'Irritated' N.W.T. minister learned of Suncor spill into Athabasca River when media called

The N.W.T.'s environment minister says he only learned about a spill of nearly six million litres of water from a Suncor oilsands sediment pond into the Athabasca River when he received a call from the Globe and Mail.

It's the second time the Alberta government has failed to notify the territory of a spill that could impact northern waters. It comes just weeks after news broke that Imperial Oil's Kearl mine had been leaking contaminated water for months.

"We did not hear about it, and that really irritated us, for sure," said Shane Thompson, minister of Environment and Climate Change, Monday morning.

"Our staff are monitoring the situation ... and again, we're giving [Alberta] one more chance on it."

The water in question spilled from a pond at the Fort Hills oilsands mine earlier this month, and had more than twice the allowed limit of solids suspended in the water.

Last week, Suncor spokesperson Erin Rees characterized it as "surface water that has a high natural silt content" — sediment that would normally be allowed to settle before the water goes into a creek that drains into the Athabasca River.

In an email to CBC last week, the Alberta Energy Regulators stressed that the water didn't leak from a tailings pond, but rather was drainage from surrounding landscapes. That includes muskeg, rock and soil over bitumen, material being stored for reclamation and other areas that haven't been disturbed by mining.

While some groups, including Environment Canada and two nearby First Nations, were notified, the N.W.T. was not.

That's despite a transboundary water management agreement that requires Alberta to notify the N.W.T. of such spills.

Thompson said he met with Alberta Environment Minister Sonya Savage last Wednesday to express his concerns.

"I can say that Minister Savage was just as upset as I was," he said. "My biggest issue [is], you know, the transboundary agreement does not work if there's a gap in communication [and] information-sharing between partners."

Wednesday's meeting with Savage was originally supposed to be a technical update on a number of reports. Instead, Thompson said he and Savage hashed out a number of commitments to improve the way Alberta communicates about such spills.

"We had a really good conversation ... and Minister Savage did, you know, apologize for the lack of communication," he said.

Thompson is set to appear before a federal committee Monday morning to discuss the issue of tailings pond leaks.

He said the message he plans to deliver is twofold: water is life, and this issue transcends politics.

"This is about people's lives. We're worried about it," he said.

"At the end of the day, everybody needs to be respectful of us because we are impacted. It goes all the way from the Alberta border, all the way up to the ocean. So they need to understand that."