Vancouver Sun: Renner dismisses oilsands toxins report

Here’s an article dated Sept 1/2010 from the Vancouver Sun that’s titled Renner dismisses oilsands toxins report.

According to that article, Alberta’s environment minister Rob Renner has dismissed the study by David Schindler et al. about the environmental impact on the Athabasca River of the oil sands industry. Dr. Schindler has pointed out that theirs is the only such study that has been peer-reviewed and published in a credible scientific journal. Rob Renner had not read Dr. Schindler’s article.

Let’s look at that again. Alberta’s minister of the environment did not read the only credible peer-reviewed scientific study that discusses the environmental impact on the Athabasca River of the oil sands industry but disregarded the conclusions of the study anyway.

If this blows your mind, then if you haven’t done so yet, listen to Fred Kuzmic claim that there is no conflict of interest in simultaneously working for Shell and being spokesperson for the Regional Aquatics Monitoring Program (RAMP) which submits data to the provincial and federal governments for assessment of the environmental performance of the oil sands industry. That begins at 2:45 of the CBC video that I posted yesterday which I also link to here.

Note that RAMP points out on their website that human health is not their responsibility [1]. I wonder what’s up with that.

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[1] Here’s the full entry regarding that point from their FAQ: “Is water quality testing for human health part of the RAMP program? Human health is not within the mandate of RAMP, but is the responsibility of Health Canada, Alberta Health and Wellness and the Northern Lights Health Region. Representatives from these organizations sit on the RAMP Steering Committee to keep informed on results of the environmental monitoring, particularly with respect to issues that may influence human health.”

Oil Sands Development and Pollution of the Athabasca River

Yesterday some scientists from the University of Alberta, Queen’s University and Oceana, Juneau published a peer-reviewed paper about our oil sands. The paper, which was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences [1] unequivocally makes the statement that the oil sands industry is polluting the Athabasca River in a way that violates Canada’s and Alberta’s environmental guidelines. In their conclusion, the scientists state that “contrary to claims made by industry and government in the popular press, the oil sands industry substantially increases loadings of toxic [pollutants] to the [Athabasca River] and its tributaries via air and water pathways.”

In particular I’d like to bring attention to their statement that their observations do not support the claim that contamination of the Athabasca River and its tributaries is only from natural erosion. They state clearly that instead their results indicate that the source of the concern was oil sands development.

The CBC wrote a news article on this issue yesterday and presented a video in which they interviewed Fred Kuzmic of the Regional Aquatics Monitoring Program who argues that the pollution of the Athabasca River is due to natural erosion. I’d like to make one point about the interview. The interviewer asks about the fact that pollutants were more concentrated upstream than downstream of the oil sands. To be clear, the scientists looked at four separate tributaries that were affected by oil sands development. On each of these four tributaries, they compared three sites: one that was upstream of oil sands development and the McMurray Formation, one that was within the McMurray Formation but upstream of development, and one that was downstream of development. They did studies of comparable sites on two other tributaries that were not near oil sands development and which they used as a reference. They also did separate studies at the mouths of streams before confluence with the Athabasca River, looking at tributaries with and without upstream development.

Feel free to continue by reading the CBC article and watching the interview at this link. Another CBC article, including links to video interviews with David Schindler from the University of Alberta, is available here. There’s also a Globe and Mail article here, a blog entry from Discover Magazine here, an article from the Winnipeg Free Press here, and an article from Reuters here.

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[1] Erin N. Kelly, David W. Schindler, Peter V. Hodson, Jeffrey W. Short, Roseanna Radmanovich, and Charlene C. Nielsen,
Oil sands development contributes elements toxic at low concentrations to the Athabasca River and its tributaries,
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America,
www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1008754107