Oilsands companies working on plan to release wastewater into Athabasca

Alberta's resources industry is researching ways to treat toxic wastewater from oilsands production so it is safe enough to pump back into the Athabasca River, according to senior managers from major companies and a chief industry scientist.

The water is currently contained in massive tailings ponds but government is pressuring industry to come up with a solution to treat the water.

"The responsibility is to treat the water to be capable of being released back to the natural environment and there will be regulations of what that water quality is," said Mark Shaw, vice president in charge of environment at Suncor.

The Oilsands Tailings Research Facility in Devon, Alta., just outside of Edmonton, was set up to research and develop ways to deal with tailings and reduce their environmental impact.  The facility is funded by both industry and the government.

Dave Sego, a civil and environmental engineering professor at the University of Alberta, is the facility's principal investigator.

"There [are] a number of students working on commercial technologies to treat the water to release it to the environment," Sego said.

Sego said water from the oilsands will not be released into the river until the technology is found to properly treat it.

"It's only going to be released when it meets the safety criteria for safe discharge,"  he said.

Still the plan is alarming people in Northern Alberta and the Northwest Territories.  Water from the Athabasca River flows north into the Arctic and eventually empties into the Beaufort Sea.

"I'm very surprised …,"  said George Poitras, a leader with the Mikisew Cree First Nation in Fort Chipewyan, Alta.

"Can you take poison out of water and make it 100 per cent clear and pure again to deposit it into the Athabasca river? I don't think so."

Michael Miltenberger, deputy premier and environment minister for the Northwest Territories, also expressed concern with the plan.

"There is a concern already with cumulative impact," he said Wednesday.  "This is another piece, another concern that gets added to the list that we're trying to sort out."

Miltenberger is also the MLA for the riding of Thebacha which is located immediately north of the border between Alberta and the Northwest Territories.

He said anything that could effect water raises fears among his constituents.

"We're not very far away," he said. "That watershed narrows down into the Slave River. So the concern's already there. And things that happen like this further fan the anxiety and fear that people have in the jurisdiction."

Miltenberger said the Northwest Territories will now have to be involved in any discussions on treating and releasing that industrial wastewater.