| A controversial oilsands project that will eventually destroy half of a major wetland in northern Alberta is one of the strongest examples of how oilsands development is taking precedence over environmental protection in northern Alberta’s boreal forest, say environmentalists.
Petro Canada’s Fort Hills project will eventually involve strip mining up to 49 per cent of McClellan Lake Wetlands, an area that was nominated for protection under the province’s Special Places 2000 initiative. Special Places 2000 involved extensive consultation with Albertans about the location of protected areas.
The wetlands were protected from development under the province’s 1996 Fort McMurray-Athabasca Oil Sands Subregional Integrated Resource Plan (IRP). However, the Alberta government amended the IRP in order to allow development in the wetland. The project received approval from the Alberta Energy and Utilities Board (AEUB) in 2002. Petro Canada, along with its partners UTS Energy Corporation and Teck Cominco, are expected to start construction of the oilsands mine in 2009 to recover the estimated one billion barrels of bitumen underlying the area.
University of Iowa botanist Diana Horton, who has studied the McClellan Lake Wetlands, says she is "absolutely appalled" that the project is proceeding.
"The boreal forest is one of the last great wilderness areas in the world and it’s being destroyed not for the benefit of Albertans and Canadians but for the benefit of Americans," says Horton, who grew up in Alberta. "The Alberta government has sold out our most important resource – our natural resources. Albertans and Canadians need to be standing up and screaming about what is being done here. We are leaving nothing for future generations of what this landscape was. It’s all going to be remade. It’s going to be filled-in pits with tree farms on it.
The McLelland Lake Wetlands contains patterned fens (peat-covered wetlands with ridges and hollows), McLelland Lake and 12 karst sinkholes. The wetlands are used by 205 recorded bird species, including the endangered whooping crane. It is also home to species of concern such as Canadian toads, sandhill cranes, yellow rails, black terns and short-eared owls and is also home to a number of rare plants. The Alberta Wilderness Association and the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society have both lobbied hard for its protection.
Chris Dawson, spokesperson for Petro Canada, says it will be "at least a decade" until any mining activity happens within the wetland area. He says first the company has to prove to Alberta Environment and the EUB that it has a solid plan to protect the unmined portion of the wetland area.
He says Petro Canada has created a McClelland Lake Wetland Complex Sustainability Committee, comprised of representatives from government, First Nations, and one environmental representative, to come up with a plan to protect the portion of the wetland that isn’t mined and to reclaim the strip mined wetland area after the oilsands project is finished.
However, he says there’s no doubt the project will proceed after Petro Canada and its partners have come up with a workable mitigation plan.
"There is approximately one billion barrels of bitumen resource under the portion of the wetlands that we have approval to mine, which is essential, as is the rest of the oilsands development, to meeting consumer demand," he says.
"We think, and the government regulators agree with us, that there’s a large resource there we can tap as long as we can prove in the longer term that the area can be reclaimed."
Horton says if 49 per cent of the wetland is mined it will threaten the "ecological integrity" of the entire area.
"It’s time Albertans stood up together and said enough is enough," she says.
"Albertans need to recognize we need to set some of these areas aside. If we’re going to allow the tar sands to go ahead we need to ensure some areas are set aside as ecological reserves so future generations will know what the landscape looked like," she says. |
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