two generations from now we'll still be looking at huge mine pits in that area.

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Okay, thanks.

Dr. Griffiths, it's lovely to see you. Thank you for coming out of your retirement to help us out. It's very appreciated.

We haven't looked at the North Saskatchewan River, and it's helpful that you mentioned it. I think it's important for us to understand the scale and the breadth of impact of the tar sands development. It's not just in the immediate Fort McMurray area. I wonder whether you could elaborate a bit more on the implications for water of the upgraders, if they proceed.

[Dr. Mary Griffiths]

The big question is whether they proceed. When I wrote a report on upgraders, Upgrader Alley, last year, it was expected that we would have about eight upgraders within the Edmonton area and that the net consumption of water would be about 80 million cubic metres; in other words, they would take from the river about eight times the volume of water taken by the city of Edmonton. I had real concerns about the implications for the water.

Since the change in the economy, several of those plans have been put on hold or temporarily withdrawn, and I don't now know how many of the upgraders will go ahead. Again I think we need to continue with good monitoring and to get in place a process whereby we can ensure the minimum use of water in the future, if those upgraders do actually proceed.

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Thanks.

You also mentioned groundwater. I understand a groundbreaking report, the first big report on groundwater, was released yesterday. Are you somewhat aware of it? Can you tell us whether they discuss potential implications for the oil sands as well?

[Dr. Mary Griffiths]

Yes, I was one of the people who reviewed a draft of it. It was a report by the Council of Canadian Academies, and it's entitled Sustainable Management of Groundwater in Canada. It was released yesterday and it has one subsection dealing purely with the oil sands and the concerns about the impacts of the oil sands on groundwater. It's not a long piece; I would encourage the whole committee to read that section in the report, because it is a very good synopsis.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you very much.

That's interesting information, that you were involved in a review of that. Thank you for telling us that.

Mr. Warawa, you have seven minutes.

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley, BC]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses for being with us today.

I saw Dr. Schindler in the back as I was sharing in questioning the witnesses in the first hour. I think Dr. Schindler heard me share that I had taken a tour by river of the oil sands a couple of years ago. In that tour we stopped along the shoreline, and I saw the bitumen leaching into the soil. This was, I think, probably in June. It wasn't a terribly warm day, but warm enough, of course, that the bitumen was leaching out of the rocks of the shoreline.

In the Athabasca region, what toxins do we see naturally occurring in the boreal wetlands feeding into the Athabasca? What toxins are we seeing naturally occurring as a baseline?

[Dr. David Schindler]

I would say that we see all of the toxins I mentioned. There's a wide suite of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, including several known carcinogens; some related compounds that have one of the carbons substituted by a sulphur, known as dibenzothiophenes; and then a suite of toxic trace metals that are bound up in this bitumen matrix too. Basically, any water that runs through those wetlands leaches small amounts of those pollutants out.

That being said, some odd times the overlying vegetation can be helpful. For example, wetlands with peat as a base are known to retain mercury very strongly. But I think it's also fair to say that if you go in and disturb either the geology or the ecosystem in those areas, you expose fresh surfaces to weathering by air and rainfall, so that the amount of those things that are mobilized, either by water or airborne, is increased. That's something you can find 40 or 50 years of studies to show, pretty well all over North America and Europe.

So in this case, it isn't a surprise that materials tied up in this bitumen are mobilized and it isn't a surprise that some are there naturally either. I think the situation is that there are natural levels, as industry and Alberta Environment have correctly stated, but those amounts are clearly enhanced by digging up the watershed of the Athabasca and its tributaries.

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley, BC]

Are there comments from anybody else, or is that okay?

I have a follow-up question, then.

In the history of the development in the Athabasca region there was a uranium mine, which in my understanding is not operating any more; there's a pulp and paper mill; there's development within Fort McMurray itself, so that we have residential and commercial operations. What role does that further development play in the mix? The focus is on the oil sands, but how has the other development, present and in the past, played into the mix?

[Dr. David Schindler]

I can probably address that. I've been involved in some of that work for 20 years.

There are actually several pulp and paper mills upstream on the Athabasca, but over the past 20 years they have really cleaned up their act. The one at Hinton, for example, spewed huge amounts of dioxins and furans into the river in the early years of its operation. I think the watershed was when the Alberta-Pacific mill, which is near Athabasca, several hundred kilometres above the area we're talking about, in a dispute in the early nineties that I was a part of, produced a process that eliminated dioxin from effluents. Since that time, dioxins are no longer a part of the effluents from pulp mills. There are still some organic compounds and so forth. One source of worry, actually the source of worry that drove the northern river basins study of the 1990s, has been eliminated.

I think the development in Fort McMurray is probably contributing several of the toxic trace metals. For example, copper is released from wearing brake shoes, and nickel and cadmium and mercury are associated with other parts of automobiles, and zinc from wearing tires. In many communities that's washed from the streets into effluents and into the nearest watercourse. I'm sure, as Fort McMurray grows, that will become an increasing problem. But right now, even at 80,000 people, I'd say it's a fairly small contribution to a river the size of the Athabasca.

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley, BC]

In the history of development over the years, as toxins and contaminants flow north, would they be deposited into Athabasca Lake and cause problems decades later for people living in Fort Chipewyan?

[Dr. David Schindler]

That was looked at in some detail by the northern river basins study, which saw no evidence. The problem has been that the big development in the oil sands has occurred since the northern river basins study took place. At that time, there were only two rather sleepy little oil sands plants in operation. The huge development we see today really started rolling about 2003.

There is now some debate over whether polycyclic aromatics and mercury deposited in the sediments near the river's mouth and the lake are increasing. Again, I think the regional aquatics monitoring program has some data. I haven't seen the results of independent studies, which have largely been done in the last year or so, but it is a matter of some debate at the present time.