Every year, Crane Lake hosts a Canada Day boat parade. Some years, over one hundred boats join. Pontoon boats, fishing boats, canoes, and fancy speed boats fill the water. As the sun sets, the boats, covered in Canada flags, parade across the lake.
When they reached the other side, it’s dusk. People sit back in their seats and watch a fireworks show.
It’s one of the many rituals that make Crane Lake unique.
Crane Lake, a tiny community of 150 year-round residents, is located about halfway between Bonnyville and Cold Lake. For residents and vacationers alike, it’s a small piece of paradise. It’s a hub for the 20,000 or so people that live in the area.
In the summertime, the campground on the lake is packed. Vacationers fill the beaches, and the lake itself bustles with activity. In the middle of the summer, the sun sets at 10 PM. Many nights, the water is filled with boats. Most turn their motors off, and the crowd watches the sunset together in the quiet.
In the winter, the community is less busy. Residents clear a skating trail across the ice in front of the cabins. People cross country ski around the lake. Deer and rabbit prints crisscross the snow beside the ski tracks.
Threat of Disaster
About a month ago, residents of Crane Lake were notified that Gear Energy intends to drill an oil well under the lake. While most oil companies drill wells deep into the ground, Gear Energy’s plan is to drill horizontally across the lake.
Mel and Tracey Hofer have owned property on Crane Lake for the past forty years. When Mel retired from the oil industry eight years ago, they moved to the lake full time.
The couple told TheRockies.Life about just how disastrous Gear Energy’s plans could be.
The lake is fed by underground aquifers, they explain. No one knows where these aquifers are exactly, so chances are high that a company drilling under the lake would hit one of them.
“We’re scared that the horizontal drilling will puncture or block off one of those aquifers and then our lake will drain. Or the lake will really get contaminated because the oil will start working its way through the aquifer,” said Tracey.
This has already happened to other lakes in the area – Ethel Lake and the Beaver River basin are a couple of examples.
The part of Gear Energy that was in charge of the Crane Lake plan was recently sold to Lotus Creek Exploration Inc.
TheRockies.Life reached out to Lotus Creek for comment. The company did not respond to questions about how they were going to protect the lake, nor about their motivations for continuing the project now that they know most Crane Lake residents are against the drilling.
Second to None
Another Crane Lake ritual, if you’re lucky enough to be on the lake at the right time, is watching a local moose swim from Doris Island in the middle of the lake to the shore.
About 75 percent of the lakeshore is crown land. Most of the lakeshore is inhabited by only moose, pelicans, cranes, and wolverines. There’s no farmland around. There are very few houses.
Eastern Alberta doesn’t have many clean lakes. Most lakes in the area are next to agricultural land, and fertilizer runoff in the water causes blue-green algae. The algae pollutes the water, making it unsafe for people to drink or swim in.
Mel and Tracey Hofer get their drinking water directly from the lake. They filter it first, of course. But unlike most places in Alberta, their water doesn’t have to be treated before they use it.
Their three children, now grown, all took swimming lessons in the lake. Now, it’s their grandchildren that they watch play on the lakeshore.
The lake is their playground. It’s their drinking water. It’s their community.
Development Gets Closer
Many of Crane Lake’s residents are current or former oil and gas workers. They support the oil industry in general, but they’re against Gear Energy’s development plans. The risks are simply too high, they say.
But they don’t feel they can speak out publicly. TheRockies.Life interviewed one such resident about his life at the lake, but he asked to remain anonymous, concerned that even his comments about how much his home means to him could put his job in jeopardy.
In the past couple of years, he’s seen development get closer and closer to the lake.
He spoke of the traffic that’s been inching closer and closer to Crane Lake. How drilling to the south means that oil tankers have already beaten up the roads in the area. How noisy that has made his corner of paradise.
He spoke of the group of cranes that hangs out on the north shore of the lake. How tight-knit the community they live in is. How everyone takes care of each other.
If Gear Energy damages the lake with its planned horizontal drilling, his life will change.
Energy development is meant to bring prosperity to Albertans. But the Hofers say that if the lake is damaged, it will very likely make their property value go down. And of course they wouldn’t see a dime of the money made from drilling under the lake.
If the lake is drained, it will mean that the thousands of people who visit or live at the lake could lose the place they call home, or their home away from home.
Alyssa’s Story
As a teen, Alyssa Noel spent her summers wakeboarding and water skiing on Crane Lake.
“All summer I was like, I don’t want to go party with my friends,” she told TheRockies.Life. She wanted to be at Crane Lake.
As an adult, she moved to BC. After 15 years away,though, she recently moved back to Edmonton with her family. She wanted her children to be able to spend summers like she did – at Crane Lake.
Weeks after coming back to Alberta, she heard the news about Gear Energy’s plans.
“It was just so defeating, like this is what we’re coming back to,” she said. “I would be crushed if anything happened to that lake.”
She’s now joined the community as it fights the development.
Residents Fight Back
Crane Lake residents are not just concerned about Gear Energy’s plans. They’re concerned that if one company drills underneath the lake, more companies will come in and do the same. Already, residents have learned that three or four other companies have long-term development plans on the south shore of the lake.
Years ago, the community formed the Crane Lakes Advisory and Stewardship Society. Several people that TheRockies.Life interviewed, including Mel and Tracy Hofer, are members of the council. The society’s goal is to protect the lake. The news about the oil development plans have kicked the group into high gear.
Residents have filed over sixty statements of concern with the Alberta Energy Regulator (AER), the governing body that’s responsible for ensuring oil development in the province happens safely.
Mel Hofer recently updated the community that he spoke with Matthew Bonko of the Calgary AER, and that Bonko said this is the highest number of statements of complaint the governing body has received about a single project in a long time.
“The Gear Energy project is now on hold until a decision is made by the AER, which could take up to 180 days and could lead to a public hearing,” Mel said in a Facebook post.
Residents aren’t waiting for a public hearing to speak their minds, though. The Hofers told TheRockies.Life that they’ve scheduled a meeting with their MLA for Monday morning.
They’re making the story and the development plans public. They’re rallying people who are connected to Crane Lake and people who want to protect Alberta’s nature behind their cause.
“It seems crazy that there aren’t rules in place to protect wild places like this from industry,” Alyssa Noel says.
Many residents repeated the same sentiment. “Drill down as far as you want, just do not drill under the lake. The risks are too high.”
Until the development plans are officially cancelled, Crane Lake residents will continue to work together to fight them.
