Oil Sands Truth: Shut Down the Tar Sands

Social Impacts

Social Impacts. Overnight injections of migrant workers will not build healthy communities and can have severely adverse impacts on existing communities, especially those of indigenous nations on their traditional lands. Such development brings vices and long term displacement too often. Drugs, alcohol and associated violence spreads. Hunting becomes difficult when the land is threatened, leading to a further loss of culture and tradition. In towns like Fort McMurray there is no planning for the future, but merely consumption in the present. However transient the individuals may be, the populations will not leave, as “development” takes on a logic all its own. All levels of run away development are subordinate to that development, not social need.

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Mercury in eggs downstream from tar sands grows 50 per cent: study

Mercury in eggs downstream from oil sands grows 50 per cent: study
Bob Weber
Edmonton— The Canadian Press
Published Friday, Oct. 01, 2010

A study by Environment Canada indicates levels of toxic mercury in the eggs of water birds downstream from the oil-sands industry seem to have grown by nearly 50 per cent over the last three decades.

The study, one of the few to compare the region's ecosystem before and after its industrial boom, doesn't tie the increased mercury specifically to energy development.

Canada announces tar sands water review panel members

Canada announces oil sands water review panel members
By Stephanie Dearing.
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Canada's Environment Minister, Jim Prentice, unveiled his picks for the six person review panel he had announced he would set up. The panel is to review all the Alberta oil sands water monitoring information.

Prentice's follow-through on his announcement to form the panel in September caught Alberta off balance, said The Tyee's Andrew Nikiforuk. The federal government of Canada has had a 'hands-off' approach when it comes to the oil sands developments.

Port will be key link in controversial Canadian oil project

By Aaron Corvin
Columbian Staff writer
October 1, 2010

Monday, the Port of Vancouver will display its ability to handle huge, odd-looking international cargo, generating revenue and fulfilling long-term economic-development objectives along the way.

Great Lakes Region: Refinery emissions could pollute our water

Refinery emissions could pollute our water
Published On Sun Sep 12 2010

David Israelson Special to the Star

As Canadians look with dismay at the aftermath of the BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico, it turns out that’s not the only place we need to worry about leaking oil.

What happened in the Gulf has implications for what happens to water in Canada, right here on the Great Lakes. There’s ever-increasing pressure to supply the oil-thirsty U.S. with more product from Alberta’s tar sands.

Syncrude chairman in Vancouver defends tarsands

Chairman says carbon emissions have been reduced

By Damian Inwood,
The Province
September 10, 2010

Syncrude Canada chairman Marcel Coutu stood before a business-friendly Vancouver lunch crowd and fired a salvo in defence of the Alberta tarsands giant's environmental record.

NASA scientist to testify at Total tar sands hearing

NASA scientist to testify at Total oilsands hearing

The Canadian Press

Date: Sunday Sep. 19, 2010 10:15 AM ET

One of NASA's top scientists will appear at hearings into a proposed oilsands project to warn about the climate change consequences of approving Total E&P Canada's $2-billion plan to build the Joslyn North mine.

James Hansen, head of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, is slated to testify at public hearings into the proposal, which begin Tuesday in Fort McMurray, Alta.

Foundations and the Environmental Movement

September 13, 2010
An Interview With Daniel Faber

By MICHAEL BARKER

Ottawa tightens muzzle on climate change, tar sands

Ottawa tightens muzzle

Documents reveal scientists need approval from minister's office before speaking with major media - a measure one researcher calls 'Orwellian'

By MARGARET MUNRO, Postmedia News
September 13, 2010

The Harper government has tightened the muzzle on federal scientists, going so far as to control when and what they can say about floods at the end of the last ice age.

Enbridge shuts third line in U.S. due to leak

By Shaun Polczer, Calgary Herald
September 14, 2010

Enbridge Inc. on Monday said it had substantially cleaned up an oil spill in Illinois even as a third export line to the U.S. was shut down after a leak near Buffalo, N.Y.

Enbridge Energy Partners, the Houston-based affiliate that operates Enbridge's U.S. pipeline network, reported that 6,100 barrels escaped from its Line 6A into an industrial park near Romeoville, Ill., on Thursday, and that 6,050 barrels had been sucked up by vacuum trucks over the weekend.

Utah agency approves tar-sands project

Utah agency approves oil-sands project

By PAUL FOY (AP) – September 13, 2010

SALT LAKE CITY — A top Utah regulator approved plans Monday for the first commercial U.S. oil sands project.

John Baza, director of Utah's Division of Oil, Gas & Mining, upheld an earlier decision by his staff to give Earth Energy Resources Inc. a permit to mine a 62-acre pit in eastern Utah.

Environmental activists had objected to the project and demanded a hearing held by Baza in July.