Kristen Villebrun and Wendy Bush hoped they wouldn't have to pray for Chedoke Creek, but four years after they first raised alarm about the water's condition, they were part of an Indigenous full moon ceremony to do just that. About 50 people showed up near Princess Point on the dark and frigid Monday evening for the monthly ceremony, which was particularly special as it focused on Chedoke Creek. The body of water that runs into Cootes Paradise had about 24 billion litres of sewage and storm water runoff leak into it due to a gate being left open.
A third-party report into the release of millions of litres of oilsands wastewater at Imperial Oil's Kearl mine has found the Alberta Energy Regulator followed its rules in keeping the public and area First Nations informed — but concludes those rules are significantly lacking. "There were no areas of non-adherence to stated policies and procedures," says the Deloitte report, prepared for the regulator's board.
Federal environmental authorities have launched a formal investigation into a tailings leak at Imperial Oil's Kearl oilsands mine in northern Alberta. Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) announced Thursday it is investigating a suspected contravention of the Fisheries Act, which prohibits the "deposit of a deleterious substance into water frequented by fish," or any place where such substances could enter fish-bearing water.
Wastewater from oilsands mining operations have long been a challenge for Canada's energy industry, much of it ending up in industrial tailings ponds. But scientists and engineers at the University of Calgary are taking aim at eliminating watery tailings from the oilsands production process with the help of specialized liquid salt. Hot water is used in oilsands mining operations to extract the oily bitumen from the sand, with the resulting wastewater ending up in tailings ponds to settle and later be reused. Alberta has an estimated 1.3 trillion litres of fluid tailings sitting in tailings ponds.
New technology developed by engineers at the University of Alberta shows potential in cleaning and decontaminating process water from oilsands production. The process relies on ozonation and biofilters to remove organic compounds from contaminated water. The study, published in Science of the Total Environment, demonstrates that the method, previously used to clean pharmaceutical waste water, efficiently removes naphthenic acids, considered to be one of the main contaminants in oilsands process water.
