Front Burner - Outrage over silence as toxic oil tailings leaked

Episode Date: March 9, 2023

Since the Kearl mine in northern Alberta began production on Treaty 8 territory in 2013, the company has touted technological innovations that they say “enhance environmental performance.” Yet for months, wastewater from the mine’s tailings ponds, containing arsenic, hydrocarbons and sulphides has been seeping into the land. The company that runs the mine, Imperial Oil, first reported the leak in May 2022 to the provincial regulator. But Chief Allan Adam of the nearby Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation says his community only learned of the seepage last month. That’s created anxiety, says Chief Adam, because people have been hunting, fishing and trapping without knowing there was a risk of contamination. Drew Anderson, the Narwhal’s Prairies reporter, joins us today to walk us through how the leak happened, Alberta’s tailings pond debate and who’s accountable. For transcripts of this series, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, I'm Alex Panetta, in for Jamie Poisson. Imagine toxic oil sands tailings seeping into the earth day after day for nine months. Imagine the people living nearby being left in the dark. It's just happened in northern Alberta.

The Curl Mine is one of the country's largest oil sands deposits. It's run by Imperial Oil. The Curl Mine is one of the country's largest oil sands deposits. It's run by Imperial Oil. And since it began production in 2013, the companies heralded the site's technological innovation, saying it represents the next generation of oil sands mining. We wanted to build off of our decades of oil sands mining and in-situ experience, and our decades of research. We wanted to reduce the environmental footprint of Curl.

We've done decades of research. We wanted to reduce the environmental footprint of Curl. But since May, industrial wastewater from the mine's operations has been leaking into the environment. For nine months, Imperial and the Alberta regulator have endangered the environment, our nation, and the public. That's Chief Alan Adam of the Athabasca Chippewan First Nation. The Curl mine is on Treaty 8 territory. Chief Adam says his community wasn't told about the toxic seepage until a few weeks ago. And he thinks that's a big problem.

Our people harvest food from the forests and the rivers adjacent to Curl Lake Project. Some of these foods have shared throughout our community. We have been eating them for months, unaware of the potential danger. Now, the chief is calling for accountability and asking questions about why. Why his community wasn't told sooner. Had this happened south of Calgary or right in Calgary, they probably would have notified everybody. They probably would have shut down all the water systems and everything and stuff like that. And they probably would have fixed the problem a lot quicker than later.

Drew Anderson is the Prairies reporter for The Narwhal. He's been covering this story. Hey there. Thanks for having me on. So before we get into the leaks and spill, I just want to go back to Chief Adam. He held a press conference last week, and just briefly, can you sum up for me what he's alleging? Yeah, so I mean, he's using some pretty strong language here. The chief got in front of reporters. And in short, he's saying that the Alberta energy regulator, so the body that's responsible for overseeing energy development and production in the province, failed to notify his

community and others about the dangers. And also that Imperial Oil, which owns the Curl mine, failed in its duty to report the issue to them. During that nine-month period, ACFN had many meetings with them, including a sit-down face-to-face between myself and the vice president in November. Each meeting was an opportunity where they could have come clean, but they chose to hide the fact from us and over and over again. He's saying that, you know, this poses a risk to his community and other communities and that they should have been notified when this first came to light in spring of last year. So let's talk about the impact on living beings, on people, on the wildlife, on the environment. I mentioned in the intro that Chief Adams' community hunts and fishes on this territory, and they're not alone. There are other

First Nations communities here. So what happens to them? What happens to the animals on this territory? Well, I mean, that is a question, but the nation is concerned that this contamination could get into the animals that live in that area. You know, the fish in the waters and, you know, the water that those animals are drinking and that members of the community could be exposed to. The nation pulls its drinking water from the Athabasca river, which has tributaries in the area. There's no indication that that has entered the Athabasca river or poses a risk to that drinking water, but they've shut down their water intake just in case. They've asked their, their members not to eat animals they've hunted or trapped in

the area and to bring it into the nation for sampling because they're worried that, you know, they could have been exposed to some of these toxins and then that could then enter into their own bodies. We sent a memo out to everybody stating to them that if you had harvested meat from that area, we asked you to discard it or you picked up berries from around that area to discard it. Don't eat or contain any of that food. It's not even worthy to feed it to your dog. You know, Imperial's own investigation found samples from this contamination that exceeded Alberta Environment and Protected Areas and Canadian Council of Ministers and Environment guidelines for some of these substances.

And, you know, we're talking about arsenic, we're talking about hydrocarbons, we're talking about sulfide and other things that really can impact living creatures. Okay, so they're not drinking from their normal water sources. What are they doing? Can you clear that up for me? They've closed the intake from the Athabasca River into their reservoir, and they're relying on the water that's in the reservoir at this point until they have a little bit more clarity and just sort of an abundance of caution. They have shut off access from the river to their water supply.

Okay, so you mentioned Imperial Oil has been sampling the water and monitoring wildlife, but what have they found? Well, you know, we've mentioned those exceedances, and that is their own sampling that they submitted to the regulator. And the regulator itself says it has grounds to believe the impacts are causing or may cause an adverse effect, but that no impacts to wildlife have been reported. When I reached out to Imperial Oil about this, a spokesperson told me that the monitoring today to show no impacts on wildlife.

And despite those exceedances, you know, despite being above the guidelines for some of this stuff, she said there was no measurable impact to local waterways. So there are still questions there. The company says they haven't found any dens on the site. So wildlife dens, but that doesn't mean wildlife isn't there. At the basket, Chippewa Nation has released photos showing animal activity in close proximity to the site, so there are still a lot of questions about what those impacts might be. Okay, so let's go back to the beginning, back to May, when this allegedly started. What exactly happened? Well, so the company, Imperial Oil, noticed that there was visible contamination on groundwater near the site,

discolored water that was enough to give them pause. You know, I've spoken with scientists who study this stuff, and that indicates a problem. So that was reported on May 19th to the energy regulator. But it did take until about June 3rd for them to say, you know, this is definitely industrial wastewater. And then again, it wasn't until November 29th that the company really said, this is absolutely 100% coming from our tailings area. It is this contamination. It's in the groundwater and it is in fact mixing with surface water. One scientist I spoke with said this was a significant detail. You know, there's

never really been this confirmation that tailings water is seeping into the groundwater, contaminating it, and then mixing with surface water and contaminating that. But at this point, we don't know exactly how much has seeped. We do know that it is coming from four different areas from the tailings ponds and that it continues to go. But at this point in time, there's no details on just how much of that has seeped through. So you've talked a bit about the geology of the area, but can you describe the place geographically? Where is it? Can you paint a picture for us of where it is? Yeah, absolutely. So we're talking pretty north here. We're in the northeastern section of

Alberta, north of Fort McMurray. That would be the sort of the main urban area for an identifier. It's west of the Saskatchewan border. So the Athabasca River flows through these oil sand sites. It flows close to the curls fed by tributaries that go right through that site into the Northwest Territories. And so tailings ponds are a fact of life in this part of the country. Can you describe this, like just so that we're clear, what is a tailings pond? They're not unique to the oil sands. You know, anytime you're digging stuff out of the ground, you're going to end up with waste products. So they take the waste products, they sort of hold them in these ponds and they let the contaminants, the waste soil and everything else sort of settle to the bottom. And they actually reuse some of

this water. You know, like if the system is working properly, they can pull it out and reuse it, put it back in. It's supposed to be this sort of closed new system. But it also means those contaminants build up and intensify in these ponds, you know, and these things continue to grow. And they haven't quite figured out how to decommission them properly. So talking about a mine, there is the active mining site, and then there will always be these sort of areas set aside for these ponds. They grow and they grow, and they don't quite know how to clean them up. There hasn't been a single one that has been certified as reclaimed at this point. There's one that's trying right now, one of the earliest ponds,

dates back decades. So they are a serious issue sort of on the landscape in this area. Okay. So Imperial realizes that there's a seepage happening at these tailings ponds in May. So they tell the regulator, good. They don't tell the public, not good. But what does the energy regulator do? Yeah, what's the response from the actual public institution entrusted to handle this?

They issued a notice of noncompliance to the company saying, you did not follow the rules as set out in your license. That is not something that is posted publicly from the regulator. So we don't really know what that said, but we do know that they started engaging the company on trying to find answers to this. They wanted them to continue to do monitoring and they asked them to submit plans for how they were going to mitigate some of these problems. Okay. So the public wasn't notified. We heard Chief Adams say his community wasn't told about the seepage, but did Imperial tell them anything about what was going on? Well, no. On May 19th, according to Chief Adam, Imperial did inform them that discolored water

had been noted adjacent to the tailings pond, but it didn't inform them that the containment had failed, that there was seepage going on. So after that initial notice of saying, you know, we've got this discolored water on there, they kind of went quiet. And Chief Adam even said in his news conference that he met with representatives of Imperial Oil over this time spanning question. Imperial obviously has taken some criticism over this. What have they said in response? What's their defense?

They have said that they noticed the problem. They got to work mitigating it. They informed the regulator and they put plans in place. But ultimately, the regulators sort of determined that the plans that they had submitted were insufficient, kept working with the company for a while, and then eventually upped the stakes with them. In a statement to CBC News, the company says it regrets its communication did not meet the community's expectations and promises to improve them. Okay, so let's talk about another leak. There apparently was another

one in February, and it sounds like this one was significantly bigger. So what do we know about this second one? Yeah. So the first incident, we're talking about seepage. We're talking about the tailings pond sort of leaking into the ground. But in February, there was a spill. So water from the tailings pond overflowed the dam that's meant to keep it contained. And over 5 million liters of water spilled the bank. So it went over, it went into the muskeg and the forested area adjacent to it. So we're talking about the equivalent of about two Olympic-sized swimming pools spilling. And that's into the land that's adjacent to tributaries of two rivers, the Muskeg River and the Firebag, both of which feed the Athabasca. We're supposed to count on the regulator to keep all of Britain safe

and the companies to ensure that their projects operate safely, but this hasn't happened. So I have some questions. Is this just a problem for Imperial, or is it something that affects the whole industry? How many more tailing leaks are taking place right now? In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization.

Empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here. You may have seen my money show on Netflix. I've been talking about money for 20 years. I've talked to millions of people and I have some startling numbers to share with you. Did you know that of the people I speak to, 50% of them do not know their own household income? That's not a typo. 50%. That's because money is confusing. In my new book and podcast, Money for Couples, I help you and your partner create a financial vision together.

To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Couples. So maybe the wildest thing about this story is it's been going on for nearly a year, and it didn't come to light until last month. That's when the Alberta Energy Regulator issued an environmental protection order against Imperial. Explain to me, what's this order and what does it do? For sure. They've been working with the company. They've said, submit a plan, tell us what you're doing to fix this problem, how you're going to clean it up. And essentially the order is the regulator saying, we are dissatisfied with your performance to date. We don't think you're doing what you need to do. And it orders them to do more and to do it within a certain timeline. So by X date, you need to have this plan in place

and you need to submit it to us. By this date, you need to have implemented these sorts of changes. And it really calls the company to task to satisfy these hard dates and these hard requests. satisfy these hard dates and these hard requests. One of the things that was pretty noticeable about why the regulators sort of chose to make this order and to post it publicly, this is the first time the public found out about it, it was sort of increasingly concerned that the company wasn't going to be dealing with this in time for the spring melt. So if you think about, you know, northern Alberta, you think about wetlands, peat, rivers. Once you start talking about the ice and the snow melting and potential floods coming through, then we're talking about more water pushing this contamination elsewhere, pushing it

into a wider area of the watershed and maybe into those rivers, the firebag and the muskeg that feed into the Athabasca. And next thing you know, you could have a far greater problem with contaminants spread over a far larger region. Oh, that's a pretty scary scenario. But to put it in context, you talked to me about how common this is to see environmental protection orders like this one that the provincial regulator issued. They do issue these orders. This one that the provincial regulator issued? They do issue these orders. This one is pretty significant. They get to the point of an order when they think that the company is not doing what needs to be done. And this is sort of the final step of saying, you know, these are the things that you need to do. We expect you to do them. And from this point forward, that's sort of the end of the let's play nice and can lead into things like prosecutions.

And we do know that the AER at this point has an investigation ongoing. And there is always the possibility that there will be more serious repercussions, including prosecutions and fines, and can even lead to the shutdown of a mine. So we've talked about the broader challenge with tailings ponds in Alberta. What does cleaning this site look like? What does that entail? Well, I mean, it's difficult. Whenever you have contamination on land, it is a significant process. And usually we're talking about contamination that is significantly smaller than 5.3 million liters spilling along with ongoing seepage. Right now, we've seen pictures from Athabasca Chippewa Nation that shows that they have cleared the trees and the top layer of soil from around

that area. But, you know, we're talking about entering groundwater. The company in its latest update has installed 16 new pumping wells. So they're going, you know, full bore trying to get this contamination sorted, get some of the worst of it out of the ground. But it's a long time and it doesn't happen overnight. It's very expensive. I mean, even just where I'm sitting from in my home in Calgary, well away from that sort of contamination, I can sort of wander across the river and see an area that's been contaminated from creosote since the 60s. There's pumping wells and monitoring wells not that far from my house, and those will be there for a very long time still.

So let's talk money and the cost here. Back in 2020, Alberta's energy regulator said its latest estimate put the oil sands mines cleanup up at about 31 billion dollars and experts say that's you know likely an underestimate so who's responsible for cleaning up these sites who's who's footing the bill well it's supposed to be the companies this is an ongoing problem in alberta or at least an ongoing debate i mean not, not just the oil sands, but the oil and gas industry as a whole, they are supposed to cover the costs of cleaning these sites up when they're done. But a lot of that doesn't happen. We've seen that in conventional oil and gas sites where we have thousands of wells that have been dumped on the public to clean up. We haven't seen a giant oil sands mine go under and leave their liabilities for

the province to deal with. But if they were to suddenly cease operations, if oil demand were to drop and leave them in the lurch, then it would essentially fall to taxpayers to clean up this mess. And it is a significant mess. Like you said, $31 billion. We've got 0.1% of all disturbed land from the oil sands that has been reclaimed. I mean, this is a problem that continues to grow. The tailings ponds, if you put them all together, are bigger than downtown Toronto. They would cover the whole entire thing. They would cover Vancouver. They would stretch from Calgary to Canmore. These are big sites with big problems, no prospect of cleaning up and billions of dollars to do so if it ever comes down to it. Drew, getting back to Chief Adam, he says Athabasca Chippewan is now considering legal action against both Imperial and Alberta's energy regulator for the contamination and for the lack of communication. How's the provincial regulator responding to that question about why it didn't notify the public after the first seepage last May?

It is basically saying that it wasn't their job to do it. You know, communication from the regulator has been limited at this point. They say there's an ongoing investigation, so they're not really commenting in depth on it. But they did say that it's up to the company, it's up to any licensee to notify impacted parties and the public of this kind of thing. That is not what Chief Adam thinks. And there is a debate going on right now about sort of why the regulator has taken that point of view. Another Drew in Alberta, Drew Uchuk, who is a lawyer, has said that the Alberta Energy

Regulator did break the law by not notifying the public and First Nations about the threats to it. And we often see the regulator posting, you know, about spills on their website. They posted nothing about this for months. And certainly, you know, Chief Adam is suggesting that this would not happen had it been closer to say Calgary or Edmonton. He had some pretty strong language questioning whether they were viewed as human beings and calling this environmental racism. If this had impacted other people in other places, he's pretty darn sure that the AER would have been telling people about it. How is the Alberta government responding to this? The Alberta government, it's been interesting.

Premier Danielle Smith has called for radical transparency going forward. I believe that there is a joint responsibility on the part of the Alberta Energy Regulators, the enforcement authority, but principally on the company. It actually is in law. It's the company's job to communicate with stakeholders, and we will be holding them to that standard. Essentially said she's not impressed with the way that the company handled this, but she did sort of stand by the energy regulator. You know, she said it's doing its and a little bit of defensiveness, I would say, is the best way to characterize the provincial government response at this point in time.

Okay, so this is one case where so much has gone wrong. Now, let's zoom out. What policy questions does this raise about the industry's ability to operate safely? Yeah, I think that there is a lot of introspection going on in the industry right now. Not only introspection, but a lot of pressure on them too. Chief Adam came out vocally about it. I spoke to another Indigenous leader last week about this. They're all looking around at the other companies and they're saying, if this can go on for months, if this seepage can be happening, what else is happening that we don't know about?

And so you can bet that the Suncores of the world are taking a very close look at their own tailings ponds, their own reservoirs, and they're wondering if their own wandering indicates a problem or a future problem and what they can do about that before it becomes another situation like this. So I think there's some serious questions about the responsibility of the AER, about public disclosure. It's a very public incident. It was handled poorly. It has significant impacts and it breaks a promise to Albertans as a whole. and enforcing the environmental laws and regulations of the province. You have enough of these situations and all of a sudden you've got a watershed moment where people start questioning really and truly the ability of these things to function in the way that they're supposed to and weighing those, you know, giant economic benefits against really significant health and environmental risks.

Thanks so much for this, Drew. Yeah, my pleasure. That's all for today. I'm Alex Panetta in for Jamie Poisson, and thank you for listening to FrontBurner. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.