Oil sands operations are polluting the Athabasca River system, researchers said Monday, contradicting the Alberta government's assertions that toxins in the watershed are naturally occurring.
In a study likely to add more fuel to the environmental battle over Canada's oil sands development, researchers said mercury, arsenic, lead and cadmium are among 13 toxins being released into the Athabasca, which flows north through the region's major oil sands operations.
The findings of the study, coauthored by University of Alberta biological scientists Erin Kelly and David Schindler, should be a signal for the Alberta provincial government to finally consider limits on oil sands development, Schindler said.
"I really think it's time to cut down the expansion until some of those problems and how to reduce them are solved," he said in an interview.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency considers the substances to be priority pollutants. They are known to be toxic in low concentrations.
The environmental impact of developing the oil sands, the biggest reserves of crude outside the Middle East, has been a topic of snowballing controversy in Canada and around the world. The Alberta government has devoted millions of dollars to defend the multibillion-dollar industry.
The latest research is published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Schindler said the incidence of pollutants in fish is particularly worrisome, as local populations depend on the region's fishery for food.
"I don't think the concentrations alone are dangerous. I worry about some of them, like mercury, because there, parts per trillion translate into parts per million in fish," he said.
A government-supported and industry-funded agency, called the Regional Aquatics Monitoring Program, has published material as recently as 2009 saying the Athabasca's water quality is similar to conditions before oil sands development.
But Schindler said the RAMP monitoring and findings "violate every rule" of long-term study and his research showed the opposite.
"We deliberately planned the study to test that claim," he said.
Sampling both upstream and downstream from industrial activity showed higher concentrations of pollutants closer to the oil sands plants, he said.
In addition, the findings are similar to the industry's own reporting of emissions to the Canadian government's National Pollutant Release Inventory.
RAMP spokesman Fred Kuzmic defended the program, saying Schindler's criticism is nothing new, and is based on a 2004 peer review that triggered 64 improvements in monitoring practices. It is undergoing another peer review scheduled to be completed by the end of the year.
"We had offered Dr. Schindler one of the eight positions to review our program and he had declined to participate in that peer review," Kuzmic said. "We do have eight other academics that were selected by an independent party that RAMP contracted to work at arm's length."
RAMP's studies have shown instances where there are higher concentrations of pollutants closer to the oil sands operations, he said.
"But that's not unexpected because the rivers run through the oil sands deposits themselves," Kuzmic said.
He did not go so far, however, as saying the new report is flawed, citing a need to study it in more detail.
Schindler said airborne pollutants that are contaminating land and water should be reasonably simple for the oil industry to reduce, based on technology available for cutting emissions, but he urged more stringent regulations for water.
The study's other authors are Peter Hodson of Queens University; Jeffrey Short of Oceana, Juneau; and Roseanna Radmanovich and Charlene Nielsen of the University of Alberta.