{"id":122530,"date":"2025-09-05T19:28:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-05T19:28:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/122530\/"},"modified":"2025-09-05T19:28:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-05T19:28:07","slug":"alberta-vows-to-implement-new-standards-for-releasing-treated-oil-sands-mine-water","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/122530\/","title":{"rendered":"Alberta vows to implement new standards for releasing treated oil sands mine water"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

There are roughly 1.4 million cubic metres of fluid tailings and more than 390 million cubic metres of water in ponds in the oil sands region.Todd Korol\/Reuters<\/p>\n

A group tasked with recommending ways to clean up Alberta\u2019s massive oil sands tailings ponds says the government should hasten the development of both new treatment technologies and standards for releasing treated mine water. <\/p>\n

In its recommendations, released Friday, the Oil Sands Mine Water Steering Committee also called for more community involvement in monitoring programs to improve their transparency and speed. <\/p>\n

Alberta established the committee in 2024 to come up with options to better manage the water in oil sands tailings ponds in the province\u2019s north. The group includes representatives from Indigenous and local communities, industry and academic experts.<\/p>\n

Alberta to invest $50-million to help develop oil sands water, tailings technologies<\/a><\/p>\n

The government said Friday it accepted all four of the committee\u2019s latest recommendations and will work with the Alberta Energy Regulator to evaluate them. The province then intends to implement \u201ca safe and reasonable plan that is supported by science and protects communities in the region and downstream.\u201d <\/p>\n

Pierre Gratton, chief executive of the Mining Association of Canada, welcomed the new measures, saying in a statement they would \u201cprovide the framework and certainty needed by industry\u201d to reclaim oil sands mines. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe are hopeful that this will accelerate the development of federal regulations \u2013 which we requested almost 15 years ago \u2013 to be similarly advanced to allow the oil sands mining sectors to proceed with significant investments in reclamation and water treatment,\u201d Mr. Gratton said.<\/p>\n

Tailings are a by-product of the process used to extract bitumen from mined oil sands, and are a mixture of sand, clay, water, silt, residual bitumen and other hydrocarbons, salts and trace metals.<\/p>\n

The issue of how to deal with them has bedevilled Alberta for years. There are roughly 1.4 million cubic metres of fluid tailings and more than 390 million cubic metres of water in ponds in the oil sands region.<\/p>\n

Although some ponds have been reclaimed, the volume of tailings continues to grow, in part because any water captured on a site must be kept there \u2013 even if it\u2019s snow melt or rain that hasn\u2019t been used in the mining process.<\/p>\n

Industry wants to be allowed to release treated water back into the Athabasca River watershed, but environmental groups and Indigenous communities downstream from the oil sands region are staunchly opposed to such a plan. <\/p>\n

Remediating oil sands mines could cost $130-billion<\/a>, according to a 2018 internal Alberta Energy Regulator memo, though in an official estimate the regulator puts the cost around $34-billion.<\/p>\n

The committee\u2019s first set of recommendations was released on June 12. <\/p>\n

It suggested segregating water that had not been affected by mining and developing clear standards for that water\u2019s safe release, encouraging more water-sharing between mine sites, and developing a standard system for measuring naphthenic acids, which are naturally occurring organics sourced from oil sands bitumen. <\/p>\n

The committee also recommended that the government work with the oil sands industry, technology providers and researchers to develop and conduct pilots on promising oil sands mine water treatment technologies.<\/p>\n

Alberta has since earmarked $50-million<\/a> to boost technologies that can help reduce and manage tailings ponds. Cash for the program will come from the province\u2019s carbon price on large emitters, and will be managed by Emissions Reduction Alberta. <\/p>\n

Multiple cases of spills and leaks from tailings ponds have been reported by oil companies in recent years.<\/p>\n

At Imperial Oil Ltd.\u2019s Kearl site, a long-running leak<\/a> has resulted in an unknown volume of tailings leeching into the environment. A drainage storage pond at the site also overflowed, spilling roughly 5.3 million litres of industrial waste water laced with pollutants into the environment. <\/p>\n

In April, 2023, almost six million litres of water with more than twice the legal limit of suspended solids was released from a pond<\/a> at Suncor\u2019s Fort Hills oil sands project into the Athabasca River watershed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: There are roughly 1.4 million cubic metres of fluid tailings and more than…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":122531,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[901,888,902,879,877,903,49,48,876,895,896,891,878,875,46,549,295,894,887,914,880,881,893,889,890,884,904,885,909,910,912,907,911,905,908,882,898,899,714,897,906,66,865,61,900,892,886,883,913],"class_list":["post-122530","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-alberta","tag-arts-news","tag-bc","tag-breaking-news","tag-breaking-news-video","tag-british-columbia","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-canada-news","tag-canada-sports","tag-canada-sports-news","tag-canada-trafficcanada-weather","tag-canadian-breaking-news","tag-canadian-news","tag-economy","tag-education","tag-environment","tag-federal-government","tag-foreign-news","tag-globe-and-mail","tag-globe-and-mail-breaking-news","tag-globe-and-mail-canada-news","tag-government","tag-life-news","tag-lifestyle","tag-local-news","tag-manitoba","tag-national-news","tag-new-brunswick","tag-newfoundland-and-labrador","tag-northwest-territories","tag-nova-scotia","tag-nunavut","tag-ontario","tag-pei","tag-photos","tag-political-news","tag-political-opinion","tag-politics","tag-politics-news","tag-quebec","tag-science","tag-sports-news","tag-technology","tag-travel","tag-trudeau","tag-us-news","tag-world-news","tag-yukon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122530","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=122530"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122530\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/122531"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=122530"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=122530"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=122530"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}