Environment committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Vice-Chair. Thank you to the committee for allowing me to present here today. I have a little brief that I was hoping to develop as a power-point presentation. I'd like to take some time and go through this handout if I may. With your permission, I'm g

Environment committee  We are recycling most of the water right now. Right now, there are two types of reclaiming of tailings ponds that we're trying to pursue. There is what we call the “wet landscapes” and the “dry landscapes”. Some of the reclaiming is with the wet landscapes—the water remains, an

Environment committee  That calculation includes upgrading, so it's the energy requirements for upgrading. By no means is it a complete life cycle of bitumen, but it does include the mining, the extraction, and the upgrading of the bitumen.

Environment committee  Into crude, which then has to be refined.

Environment committee  I don't have those numbers.

Environment committee  It's an average.

Environment committee  As far as I understand it, the solids in the dry landscape would be placed and buried in much the same way as the solids in a landfill. The solids would be capped with soils that could support biotic life.

Environment committee  We're talking about the water table, not the river. They do a lot of studies at Waterloo University on the compounds present in the water table around the oil sands. This isn't my field. Consequently, I don't have a lot of information on the subject. However, the toxic compound

Environment committee  My calculations went from roughly 15% to as high as 25%, I believe. Roughly 15% to 30% would probably be the range.

Environment committee  The concentrations weren't high. From what I know, the naphthenic acid concentrations are very low in the water tables. They are very high in the tailings ponds, but the concentrations are quite low, indeed non-toxic, in the water tables.

Environment committee  There are heavy metals in the ores. These are heavy metals that were present, but the concentration levels of which have greatly increased as a result of the process.

Environment committee  I don't know. You should perhaps consult the data of the Regional Aquatic Monitoring Program.

Environment committee  Once again, I don't have the figures with me. I haven't monitored the concentrations. So I'm not sure. Perhaps we should look at the data that Waterloo University has published in this field.

Environment committee  Not as far as I know.

Environment committee  Heavy metals are not very mobile in the environment. You often find them in solid tailings, but not in the liquid part. They are often associated with solids, not with liquids, except if they are chemically combined with other compounds. However, they often stay with solid tailin