FORT MCMURRAY, ALTA.—The toxic waste of the Canadian oilpatch has been quietly spreading in the boreal forest since bitumen mining began here in the 1960s.The yogurt-like mix of clay, water, toxic acids, metals and leftover bitumen has sprawled in artificial ponds to cover an area twice the size of the city of Vancouver.More than one trillion litres of the goop, called tailings, fill these man-made waste lakes that can be seen from space. An equivalent amount of water would take five days to tumble over Niagara Falls.The contaminated tailings ponds attract and kill migrating birds. They emit methane and other greenhouse gases.Despite years of public promises from officials that the tailings ponds would shrink and go away, they are growing. And in the meantime, troubling gaps are opening in the oversight system meant to ensure the oilpatch cleans up its mess. Alberta has collected only $1 billion from companies to help remediate tailings — a problem that is now estimated to cost about 100 times that.Decades and billions have been spent on research and still there is no sure solution to a problem that is getting attention beyond Alberta. In August, the Commission for Environmental Cooperation — a NAFTA organization composed of officials from the U.S., Mexico and Canada — announced it would investigate and produce a report on tailings ponds and the threat they pose to surrounding groundwater and rivers.While the world watches, the mining companies operating here have been allowed by regulators to pursue a clean-up technique called water capping.It’s supposed to work like this: put the tailings into a mined-out pit, then cover it with fresh water from a nearby river or reservoir. The idea, according to oil producer Syncrude, is that the tailings will settle to the bottom and over time the lake will turn into a healthy ecosystem supporting fish, animals and aquatic plants.“It’s biologically and chemically an impossible fantas ...
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