Oil sands, tar sands; tar sands, oil sands–let’s call the whole thing awful

That’s about the size of the state of Florida, a comparison often used by U.S. environmentalists to suggest how much boreal forest would be ripped up. But not quite. About 80 per cent of the oilsands will be mined in-situ, a technique that uses injected steam to soften the bitumen underground and pump it out. The gaping, smoky open pits often equated with oilsands mines will sprawl across about 500 square kilometres.

That doesn’t mean the rest of the region will remain pristine. Even in-situ mines require roads, pipelines and other facilities that will chop the forest into smaller and smaller blocks and destroy habitat for animals that require large undisturbed areas. One U.S. scientist has estimated that those effects will reduce songbird populations by 166 million birds over the next 30 to 50 years. [...]

The Alberta Cancer Board has found cancer rates about 30 per cent higher than anticipated in the downstream community of Fort Chipewyan, with blood and lymphatic cancers double the expected rate. The board didn’t consider possible causes.

Government air-quality monitoring has found no increases in carbon monoxide, ozone, particulates or sulphur dioxide in Fort McMurray, the largest community in the oilsands area. Nitrogen dioxide and hydrogen sulphide have increased slightly. In some streams, PAHs are already at levels toxic to fish embryos. However, a fish with two jaws caught last spring downstream from the oilsands was later found to be a goldeye showing signs of a natural after-death phenomenon.

What about those tailings ponds?

The oilsands use a lot of water and much of it ends up in vast tailings ponds, which are now the size of the city of Vancouver, and they’re growing. The ponds are toxic. About 1,600 ducks tried to land in one last year and most died, covered in oily sludge. The ponds are separated in some places from the Athabasca River only by large earthen dams. One study suggests that up to 11 million litres of tailings leak out every year, although Alberta says any leaks percolate harmlessly into bedrock.

Sediment in the ponds has been very slow to settle and dealing with it is one of the industry’s most stubborn problems. Companies have proposed “capping” the ponds with clean water and leaving them, but Alberta’s energy regulator recently said mines must start converting to dry tailings by the summer of 2011. Of nine oilsands projects that filed proposals to do that, only two plan to meet the timeline, although the regulator promises the timeline will be enforced.

How significant are greenhouse gas emissions from the oilsands?

It depends on the comparison. The oilsands are Alberta’s second-largest industrial emitter – coal-fired power plants are bigger. One oft-repeated statistic is that all the greenhouse gas emissions from the oilsands account for only five per cent of Canada’s total emissions and 0.1 per cent of global emissions.

Environmentalists respond that any one project which shows up on a global scale is significant, period. They also point out that the oilsands are Canada’s fastest-rising source of greenhouse gases.

Tar sands oil and the Keystone XL Pipeline would be undeniably bad for the United States, its citizens, and its environment:

[Nebraska cattleman Randy] Thompson apologizes for becoming animated, but says he’s about done using politically correct language where the Keystone XL project is concerned.

Though he is a lifelong conservative and registered Republican, Thompson had never written so much as a letter to the editor or contacted a single politician in his life until agents for TransCanada first notified him, three years ago, that his property lay in the path a proposed $7-billion crude oil pipeline.

Now he is at the centre of a high-stakes fight over Keystone XL, which would transport up to 900,000 barrels per day of oilsands bitumen from northern Alberta to refineries on the Gulf Coast of Texas.

The long-delayed pipeline project has been under intense scrutiny amid persistent concerns – raised by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, state legislators and private landowners – about the dangers posed by a possible spill of Canadian crude along its 2,700 kilometre route.

The U.S. State Department has the authority to grant a ‘presidential permit’ approving construction, and has indicated it will make a decision by the end of 2011 on whether Keystone XL is in America’s national interest. [...]

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