Alberta’s power regulator is reconsidering a challenge it permitted months in the past after receiving a vital report on Fort Hills Vitality’s plan to extract oil sands from a novel carbon-storing wetland.
In September, the Alberta Vitality Regulator permitted plans to mine a portion of the McClelland Lake wetland advanced — a big and intact wetland as soon as thought of for environmental safety that lies partially throughout the firm’s lease.
The approval got here after a two-decade regulatory historical past and the submission by Fort Hills of plans that say it may mine about half of the wetland with out affecting the remaining.
However in March, the Alberta Wilderness Affiliation offered the regulator with an unbiased scientific evaluation of the corporate’s plan that discovered important flaws. It requested the regulator to evaluation its determination.
“We observe that you’ve got requested a reconsideration,” learn the regulator’s response on April 12. “This request will probably be processed by (our) reconsideration course of.”
Laws says the regulator could verify, range, droop or revoke its choices, with or with no listening to.
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The McClelland Lake advanced, about 90 kilometers north of Fort McMurray, consists of two giant patterned bogs – peat-producing wetlands with lengthy stretches of timber and shrubs separated by slim swimming pools. Its 60 sq. kilometers are dwelling to 12 sinkhole lakes, a uncommon landform created by the collapse of decrease rock layers.
Twenty uncommon or endangered plant species and communities stay there. Greater than 200 migratory fowl species, together with endangered whooping cranes, use it as a stopover.
It accommodates 11,000 years of amassed carbon-rich peat. First Nations have used it for hundreds of years.
The affiliation needs all the space protected, noting that it represents a small fraction of Alberta’s 4,750 sq. kilometers of mineable oil sands.
The advanced was excluded from improvement in 1996. That exclusion was lifted in 2002 for the portion of the wetland inside an oil sands lease then owned by True North Vitality.
On the time, the regulator estimated that the wetland was overlaying a billion barrels of bitumen.
The regulator permitted True North’s utility to develop the location, regardless of warnings from an environmental influence examine that mine drainage and different disturbances would probably kill the fen’s signature peat-forming mosses. The approval got here with situations that included creating a plan to guard the unexploited portion of the wetland.
![Click to play video: 'Residents against gravel mine expansion into wetlands'](https://i1.wp.com/media.globalnews.ca/videostatic/news/y4or75slkb-441kyf4999/WABAMUN_WETLANDS_THUMBNAIL.jpg?w=1040&quality=70&strip=all)
That plan, lastly submitted in 2021, is now being reconsidered, though the challenge now belongs to Fort Hills Vitality, which is majority-owned by Suncor Vitality Inc.
The plan envisions an advanced set of wells and pumps to manage and monitor water ranges and chemistry. However its centerpiece is a wall, almost 14 kilometers lengthy and between 20 and 70 meters deep, supposed to guard the unexploited wetland whereas the remaining is drained and excavated.
“It is untested,” stated Lorna Harris, an ecologist specializing in turf on the Wildlife Conservation Society, who has labored at universities in Canada and England. “We’ve no certainty that it’ll work.”
That wall should work for many years, she stated.
“We all know that these buildings do leak.
“We simply noticed (that) with (Imperial Oil’s) Kearl Lake (oil sands) tailings leaking just lately. That is additionally identified from different web sites.”
![Click to play video: 'Kearl oilsands: Alberta privacy watchdog investigating leak goes unreported for months'](https://i1.wp.com/media.globalnews.ca/videostatic/news/po7nnxxgrn-l8ago04aam/ONLINE_STILL_KEARL_LAKE_LEAK.jpg?w=1040&quality=70&strip=all)
The corporate admits plans for the wall are incomplete. “The water administration design options are at present in a conceptual stage and engineering work to advance the options is ongoing,” the plan states.
Harris, who co-authored the report with Kelly Biagi of Brock College, stated the Fort Hills plan additionally threatens the wetland’s delicate water chemistry.
“The species in that fen that the entire ecosystem will depend on, they rely upon that chemistry. As soon as you modify that, you are prone to lose that species.”
Efforts by different oil sands producers to rebuild fens have developed into various kinds of wetlands, Harris stated, and it is not clear whether or not these fens will produce peat and retailer carbon over the long run.
McClelland Lake does. The location is underlain by peat between two and eight meters deep.
“It is deep turf,” Harris stated. “That is quite a lot of carbon.”
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She stated she calculated that all the McClelland advanced shops the equal of between eight million and 35 million tons of carbon dioxide. The full quantity of carbon dioxide sequestered in Alberta’s carbon seize and storage applications since 2015 is 10.5 million tonnes.
Harris and Biagi additionally query Fort Hills’ plan to take care of water ranges, including that a lot of its modeling relies on a couple of years of knowledge — not ok, as local weather change adjustments the foundations.
In its September approval letter, the regulator listed strict monitoring situations. “The (regulator) expects the operations plan to incorporate triggers designed to detect important deviations from the anticipated efficiency as rapidly as sensible,” it says.
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In a separate letter, the regulator reminded the Alberta Wilderness Affiliation that the plan is the results of years of labor.
“Fort Hills is required to conduct additional monitoring, modeling and engineering research, with efficiency studies submitted … for evaluation. Subject material specialists will proceed to be concerned in reviewing the efficiency of the challenge.”
Suncor stated in an e mail that it’s dedicated to defending the unexploited portion of the wetland.
“The plan was the results of years of labor knowledgeable by a sustainability committee arrange in 2005, together with representatives from native Indigenous communities,” spokeswoman Leithan Slade wrote.
“The plan will proceed to be refined as further monitoring and modeling work is accomplished, in addition to additional engagement with the sustainability committee. Complete reporting to the (regulator) may also proceed all through the lifetime of the mine till closure.”
Harris warned that by the point catch adjustments are monitored, it is going to be too late.
She stated in locations like Europe, livestock are closely protected for his or her uniqueness and carbon storage capability. Mining of even a part of the McClelland Lake advanced is not going to be thought of there.
“I do not assume it might be acceptable elsewhere.”