The Canadian government has joined with Canadian oil companies to put a green hue on Canadian tar sands – but the world shouldn’t be fooled. Canada cannot meet its own arguably weak climate target and the country's plans to expand oil and gas production is inconsistent with Paris goals. The cumulative impacts of this fossil fuel development are growing and industry continues to obtain sweeping approvals that are shocking for their lack of environmental rigour. Mining the tar sands for oil produces over 3,600 tonnes of CO2 emissions per hectare, consumes freshwater at a rate that rivals the daily water use of several major Canadian cities combined, and has destroyed a New York City-sized chunk of boreal forest
There is the issue of the toxic sludge of waste products from Canada’s tar sands destruction, which form what are known as tailings ponds. As of this year, these ponds hold 1 trillion litres of sludge that is unlike any other industrial byproduct in the world. They contain a unique cocktail of toxic chemicals and hydrocarbons that will remain in molasses-like suspension for centuries if left alone. These open, unlined ponds currently cover 220 sq km, an area of land equivalent to 73 New York Central Parks. A single tailings pond – the Mildred Lake Settling Basin – has been identified by the US Department of the Interior as the world’s largest dam. Last month the government of Alberta approved a tailings management plan for Suncor Energy Incorporated, the oldest mining company in the Canadian tar sands.
Suncor will get an additional 70 years after their operations shut down to clean up the environmental mess that they have created over 60 years of oil extraction. While Suncor’s mine will close down in 2033, they have been granted until after 2100 to figure out how to clean up their tailings and reclaim the land. Moreover, they will be “treating” their tailings by dumping them in the bottom of pits and covering them with freshwater to form a permanent “lake”. The tar sands industry’s approach to tailings management since 1967 has been to procrastinate on cleaning up the mess until a silver bullet technology is found to deal with them. Now, 50 years later, technologies to clean up tailings that have been discovered are not being implemented because they are expensive and government is not requiring them.
Several of the tailings ponds are now decades old. A failure of a single tailings dyke could result in contaminated waterways from Alberta’s Athabasca region through to the Arctic Ocean. A couple of years ago a directive was put into place to require companies to reduce tailings. Not a single company complied. Rather than fining the companies or refusing permits, the government simply removed the directive. the tar sands have been dubbed the largest and most destructive industrial project in human history government data shows that these tailing ponds are leaking and indigenous leaders have repeatedly called for health studies and noted that the expansion of the tarsands is violating their Treaty rights.
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