(Source: CBC News) The federal government has begun developing regulations to allow oilsands operators in northern Alberta to begin releasing treated tailings water back into the environment, something that’s been prohibited for decades.

Currently, companies must store any water used to extract oil during the mining process because it becomes toxic. The massive above-ground lakes are known as tailings ponds, which are harmful to wildlife and have resulted in the death of birds who land on the water, on multiple occasions.

For years, local Indigenous groups have raised concerns about contamination from development, and how tailings ponds could further pollute their land and drinking water.

But now, industry leaders and some scientists are convinced the water can be treated enough so it can be safely discharged and they say it can reduce the environmental risk of storing an ever-increasing volume of tailings.

For decades, oilsands companies have used freshwater to help separate the oil from the sand and other materials found in mines.

Over the years, the industry has improved its techniques to recycle more and more of the water it uses. Still, mines require about three to four barrels of new water to produce one barrel of bitumen. 

After the water is used, it is stored in tailings ponds since the material contains various toxins, bitumen residue and elevated levels of salt.

The tailings ponds in northern Alberta, adjacent to oilsands mines, store about 1.4 trillion litres of waste water. That’s the equivalent volume of more than 560,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools, which would stretch from Edmonton to Melbourne, Australia, and back if placed end-to-end.

“The biggest challenge is that we have a massive amount of water that needs to be treated,” said Mohamed Gamal El-Din, a University of Alberta professor who specializes in oilsands tailings water treatment.

In order to return tailings ponds water to the environment, the water does not need to be clean enough to drink, he said, but safe enough to meet the government’s forthcoming standards. It’s similar to how towns and cities across the country treat sewage to the point where it can be released to the environment.

In both situations, Gamal El-Din said the fluids can be purified to a point where it can be drinkable water, but municipalities and industry have deemed that too costly.

“There are technologies that can do that,” he said, but “it’s not economically feasible.”

A Crown-Indigenous working group has been working on the creation of oilsands tailings water release standards  since the beginning of the year and the federal government wants to release the draft regulations in 2024 and final regulations in 2025, under the Fisheries Act.

In a statement, Environment and Climate Change Canada said allowing treated wastewater to be released “will help slow the growth of oil sands tailings ponds, and reduce the associated environmental and health risks” of storing the toxic material.

Some experts are quick to point to examples in some other countries where harmful mining water was unexpectedly released because infrastructure failed, including a dam disaster in Brazil that killed 270 people.

They argue that continuing to build more tailings ponds in the oilsands region only heightens the risk of an unexpected release, which could damage the environment even more.

Currently, companies that are polluting water have to keep building more tailings ponds and hold the fluid in perpetuity. 

“This scenario is not tolerable,” said Les Sawatzky, a Calgary-based water resources engineer who has worked on projects around the world, including with oilsands companies.

(Source: CBC News) The N.W.T. is home to nearly one-fifth of Canada’s peatlands, according to a researcher who says they’re an asset worth protecting in the fight against climate change because of their capacity to store carbon. 

Lorna Harris, a postdoctoral fellow and ecosystem scientist at the University of Alberta, said peatlands cover about 230,000 square kilometres of land in the N.W.T., and they store 24 billion tonnes of carbon. That’s the carbon equivalent of using nearly 200 billion barrels of oil.

“It is a large portion in the N.W.T., relative to some other provinces,” she said, noting that the Mackenzie River basin, stretching from northern Alberta to the N.W.T., is the second largest expanse of peatland in Canada next to the Hudson Bay Lowlands. 

Peatlands are wetland ecosystems filled with organic matter that has collected over thousands of years. They are a type of carbon sink, because through the decaying process, that matter deposits carbon into the surrounding soil and peat, rather than releasing it into the atmosphere.

Peatlands cover swaths of temperate, boreal and subarctic regions and can be found in forests and in permafrost too.

A World Wildlife Fund-Canada (WWF) study unveiled at the Conference of the Parties (COP26) said Canada stores more than a quarter of the world’s soil carbon, and suggests keeping that carbon in the ground — so it doesn’t further exacerbates global warming — is key to the country’s climate efforts. 

Harris, the lead author of a separate study published recently in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, concludes the biggest threats to northern peatlands are human activities like mining, logging and agriculture, as well as wildfire and permafrost thaw. 

Steven Nitah, a senior advisor to the Indigenous Leadership Initiative and one of lead negotiators in the establishment of the Thaidene Nëné Indigenous Protected Area, said parts of the N.W.T., like its peatlands, are “globally significant” and “provide a nature service that’s definitely required to give us a fighting chance” in the face of climate change. 

He said the first thing that needs to be done is to identify those important areas and to work across levels of government — Indigenous, territorial and federal — to protect and manage them. 

The federal government has committed to protecting or conserving 25 per cent of Canada’s land by 2025 and working toward protecting 30 per cent by 2030, as part of the country’s efforts to fight climate change and defend vulnerable species and ecosystems. 

Nitah said Canada has protected about 15 per cent of its land so far. 

“To double that protection, they [the federal government] need to conserve or protect the quantum land roughly the size of Manitoba,” he said, pointing out an opportunity for the N.W.T. to advocate that its lands be protected. 

Nitah said the N.W.T. can continue to demonstrate itself as a leader in Indigenous land protection and management by identifying the right areas for protection as the federal government works toward that goal. 

Harris also outlined Indigenous stewardship as one of the key solutions for protecting the essential carbon service provided by northern peatlands. 

Another solution for protecting peatlands, highlighted by both Harris and Nitah, would be for the carbon offset market to place a value on their capacity to store carbon. 

“You can go in and damage a peatland and then, any reduction in that damage is considered an offset,” said Harris, of the current offset system. “Whereas just leaving the peatland alone, without it being at risk of any damage, there’s no real value given to that.” 

Harris said it’s dangerous to only put value on carbon when it’s part of a restoration activity for damage that’s already being done, especially when it comes to peatlands. She also described the carbon stored in peatlands as being “irrecoverable” because it would take roughly 1,000 years for one metre of peatlands to re-accumulate, if it were to be stripped away. 

“Restoring them now is not going to gain enough carbon that was lost from the damage that was caused,” she explained. 

Putting a value on the carbon service provided by the natural environment could also help fund land protection and management programs in the N.W.T., said Nitah, who pointed out the territory doesn’t have a big enough tax base to fund such projects on its own. 

“The responsibility for management certainly is within the Canadian jurisdiction, but the responsibility for paying for it should be global,” he said.

Funding from the carbon offset market could be used for wildfire management practices like vegetation management,  said Nitah, which is sometimes also called forest thinning. 

Nitah said it’s something Indigenous people have traditionally done to clean the forest floor, to reduce the amount of fuel that a wildfire can burn and to increase biodiversity.

Wildfires are becoming more frequent and more severe because of the world’s changing climate, and they release carbon that is stored in the trees that are burned — but they can also damage the peatlands below.

Harris said if peat is dry at the surface of the ground, it too, will burn. 

“I think up to a metre has been lost in some peatlands here in Western Canada,” she said. 

Peat fires are notoriously difficult to fight: they are especially smoky, and they can burrow underground, re-emerging days or even months after they appear to have been put out. 

Harris said fire can also speed up the rate of permafrost thaw, which releases even more carbon into the atmosphere. 

Harris said the N.W.T. government has a “big role to play” in protecting peatlands, because decisions about mining development, oil and gas exploration and forestry are made at the territorial level. 

“They should really be developing some kind of management plan for peatlands, or a land-use plan, identifying where … the peatlands are in the region, where they can protect the peatlands, [and] where they can restore peatlands as well.” 

Harris also wants to see the federal government increase research funding and implement a national peatland strategy that outlines a set of goals and targets to help guide provinces and territories in their individual decision-making processes. 

A main objective, she said, should be not to dig up peatlands or remove the peat that’s inside them. 

“Just leave it in place,” she said.