Why did a parliamentary committee suddenly destroy drafts of a final report on tar sands pollution? Here’s what they knew. This tailings pond is about five kilometers long and is located to the north of the Syncrude oil sands operation. Photo: David Doodge, Pembina Institute

By Andrew Nikiforuk, www.TheTyee.ca 
15 Jul 2010 Just two weeks ago the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development abruptly cancelled a big report on the tar sands and the project’s extreme water impacts. The parliamentarians even destroyed draft copies of their final report. After listening to testimony from scores of scientists, bureaucrats, lobbyists, aboriginal chiefs and environmental groups, the committee dropped the whole affair like a bucket of tar. (For the record, the Alberta government, a petro-state with Saudi visions of grandeur, refused to show up and testify.) Killing reports paid for by Canadian taxpayers on a $200-billion backyard development is not the sort of behavior one associates with a “responsible energy producer,” but there you have it. While federal panjandrums argue that the tar sands may be key to our economic prosperity, our politicians couldn’t put aside their partisan views long enough to complete a national report on the project’s formidable water liabilities. Fortunately, civilians can do what politicians can’t. In the interests of accountability and transparency, I read through 300 pages of evidence and pulled out the sort of uncomfortable revelations that Ottawa doesn’t want U.S. oil customers, industry investors or Canadian taxpayers to know. The evidence, of course, all points to one embarrassing conclusion: Ottawa has managed its mandate in the tar sands as irresponsibly as the U.S. Mineral Management Services oversaw the safety of deep sea drilling in the Gulf. … Cynthia Wright, acting assistant deputy minister of Environmental Stewardship branch, explained that Environment Canada was not involved in the design of tailing ponds holding six-billion barrels of toxic fish-killing and cancer-making mining waste that cover an 170 square kilometre area along the Athabasca River because the ponds don’t contain fish. Wright also claimed the ponds don’t leak. But two University of Waterloo scientists, who study tailings pollution and groundwater for living, gave evidence proving that Environment Canada was out to lunch. James Barker, an earth science professor at the University of Waterloo, testified that the tailing ponds do leak and seep. In particular “seepage of process affected water is occurring from the (Suncor’s) Tar Island dike into the sediments of the Athabasca River” at a rate of 67 litres per second. Moreover the risk of more toxic seepage from the expanding tailing ponds into groundwater would escalate as mining projects increase bitumen production. “Newer oil sands tailings operations are forced really by geography to be located closer to or on top of sandy aquifers… the risk of local groundwater contamination is fairly high.” …

What Those Who Killed the Tar Sands Report Don’t Want You to Know