(Edmonton) Alberta does not yet understand the environmental impact of oil sands development, ten years after launching a monitoring program supposed to provide it with information.
This is what an internal study by the Alberta government suggests.
In July, the Department of Environment and Parks sent a questionnaire to several dozen scientists and other participants in the oil sands environmental monitoring program, a federal-provincial program that has existed under different names since 2012.
The program is receiving $ 50 million in annual funding from industry.
The study was not published, but The Canadian Press obtained a copy.
A total of 26 people responded to the questionnaire. They expressed concerns about the lack of general leadership, poor communications and inadequate funding that has not been increased for 10 years and that has been slowly eaten away by inflation.
“We have significant concerns about its ability to become a world-class monitoring program as planned,” said the Alberta Environmental Network, a group with several members on the program’s technical committees.
The group points out that funding has remained unchanged since 2012 despite inflation. According to him, this equates to an actual reduction of almost 9%.
“We don’t know of any independent study that says 50 million is adequate. ”
Result: several fundamental questions remain unanswered, argues the group.
Funding for research on wetlands, which cover about a quarter of the oil sands, was cut by more than 50% in 2021-22 after being cut by two-thirds the previous year. Terrestrial surveillance, which examines the state of flora and fauna, has been reduced by 66% this year, following a 50% drop the year before.
The group regrets that no research has been funded to examine the dangers posed by industry’s toxic tailings ponds.
No representative from the Alberta Environment and Parks responded to a request for an interview on the subject.
The lack of communication and coordination between the different scientific groups is one of the program’s ills, according to a majority of respondents.
“Communications suck,” one wrote.
“Obviously committee members have no clear idea of the goals and priorities of the program,” complained another.
Others find that valuable data has been collected, but authorities have failed to capitalize on it
“Surveillance activities took place in various places, but no analysis,” laments one respondent.
Mandy Olsgard, who represents Indigenous communities on the advisory committee, says there is no blueprint to guide decision makers on what research to do. The funds are divided according to the various individual proposals of the researchers.
“There were arbitrary reductions that weren’t based on science,” she says. The program is just trying to come up with a number [50 millions]. I’m not saying the data doesn’t exist, it’s just that we don’t put it together to see a picture of environmental effects. We do not understand the cumulative effects of oil sands exploration. ”
Kelman Wieder is a biologist from Villanova University, Pennsylvania. He has studied oil sands in wetlands for decades. He has written several articles on the subject. Its funding has been completely taken away from it.
“The strategy is to go and collect data, write it down in a notebook and forget it on a tablet,” he says.
According to him, the program is organized wrong.
“My approach would be to design the best program and see what it will cost and see if the money is there. If we don’t have the money, let’s review it to see what can be done. ”
Professor Wieder is firm when asked whether the environmental impact of oil sands development is fully understood.
” Absolutely not ! We are not even close. ”