This Massive Waste Water Spill Will Turn a Canadian Forest Into a Dead Zone for at Least a Year

With an economy based primarily on oil and gas extraction, the Canadian province of Alberta has averaged an incredible two crude oil spills per day for the last 37 years. Add those up and the total is over 28,500 individual incidents. Beyond that, there have also been an additional 31,453 spills of other pipeline substances. With "holy shit" numbers like these, it’s no wonder then that a little more than two weeks ago, Alberta saw one of the largest spills not only in its own recent history, but in all of North America.

Estimates by the Apache Corporation, the Houston-based multinational oil and gas company that operates the faulty pipeline in question, place the quantity of leaked substance at 9.5 million liters. It has affected over 42 hectares (or 94 football fields) of land roughly 13 miles from the ecologically precious Hay-Zama wetlands. While some reports call the spilled liquid “toxic waste,” Apache utilized the technical, but definitely more mild-mannered and almost euphemistic term “produced water.”

Produced water, as it is known in the energy industry, is a common byproduct of oil and gas extraction. In the United States, there are seven barrels of it for every one barrel of extracted oil. While the contents of produced water vary by operation and geology, it can contain environmentally damaging materials like salt, oil/grease, chemicals, and naturally occurring radioactive material (NORM). In the Zama case, Bob Curran of the Energy Resources Conservation Board (ERCB) said in an email that the water contained only trace amounts of oil (200 parts per million). Elsewhere, he commented that the water is high in salt.

Beyond these basics, no other information has been divulged on the exact nature of the liquid, and what has been said has been played down. It seems as though the implicit suggestion in all official communication is that salt isn’t as bad as oil. Not true. Even if the water isn’t oily, briny water can be fatal to plants as it hinders their accessibility to water. While oil might be more difficult to clean up, a specialist in wetlands ecology who spoke to CBC News stated unequivocally that the salt will kill vegetation near Zama, transforming the affected area into a dead zone for at least a year or more.

Chief James Ahnassay of the Dene Tha’, an aboriginal community that lives and harvests near the tainted location, suggests that massive death of plant life has already occurred. According to him, every plant and tree in the area has died, photographs seem to confirm widespread environmental damage. Strips of brown trees interrupt an otherwise verdant forest. A sludgy, oily-looking mixture lies stagnant in the middle of the woods. Apache is conducting wildlife, aquatic, and vegetation studies, but there has been no readily available company comment on the condition of Zama plant life just yet, though they have said "there are no visible impacts on wildlife."

From the environmental nonprofit community to political groups like the New Democrats, one of the primary concerns with the Zama spill is that neither the government nor Apache were forthcoming with publicizing the incident to those it could affect. Transparency can save everyone a lot of grief in a lot of situations, but apparently, it's harder than it looks. The leak was discovered via a flyover by Apache on June 1. However, it wasn’t until the middle of last week when the public at large was notified.

That only happened, it seems, when the company's and government's hands were collectively forced by a local resident reporting the spill to a television station. The Dene say that the ERCB only reported to them 11 days after the fact, once their own field technician had already been onsite and noted the damage. Given the enormity of the spill, the Dene Tha' expressed fears that it may have been going on since last winter, a charge that Apache denies.

Mike Hudema of Greenpeace Canada has been a vocal critic of what he calls a “pattern of silence” surrounding this incident. In his two blogs on the subject, Hudema wonders how many other spills are being kept secret. When asked what he thinks or hopes this will mean for the future of the Canadian energy industry, Hudema said, “I hope it gives all jurisdictions that are considering new tar sands pipelines a sober, second thought. Pipelines can and do spill and tar sands spills are harder to clean up and can be much more devastating to the environment. We need to be moving away from new pipeline infrastructure and toward a green energy future because when you have a solar spill, they just call it a nice day."