I'd like to thank the committee for the opportunity to talk today a little bit about the regional aquatics monitoring program, RAMP. I'm past chair and technical chair of this group.
RAMP is really a joint monitoring environmental program that assesses the health of the rivers and lakes in the oil sands region. It's a science-based program that's funded by industry and has multi-stakeholder representation from a broad range of stakeholders in the region. The program was initiated in 1997 and has been ongoing ever since.
A number of industry members are involved in the program. Some of them aren't oil sands companies. A number of government agencies representing both the provincial and the federal governments, including Fisheries and Oceans Canada, Environment Canada, and Health Canada, are part of the RAMP technical group and helped design the program and the technical aspects of it.
Under Environmental Protection and Enhancement Act approvals, operators in the oil sands region are required to conduct aquatic effects monitoring. They can do that themselves, or they can do it through participation in RAMP, which most of them choose to do.
The intent of the RAMP program is really to monitor aquatic environments in the oil sands region and compare that information with the environmental impact assessment predictions. RAMP also has the task of collecting baseline information to characterize the natural range of variability in the area. Again we collect information to compare against EIA predictions to see if they are accurate. Finally, we collect some information to fulfill the particular EPEA approval requirements that operators have.
RAMP is a program that uses both stressor- and effects-based monitoring approaches and achieves a holistic understanding of the potential impacts on the aquatic environment. We try to recognize and incorporate traditional environmental knowledge from some of our first nation stakeholders into the program. We try to communicate with the communities, the regulators, and other interested parties to share information we have. In fact, we publish a technical report each year that summarizes the activities of the monitoring program.
One of the important aspects of RAMP that we're really proud of is the continuous improvement part of it. We really try to focus on reviewing the results and looking for ways to modify the program in reflection of changing science or additional monitoring mechanisms that become available to us.
RAMP is made up of five or six key components. There are some slides that follow, so I'll detail some of the aspects of those further on. But let's start with climate and hydrology.
The climate and hydrology component of RAMP is really there to monitor the changes in water level of selected lakes and the quantity of water flowing through rivers and lakes. That's accomplished through a series of snow course surveys, hydrometric stations on the Athabasca River, and hydrometric stations along a number of the tributaries, including the Muskeg River. There are, in fact, ten hydrometric stations on tributaries north of Fort McMurray, and three hydrometric stations on tributaries south of Fort McMurray. We've taken water levels at three lakes as well.
In terms of the fish populations component, these are biological indicators of ecosystem integrity, and they're a highly valued resource in the area. There's another slide that follows on that, and I'll get into the details of that a bit more.
In terms of benthic invertebrate communities, we look at the aspects in rivers, lakes, and in the Athabasca River delta, the Peace-Athabasca delta. These are biological indicators that contribute to fish habitat, so it's important for us to look at these as well.
The final component of our RAMP program is acid-sensitive lakes. Here, water quality is reviewed as an early indicator of potential effects of acid deposition. RAMP has identified 50 of the most highly susceptible acid-sensitive lakes. We monitor those on an annual basis, looking at trace metals, general water quality, phytoplankton, and zooplankton. The indications are that we have 50 acid-sensitive lakes in the monitoring program, as well as 11 or 12 tributaries that we deal with outside the Athabasca main stem.
There are a couple of regional initiatives that are under way where people can contribute to the RAMP program, and I note a few things that they've noticed.
The first one is the river response network. This provides emergency response to public reports of non-spill events such as fish kills, the presence of foam, or scum floating down the river. This is an effort we have in conjunction with Alberta's environment protection ministry. They have a 1-800 number where they report that information.
In terms of the fish tagging program, this is an opportunity where we encourage the public to report tagged fish. Part of the fish populations program is the capture, tagging, and release of fish. When these fish are caught by fishers downstream or somewhere else in the river, they can report that back with the numbers that are on the tags.
In fact, just in terms of some information, walleye tend to be very far-travelled. In some cases we've had tag recoveries about 715 kilometres from the initial tag sites—in Lesser Slave Lake in the middle of the province at one of the upstream edges of the Athabasca basin—and as far downstream as 403 kilometres along the Slave River. So these fish tend to be far-ranging.
The fish health program that we have promotes reporting of abnormal fish. So if a fisher catches something that looks strange or odd—if there are fish with lesions, growths, or physical abnormalities, such as curved spines or blindness or missing fins—they're encouraged to call the number that we have published and report the information to us so that we can take the fish and send it out for further analysis at the veterinary school.
If you take a look at the map, the RAMP study area is pretty big. It covers the entire regional municipality of Wood Buffalo. There are upstream monitoring sites from the oil sands operation, and downstream of Fort McMurray; and then there are some far downstream sites on the Athabasca River delta that look at the potential effects of development in the region.
The regional study area covers off the RMWB, as I said, but the focus study area looks at particular areas and watersheds where oil sands development is occurring, or is planned to occur in the future. So it's really keyed to those particular areas.
Take a quick look at some of the water quality information. As I mentioned before, water quality and sediment quality are two important components of our program. We look at all the regional tributaries of the rivers, and there are some lakes where the information is reviewed, and then out on the Athabasca and Peace River deltas as well.
The water and sediment quality reflect habitat quality, as well as potential exposure of fish and invertebrates. We have 45 sites that are sampled at a minimum annually, but there are some sites that are sampled monthly. There are 28 different sediment sites that we collect sediment samples from, and those are tied into the benthic invertebrate program as well.
We do toxicity testing. We analyze for polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. There are some potential fish-tainting compounds for which we analyze those particular materials as well, and there are some thermographs that we have to monitor for changes in water temperature.
The next few slides really just run through a couple of snapshots for the 10-year monitoring period between 1997 and 2007 on a few key components. The thing you'll notice is that each of them is below current guidelines—either CCME guidelines or other particular guidelines that apply—and there hasn't been a lot of change between the upstream and the downstream, or no change in most cases, between monitoring upstream and downstream of oil sands operations.
Maybe we could just flip through these slides. The first slide is of arsenic concentrations, the second of sulphate concentrations, and the next is of dissolved organic carbon concentrations. You can see that the purple represents the downstream sites and the green triangles represent the upstream sites.
The last slide on water quality that we have here is on PAH concentration, the polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. You can see there is a bit of fluctuation on some of those. The levels at upstream sites can be higher, depending on erosion that's occurring along the river, or seepage from some of the sites that Ian mentioned earlier. But the downstream sites tend to be fairly consistent over the period of record. So this is really showing no change across the region.
The benthic invertebrate samples are really biological indicators that reflect fish habitat and the quality of the sediment. There are 29 different locations on 23 river locations, three on the Athabasca River delta and three at the regional lakes. We measure both erosional and depositional habitat. There are 10 replicates collected at each of those sites, so there is some strong statistical power to the analysis that we do. And we collect the required physical measurements as well. None of the sediment samples are showing any changes in sediment quality. The benthic invertebrate community structure is similar and shows no change from previous data.
So one of the primary conclusions from the 2007 RAMP technical report—you can see the quote there—is that there have been no major effects on benthic invertebrate and sediment quality, as supported by the watershed and lake level analysis.
Talking about fish populations, the RAMP program each year does spring and fall inventories on the Athabasca and Clearwater rivers. In 2007 we collected just over 3,500 fish, and 2,500 of those were caught in the Athabasca River. A number of those fish will be tagged and released, but all of the fish are measured, weighed, and sexed so that we can come up with length and weight distributions and the age structure. There are 19 different species that we record in our inventories. These include walleye, northern pike, goldeye, and long nose sucker, to name a few. And we've seen no ecologically relevant level of change in any of the fish populations, which is really indicative of just natural variations.
We see that “sentinel (fish) species monitored in potentially influenced sites have not exhibited consistent differences in comparison to reference sites”.
This is a non-lethal monitoring program we've employed over the last few years to look at upstream-downstream young of the year, to analyze any changes that may be occurring to those populations and the growth expectations related to any development.
There are some other aspects of the fish population study. We do fish fences, as well as the electrofishing and the monitoring that goes on in conjunction with the sentinel species work.
We're the only agency right now that is collecting tissue samples and analyzing for mercury. That information is passed on to Alberta Health and Wellness, Environment Canada, and Health Canada for continuation of the fish consumption advisories.
With that, I would like to turn the floor over to Greg.