This month's National Geographic has a story on the oil sands and the area, with several mentions of Fort McMurray. For those who are interested.
I got through the first page so far. First comment: Jim Boucher is chief of the richest Aboriginal band in Canada.
Good read. My original comments were pretty much bang on, except I should also throw in that apparently it kills lots of people too!
I just finished it too. Interesting read. I'd like to take a helicopter ride around there to see it from the air. But it's pretty much what I expected it to be.
It's all about pros vs cons... there are hundreds of things we're doing to destroy the environment that don't make the country billions of dollars, if we're going to start hardcore cramping our lifestyle to change the environment why not start with them I'm very pro-oil sands... they might be responsible for a few thousand wildlife deaths a year, no big deal we've got millions more where they came from.
Just about every mine in the world has tailings. I don't understand why our tailings are such a big deal compared to everyone else's.
Well - this process seems to use more water than typical mining processes, so there's more chances of it leeching and contaminating watersheds.
The only tailings pond near the river systems is the one at Suncor mentioned in the article. There are strict regulations that have been in place for years stating that tailings ponds have to be so far from fresh water lakes/rivers. The one pond that has potential to leak into the river system has been there for 25 years. It is also the one that Suncor is giving priority to for reclaimation.
Wirelessly posted (BlackBerry7130e/4.1.0 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/126) I enjoy living near thunder.
Wirelessly posted (BlackBerry7130e/4.1.0 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/126) Prove it.
rory or rob answer me this. I looked it up on wiki but didn't answer my quesiton. The tailing ponds are water/oil etc etc from the seperating process. my question is: Is the water reused after the solids left in the water sink to the bottom?
nothing. thats the point. The sand sinks to the bottom. once its full of sand, they reclaim it and put a heard of buffalo on it.
I read the article last night (in the magazine). The mentioned that the oldest one of the trail ponds was on a river. They didn't make it out like they all were. I don't think they were unfairly biased toward the environment. It is what it is. All mines are pretty similar in that respect, and this process does use a lot more heated water, so it uses more energy to process. :shrugs:
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2009/03/canadian-oil-sands/essick-photography Last pic in the slide show. *EDIT* - opps, last pic on the initial 9 that come up.
Thats the one I was talking about thats been there for years. Its near the river, but not on the river by any means. If you saw it in person, you'd understand. I took the hovercraft home last week and was 100 ft from it. The river bank is about 40 ft straight up and the road on the top is a haul road that heavy equipment uses. Obviously, its way too close to the river and they do get seepage into the river (as it states in the article) and they need to reclaim it as soon as possible.
The article and caption say it's the old one. Although I find it hard to say it's not on the river. I mean - it shares a (man-made) border with it, no matter how wide it is. According to the article it isn't in use and is on some state of clean up. I don't know how long they have to let it settle for before the process begins. Or what exactly they're going to do. Am I right to assume the ponds in the foreground with the oil skims on top are amoung those they're talking about?
Wirelessly posted (BlackBerry7130e/4.1.0 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/126) The only fresh bodies of water in that pic are the river and the one that looks like a lightbulb at the top. The rest are tailings ponds. Syncrude is currently reclaiming the one in the top left.
