Environment Committee on June 16th, 2009

[Dr. James Barker]

Syncrude, I think, has made application, and one small area has been accepted. Suncor is advancing some to get accepted. But those have not been the troublesome areas of the ponds and other challenging areas. I'm not aware of any that have actually been demonstrated and handed over.

[Dr. D. George Dixon]

In my understanding, there have been no aquatic entities that are deemed to have been reclaimed.

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley, BC]

Right. So the end-pit lake strategy is still in process. We flew over actual areas where a tailing pond has been filled in with the white sand and others that were in process, where you end up having sand where there used to be an open-pit mine. You now are taking overburden from another area that's being stripped off and putting it into place. It has seeds in it and it starts regrowing fairly quickly. Is that what you're referring to?

[Dr. D. George Dixon]

No. That would be a dewatered tailing site, probably a sand dump of some kind. What I'm talking about are aquatic areas that have been reclaimed. Nobody has suggested that this pond or wetland has been reclaimed. So I'm not talking about uplands stuff at all.

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley, BC]

Okay.

I'm going to switch gears quickly, because my time is running out. On the trip, we went up to Fort Chipewyan and we heard a lot of concern about perceived health problems being caused directly by the oil sands. Is there certainty that there are toxins that are being introduced into the Athabasca and Lake Athabasca, which are directly related to the oil sands operations?

[Dr. D. George Dixon]

Well, there are groundwater inputs to the Athabasca that are there; I mean they're documented. We don't know what the aerial transport depositions are in terms of surface waters. In surface water inputs there aren't any. It's quite obvious there are issues around the health community around Fort Chip, but I don't know what's causing those problems.

By the way, I'm not suggesting it isn't the oil sands; I'm just saying we don't know. I would worry more about trying to determine what the health issues are in Fort Chip and then go back after and look at that.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Okay, thank you. Your time has expired.

Dr. Dixon, in your research, though, you're talking about the cumulative impacts on surface water.

[Dr. D. George Dixon]

Yes.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

So you're looking at the impact of, as you said, the oil sands, the reclamation projects, and any ongoing future impacts that they're going to have—as well as Fort McMurray and other agricultural and industrial uses in the area.

We were told by some of the witnesses that there is even natural pollution occurring because the oil sands come right to the surface in the riverbed itself. Is there any way of measuring those natural impacts?

[Dr. D. George Dixon]

Yes. In fact, you'll find that in some of the papers I have here that were done looking at slimy sculpin in a couple of these rivers...we suspect those may be impacts on fish that are occurring as a result of the natural levels of materials that are present in the system. I can show you streams up there that look as if the bottom of the thing has been paved. It looks as if it's been paved; it's eroded bitumen with the stream running over it. The trick is that the contaminants you see that are associated with oil sands exploration and exploitation are exactly the same contaminants that are there as a result of natural weathering.

So the question arises whether the naturally occurring compounds are having an effect. We have some indications that in some places they may be high enough that they are. Now the beauty of that, of course, is that it tells you what to look for when you're looking for an anthropogenic impact.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Thank you.

We're now going to go to the third round. Mr. Scarpaleggia, could you kick off?

[Francis Scarpaleggia, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

Thank you very much.

You say there are pulp mills up there and they may be contributing to toxicity or pollution of the water. But my understanding was that as a result of the pulp and paper effluent regulations, pulp mills have kind of closed systems now and they're not really letting anything into the water. Is that correct?

[Dr. D. George Dixon]

Yes, the pulp mill systems have come a long way. They're not totally closed systems. They do have input of aquatic effluent. But you have to remember cumulative impact. They've been active for a period of time, so there may be stuff that has been deposited into the sediments when they were open earlier that could still be an issue. But the contaminants you see associated with pulp mills are not the same as the contaminants you see associated with oil sands, and I didn't mean to imply they were.

[Francis Scarpaleggia, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

Okay.

You said there were two groundwater inputs into the Athabasca. If there were deleterious seepage from tailings ponds and some water was seeping into the groundwater, and if that groundwater was highly polluted, would it be entering the Athabasca through those two groundwater inputs? Now this is a scientifically naive question, I understand, but if we know there are two inputs into the Athabasca, if we know that seepage water from the tailings would be entering the Athabasca through those inputs, why don't we just park ourselves at the inputs, if you will, and do some research and see what's coming out there?

[Dr. D. George Dixon]

I have.

[Francis Scarpaleggia, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

And you say there's no problem?

[Dr. D. George Dixon]

I said there were at least two seepages. In any information that I've seen, within about 20 feet in the river from where the seep goes in, you can't pick up a chemical trace.

[Francis Scarpaleggia, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

Environmentalists tell us there's seepage into the Athabasca from the tailings ponds. You're saying that, based on your research, it's insignificant with respect to pollutants.

[Dr. D. George Dixon]

No, I didn't say it was insignificant. I said I couldn't pick it up chemically. I don't know if I could pick it up from a biological response in organisms. Remember, I said there were two areas of uncertainty. There was no surface water input, but there could be groundwater input and aerial transport and deposition that we don't fully understand.

[Francis Scarpaleggia, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

What can we do? Can we do some research on the biota and the aquatic species to come to a conclusion about this? This would seem to me to be the priority, from a public policy perspective. It's all about tailings ponds and if they're seeping into the Athabasca, yet we seem to be avoiding this issue as if it were the elephant in the room. You've done some research, but apparently you're not prepared to make a categorical statement until the last bit of research is done. Why isn't this being done?

[Dr. D. George Dixon]

We have done sufficient work that I'm relatively sure that the groundwater inputs into that system are not having a significant effect. But the uncertainty around that is about 20%.

[Dr. James Barker]

There has been monitoring—aquatic chemistry monitoring and aquatic effects monitoring. The seepage that we've noted from Tar Island dike and Pond 1 on Suncor's land has been monitored for a number of years and reported to Alberta Environment. Whether that monitoring is of good quality, I can't say, but there has been at least some monitoring focused on that area.

[Francis Scarpaleggia, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

First, why is it being left to the companies to monitor this important link in our possible conclusions about the impact of the oil sands on the Athabasca and downstream?

Second, I seem to have read that in its last budget the Alberta government cut funding for well monitoring. Is that well monitoring in the oil sands area?

[Dr. James Barker]

There are so few wells that the province could monitor in the oil sands area that I don't think this pertains to the oil sands.

[Francis Scarpaleggia, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

Don't you think it's odd that the industry is monitoring itself on such an important issue?