Imagine finding out that the food you have been eating for the last nine months might be contaminated. Unfortunately, this is the reality for Alberta’s Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation (ACFN).
Oil and gas producer Imperial Oil is in the hot seat after the Alberta Energy Regulator issued an environmental protection order on February 6, 2023.
The Alberta Energy Regular issued the order to Imperial Oil after two spills breached containment at the company’s Kearl Oil Sands Project. This oil sand site in the Athabasca Oil Sands Region is 45 kilometres northeast of Fort McKay.
In both incidents, tailings spilled from the Kearl oil sands project into the forest and wetland near the Muskeg and Firebag rivers.
So, how did this happen in the first place?
Well, most oil sands projects like Kearl use toxic sludge pits to store their tailings. In oil sand mining, tailings remain after the oil has been extracted from the ground and processed.
If these tailings spill or leak from the toxic sludge pits called tailings ponds, dam-like structures called catchment systems are supposed to catch the spills.
Keep in mind, tailings ‘ponds’ are far from small bodies of water. They may as well be lakes. So, what happens when these catchment systems fail? A whole lot of bad.
The Truth Spills Out
In the case of Imperial Oil, the company informed the AER of leakage at its toxic sludge pits at Kearl in May. The escaped tailings contained iron, arsenic, sulphates, and hydrocarbons above federal and provincial guidelines.
In other words, it would be a big freaking deal if these tailings were to get out. But thank goodness for catchment systems, right?
The AER failed to mention to the public that tailings had escaped the catchment system and were leaking into the Muskeg and Firebag Rivers, which flow into the Athabasca River.
The AER also failed to notify the federal and provincial environment ministers. Remember, federal legislation requires leaks to be reported to Environment Canada within 24 hours.
To make matters worse, the ACFN relies on the Athabasca River for food and materials.
It wasn’t until another leak occurred, spilling more than 5.3 million litres of tailings from Imperial Oil’s catchment system, that the ACFN learned of the previous containment incident back in May.
In response to the leak, the AER issued an environmental protection order to Imperial Oil on February 6, 2023, which brought the leak to the ACFN’s attention.
This means the ACFN’s people had unknowingly been eating food harvested from the area for nine months.
“We have land users in the area that hunt and fish animals that could have been exposed to these deadly toxins. We have been eating them for months, unaware of the potential danger,” Chief Allan Adam of the ACFN told The Canadian Press.
Imperial Oil and the AER had nine months to warn the ACFN, but they didn’t.
“During that nine-month period, ACFN had many meetings with [Imperial Oil], 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 over and over again,” commented Adam.
To make things right, Imperial Oil has installed additional monitoring systems and wells to control leaks. The company also plans to build more catchment systems and has promised to improve its communication with First Nations.
“We regret these incidents and are making every effort to learn from them and prevent them from happening again,” said Imperial Oil’s Vice-President of Mining Jamie Long.
Currently, Imperial Oil and the AER are pointing fingers at each other.
Will either Energy Regulator or Imperial Oil take responsibility?
A Failure To Communicate
Since the ACFN and the public became aware of the spill, documents obtained from The Canadian Press have shed more light on the situation.
On March 2, 2023, chiefs of the area’s First Nations claimed they had not been updated on the situation since the environmental protection order was issued on February 6, 2023.
That’s almost an entire month of radio silence from the Alberta government.
A few days later, on March 7, 2023, Alberta Environment issued an emergency response to the spill. The spill contained high levels of toxic contaminants like arsenic.
“When (the releases) first hit the press in February, all we heard from the minister, the regulator and Imperial Oil was that everything was fine and under control. A month later, we’ve got an emergency response,” said Marlin Schmidt, environment critic for the NDP.
If that wasn’t bad enough, it took three days for provincial emergency response staff to arrive at the site of the spill. If an ambulance arrived three days late, it wouldn’t be much of an emergency response, would it?
According to Chief Alan Adam of the ACFN, his band has yet to be contacted by either of the UCP government members representing the area.
“You’d think this would be right up their alley…Maybe there’s a bigger crisis happening in our region that I don’t know about that they’re focused on instead,” said Alan in a statement.
When asked why it took a month to declare an emergency, Alberta Environment did not respond.
An investigation is now underway to determine whether the AER had a duty to release information to the public. Regulations be damned, anyone with a heart would have told the public immediately.
