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Environment monitor says oilsands industry cut funding
News Articles Featured | Calgary Herald | December 13, 2011
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CALGARY — A group charged with designing environmental monitoring programs in the oilsands region says industry has chopped its funding contributions for 2012.
The Cumulative Environmental Management Association or CEMA said in a news release Monday that the Oil Sands Developers Group, representing oilsands companies, has agreed to give only $5 million in 2012, down 15 per cent from $5.9 million in 2011.
But the executive director of the industry group said its overall spending on five monitoring associations is actually rising next year to a total of $24 million and three of the five are getting every dollar they asked for.
CEMA executive director Glen Semenchuk said in an interview that it would “aggressively” seek out other funding to make up the difference.
“According to the stakeholders, the job isn’t done — there’s still a lot of work to be done and if our traditional funder is not going to fund the majority of it, we’re either going to have to cut programs or go find other funders,” he said.
He added the group is hoping to get funding from the federal government, which hasn’t given any grants since giving $350,000 in 2008.
“One of the things (industry) has told me is they feel someone else should be bearing part of that load and that someone should be government,” he said.
Ken Chapman, executive director of the developers group, said funding is being trimmed for CEMA because its government-mandated list of research projects is getting shorter and because federal and provincial governments are calling for a revamped and consolidated oilsands monitoring system.
“CEMA has more work to do but they’re nearing the end of their 1999 mandate from the province of Alberta on cumulative impacts,” he said.
“We’re moving to the next stage of environmental monitoring which no doubt will be more environmental monitoring, still science-based, still independent but more integrated and more comprehensive,” he said.
The Wood Buffalo Environmental Association, a group that monitors air, earth and human impacts of oilsands, will receive its entire $10.7 million request for 2012, Chapman said.
The group that covers water, the Regional Aquatics Monitoring Program, will also be fully funded to the tune of $5.2 million, he said, as will the Environmental Monitoring Committee at $750,000.
The fifth group, the Alberta Biodiversity Monitoring Institute, is having $2.3 million of its $2.9 million request funded, Chapman said.
Doubts about results from the aquatics program prompted the formation of federal and provincial review panels who last summer issued reports recommending a step change in how environmental monitoring is done in the oilsands.
Governments have yet to decide the details of implementation but the federal government suggested a proper monitoring system could cost $50 million per year, without saying where the funds would come from.
Semenchuk said CEMA wanted to do $9.6 million worth of work in next year’s budget, an increase from the 2011 work plan of $8.9 million.
He said CEMA has actually been spending about $7 million per year for the past three years because of cost-saving or failing to complete certain projects in the year.
Asked for clarification, spokesman Corey Hobbs said CEMA will actually spend $6.45 million in 2011, of which $235,000 came from government and $6.215 million has been contributed by industry.
The difference between that and $5.9 million as written in the news release is a carry-over from the previous year.
He provided a funding chart which shows that CEMA’s requested funding, received funding and expenditures matched from 2000 to 2006 but have not in any of the five years since then.
Funding jumped from $567,000 in 2000 to $2.9 million in 2006.
In 2007, CEMA asked for $8 million and got $6.3 million; in 2008, it asked for $10.3 million and got $7.5 million; in 2009, it requested $8.8 million and got $7.3 million; and in 2010, it asked for $7.2 million and got $6.2 million, according to the chart.
Semenchuk said CEMA has a full-time “facilitation staff” of 10, who work with groups made up of stakeholder representatives to design working plans to present to the board for approval. About half of the research concerns reclamation of land disturbed by oilsands.
“We do a lot of the research that ends up designing what our monitoring programs should be. So we’re actually out there first,” he said.
In 2012, for example, CEMA has proposed updating manuals and policies on wetlands and lakes that have been situated on former oilsands mine pits.
CEMA doesn’t deal with tailings ponds, where mining companies store water after it has been contaminated in the oilsands transportation and upgrading process.
Tagged with: alberta, monitoring, cumulative environmental management association
