Alberta’s oilsands industry says it is responsibly using water and managing waste tailings, but some environmental and community groups say oilsands operations are putting water resources at risk.
    The energy industry is one of the most responsible users of water in the province, representatives of Suncor Energy and Devon Canada Corporation told an International Council of Academies of Engineering and Technological Sciences (CAETS) meeting, held in July in Calgary.
    Suncor and Devon Canada both pay great attention to the ‘three Rs’ of water use: reduce, reuse and recycle, said Prit Kotecha, senior process engineer for Suncor, and Will Yakymyshyn, vice-president of thermal heavy oil for Devon Canada.
    Suncor’s water management is so rigorous that the company “has one of only a few licenses to discharge water” back into the Athabasca River near the company’s Fort McMurray oilsands operation, Kotecha said.
    Yakymyshyn said that Devon, which produces about 35,000 barrels of oil per day, is recycling about 90,000 barrels of saline water. “We won an award for the fact that we were the first (company) out there for raising that bar in terms of 100-per-cent saline use.”
    But Terra Simieritsch, a policy analyst with the Pembina Institute, says that while the ratio of water usage per barrel of oil produced is improving in the oilsands, the improvement is negated by a very rapid increase in bitumen production. The government does not publically report seepage rates, but a breach of tailings could cause "catastrophic” downstream impact to surface water, Simieritsch told the Canadian Water Resources Association (CWRA) conference, held in Lethbridge in April.
    Some community groups are increasingly concerned about the oilsands industry’s water use and management. At the end of May, the Northwest Territories Association of Communities (NTAC), which represents all 33 communities in the N.W.T., called for a temporary moratorium on new oilsands approvals. There is “widespread concern in the Northwest Territories” that the Alberta and federal governments “have not managed the Alberta oil sands in a sustainable way that protects the environment or downstream communities,” NTAC said.
    N.W.T. communities are concerned that oilsands expansion will result in greater use of water, thereby reducing the amount of water flowing into the Mackenzie Basin, NTAC said. It urged the N.W.T. government to ask the Alberta government “to halt new oil sands approvals until it negotiates an enforceable trans-boundary water agreement with the N.W.T. that ensures water flowing into the Northwest Territories is clean, uncontaminated and that water flows are unimpeded.”
    “We are concerned that irresponsible development in the oilsands is going to affect the North as the water flows downstream,” said Robert Sayine, mayor of Fort Resolution. 
    “This is a life or death situation for people of the North,” said Yellowknife councillor Kevin Kennedy, a member of the municipal council that brought the resolution to NTAC’s annual meeting.
    The Dene Nation passed a similar motion in February at its Dene Leadership meeting in Yellowknife.
    George Poitras, head of government consultations for the Mikisew Cree First Nation in Fort Chipewyan, Alberta, said in an email that many people “have stopped eating fish from Athabasca River . . . and many don’t trust the water to drink. The water that flows from oilsands past Fort Chipewyan runs on into the N.W.T. We are the precursor of what they can expect.”
    Brent Moore, Devon Canada’s field environmental advisor, told the CWRA conference in Lethbridge that “water use where energy is concerned is really a good news story.”
    At Syncrude’s oilsands operation, water use has decreased by 60 per cent since the mid-1980s, Moore noted. Process water is recycled an average of 18 times, while the amount of water used has dropped to about 2.5 to three litres of water per litre of oil – down from four or five litres of water.
    Oilsands producers use very little freshwater for steam-assisted gravity drainage operations, Moore said. Devon Canada’s Jackfish operation, for example, relies solely on saline aquifers. 
    The oilsands industry’s water ‘footprint,’ compared with other industries’ use of water, delivers huge economic benefits for Albertans and Canadians, he said.
    Producing a cotton shirt, for example, requires 20,000 litres of water, while producing a kilogram of beef takes 16,000 l.     Producing one kg of rice requires 3,000 litres of water; one litre of milk needs 1,000 l; one cup of coffee, 140 l.
    In addition, the energy industry’s use of water is highly regulated by the Alberta Energy Resources Conservation Board (ERCB) and the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans, Moore added.
    But Mary Griffiths, a consultant to the Pembina Institute, told the House of Commons Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development’s fact-finding mission on oilsands development and federal responsibility for water that, in 2007, nine million cubic metres of non-saline groundwater were being used by the industry for in situ operations.
    Water Matters, a citizens’ group concerned about watershed protection in Alberta, points out that a report in May by the Council of Canadian Academies and commissioned by Natural Resources Canada said that groundwater use in the oilsands region is unsustainable. The report noted the need to transition from project-by-project assessments on groundwater to regional assessments that consider multiple projects, said Daneille Droitsch, executive director of Water Matters.
    Water Matters’ website (http://www.water-matters.org/node/302) includes testimony to the House of Commons committee that the federal government has largely avoided its responsibilities regarding water use in the oilsands. 
    Barry Robinson, staff lawyer for Ecojustice, told the committee that the “federal government has been somewhat missing in action in an area where it has clear responsibilities.”
    Owen Saunders, executive director the Canadian Institute for Resources Law at the University of Calgary, told the all-party committee that: “There are important federal interests here and a clear need for federal leadership, which has largely been abdicated by the federal government over the past three decades.”
    No witnesses were provided to the committee by the Alberta government and energy regulators such as the ERCB, although invitations were issued.
    Devon Canada’s Moore told the CWRA conference in Lethbridge that the oil and gas industry is allocated about seven per cent of the available water in Alberta, but actually uses only about three per cent. Most of that use occurs in northern Alberta which “is not water short” compared with southern Alberta, he said.
    The oilsands industry currently uses less than one per cent of the total average annual flow in the Athabasca River and about five per cent of record low weekly winter flow rates, Moore said. The industry’s maximum projected use is two per cent of average annual flow and 10 per cent of record low weekly winter flow.
    “Current Athabasca River Basin allocations are enough to sustain the oilsands mining industry to 2030 at three to four times the current production rates,” Moore added.
    But the Pembina Institute’s Simieritsch told the CWRA conference that the projected utilization of two per cent of the Athabasca’s annual flow is “misleading” because of highly variable seasonal flows in the river.    Industry “is currently licensed to withdraw up to 15 per cent of instantaneous flows” from the Athabasca, which could lead to “damage to fish beds” during low-flow conditions, she said. Also, there are no legally binding protective limits for the river, even during “red” or lowest-flow conditions, she added.
    In March 2007, Alberta Environment and the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans outlined a framework for Athabasca water usage by oilsands producers. (See Vol 17 #5&6 pg. 10) “The framework consists of three river flow conditions (green, yellow, and red) for each week of the year that have differing environmental implications and corresponding management actions,” Water Matters says.
    The water allocated to the oilsands industry “is equivalent to a city of three million people, and (that) water is not returned because it becomes toxic,” Simieritsch said. In describing what she called the “tailings legacy” left by oilsands operations, she noted that:
.  720 million cubic metres of fine tailings currently exist in long-term containment;
.  “lakes” or tailings ponds cover an area greater than 130 square kilometres, an area the size of the City of Vancouver;
.  1.5 barrels of mature fine tailings are produced for every barrel of bitumen;
.   tailings contain toxic napthenic acids, volatile organic compounds (VOCs), polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and heavy metals;
.  tailings ponds are sources of methane, VOCs and hydrogen sulphide emissions. 

    A study last year of projected tailings pond seepage, using published data in individual company’s environmental assessments after the Alberta government failed to provide any data on industry’s groundwater monitoring wells. Pembina’s study concluded that tailings ponds could be leaking at a rate of 11 million litres per day, and this rate of leakage could more than double if current proposed projects proceed.
    Suncor has reported that its Tar Island 1 site was leaking into the Athabasca River at a rate of about 1,600 cubic metres per day, Pembina said. “It does escape into the environment,” Simieritsch said, in calling for greater transparency and for the public to have access to data on tailings leakage.
    Alberta Environment Minister Rob Renner told the Legislature last year that leakage from the Tar Island site stopped after a seepage return system was installed in 1976. Water did leak from the pond prior to this system being installed, “and there is some evidence that there could be some seepage into groundwater from that original water,” Renner said.
    Suncor’s Kotchea told the CAETS 2009 conference in Calgary that the clay and silt in the tailings ponds “don’t settle well.” However, Suncor is very close to starting field trials that would involve adding coagulants and chemicals to fine tailings to expedite reclamation of the ponds, he said.
    “We’re stepping up our reclamation targets and our research and development in coming up with ways to get to ‘dry’ reclamation,” Kotchea said. “So you’re not going to see a lot of water sitting on top of ponds. You’re going to see a lot of ponds which have now been eliminated in terms of their water storage.”
    But Fort McKay Chief Jim Boucher told the House of Commons Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development that, after 40 years of operations, there are no proven and viable reclamation plans for oil tailings ponds, which by 2025 will hold one billion cubic metres of degraded processed water. Boucher said that 60 per cent of the band’s local trap lines have been lost to oilsands development, and 57 per cent of lands within 20 kilometres of his community has been mined or approved for mining.
    The Pembina Institute, in a news release in May, cited numerous impacts on water and water-related issues from oilsands development, including:
.   370 million cubic metres of freshwater from the Athabasca River was licensed for used in oilsands production in 2006;
.   less than 10 per cent of the freshwater withdrawn from the river is returned;
.   529 million cubic meters of water per year is expected to be withdrawn from the Athabasca River by existing and planned oil sands projects;
.   25 per cent of the Athabasca’s flow will be withdrawn if all licensed lower-river users withdraw during low-flow periods;
.   oilsands operators currently obtain their water for free; there is no cost for the water.
    William Donahue, an Edmonton-based water and climate change expert, told the House of Commons Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development that there has been a 50-per-cent decline in the Athabasca River during the last 30 years in the amount of water coming from the catchment area downstream of Hinton, Alberta. Such changes will be magnified by climate change, Donahue said.
    Prominent University of Alberta ecologist David Schindler, who looked at 18 sites upstream and downstream of oilsands development, found that aluminum, arsenic and mercury all increase substantially downstream of the oilsands and in some cases double their upstream concentrations.
    In February, an Alberta Health study found a higher-than-expected rate of biliary cancer among Fort Chipewyan residents. However, the study didn’t find a cause for the high incidence, nor did it link the cancer to the environment or to oilsands operations. EnviroLine

By Elona Malterre