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Politicians cancel oilsands pollution investigation
News Articles | Montreal Gazette | Mike DeSouza | July 07, 2010
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Drafts destroyed. Decision alarms environmentalists.
Federal politicians from the government and opposition benches have mysteriously cancelled an 18-month investigation into oilsands pollution in water and opted to destroy draft copies of their final report, Canwest News Service has learned.
The aborted investigation comes as new questions are being raised about the Harper government’s decision to exempt a primary toxic pollutant found in oilsands tailings ponds from a regulatory agenda.
The government is in the process of categorizing industry-produced substances that could either be toxic or harmful, but has excluded naphthenic acid -a toxin from oilsands operations -from the list, and left it off another list of substances that companies are required to track and report.
The exclusion is “alarming,” according to a letter sent yesterday to Environment Minister Jim Prentice and Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq, since the federal and Alberta governments have already identified it as a primary source of pollution in liquid waste dumped into ponds after companies extract oil from the region.
“Naphthenic acids are one of the main pollutants responsible for the toxicity of tarsands tailings to aquatic organisms, and have been shown to harm liver, heart and brain function in mammals,” wrote Matt Price, the policy director at Environmental Defence, an independent research organization based in Toronto. “Naphthenic acids are also very long-lived, taking decades to break down.”
Price also said in the letter that the federal and provincial governments are already allowing some of the toxins to leak into groundwater and surface water.
“It is therefore urgent that all tailings pollutants, and naphthenic acid in particular, be properly assessed and managed to minimize the risk to human and environmental health,” he wrote.
Environment Canada said that a variety of acids from the oilsands are on a medium priorities list of its chemical-management plan, but have not yet been assessed. A spokeswoman explained in an email that the government would also consider adding naphthenic acids to a list of substances that companies would be required to report following further study.
The petroleum sector is the only industry with its own stream of substances to be evaluated under the government’s plan.
Meantime, Price added that the United States had moved forward with specific reporting requirements for the substance, urging the Harper government to follow suit, especially following the cancelled investigation in Parliament.
“The recent decision of the federal environment committee to abandon its work on a report regarding water and the oilsands industry heightens the need for the federal government to properly deal with oilsands pollution, or risk further undermining public trust in responsible oversight of the industry,” Price wrote.
The MPs made the decision to terminate their investigation and destroy copies of their report in a meeting behind closed doors on June 17, and they have all declined to provide details on what happened apart from explaining that they failed to reach a consensus.
Read more: http://www.montrealgazette.com/business/Politicians+cancel+oilsands+pollution+investigation/3244482/story.html#ixzz0t0RvHvOP
Tagged with: environment canada, harper, naphthenic acids
