Nebraska, January 8, 2013 – For years, independent researchers have maintained that mining tar sands releases toxic and carcinogenic chemicals. Now, a new study funded by the Canadian government confirms those findings. The study found that pollution from tar sands had contaminated lakes as far as 55 miles away from the mining project.
Nebraska, January 8, 2013 – For years, independent researchers have maintained that mining tar sands releases toxic and carcinogenic chemicals. Now, a new study funded by the Canadian government confirms those findings. The study found that pollution from tar sands had contaminated lakes as far as 55 miles away from the mining project.
David Schindler, a water ecologist and one of the independent researches who had released an earlier study on tar sands pollution, said that this study should “deep six once and for all the bullshit that all pollution from the tar sands is natural.”
Both the New York Times and The Tyee, a newspaper out of British Columbia, reported on these new findings:
New York Times: The development of Alberta’s oil sands has increased levels of cancer-causing compounds in surrounding lakes well beyond natural levels, Canadian researchers reported in a study released on Monday. And they said the contamination covered a wider area than had previously been believed.
The Tyee: The study conclusively shows that bitumen pollution "is not natural, is increasing over time and the footprint of the industry is much bigger than anyone thought," says John Smol, one of Canada's leading freshwater ecologists, a Queen's University professor and a contributor to the study.
New York Times: “Now we have the smoking gun,” Professor Smol said.
The Tyee: Rising levels of PAH pollution may pose significant challenges to the proposed expansion of tar sands production from 1.6 million barrels a day to 3 million barrels by 2025. Scientific studies, for example, have found high levels of PAHs in six billion barrels of oil sands mining waste (enough to stretch to the moon and back 12 times) now stored in huge dams covering an area larger than the city of Vancouver.
Given the high levels of PAHs contamination found in the lakes and the great distance they are now travelling Schindler would not recommend any more tar sands project approvals “until a complete, independent monitoring program is in place, and we have a couple of years data to know what the baseline is. And that information should be publicly known.”
While the Harper government set up the new oil sands monitoring program largely to stem international criticism of the project, it has also muzzled government climate change scientists, reduced other environmental monitoring, gutted key environmental laws (most fish habitat is no longer protected), and even cut the $25-milllion Research Tools and Instruments Grant Program, that helped to partly fund the EC study.
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For more information, contact:
Josh Mogerman, jmogerman@nrdc.org
Eddie Scher, eddie.scher@sierraclub.org
Jane Kleeb, jane@boldnebraska.org
Tony Iallonardo, iallonardot@nwf.org