'Every Tree and Plant Died': Massive Toxic Spill Guts Alberta

[Coyotl]

'Every Tree and Plant Died': Massive Toxic Spill Guts Alberta
http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2013/08/26/toxic-wastewater-spill-alberta-kills-dene-tha-landscape-150968

A toxic waste spill, the largest of its kind in North America, has destroyed a chunk of landscape in northern Alberta.

"The substance is the inky black colour of oil, and the treetops are brown," reported The Globe and Mail in a recent story. “Across a broad expanse of northern Alberta muskeg, the landscape is dead. It has been poisoned by a huge spill of 9.5 million litres of toxic waste from an oil and gas operation in northern Alberta, the third major leak in a region whose residents are now questioning whether enough is being done to maintain aging energy infrastructure."

...........

This leak is known as “produced water,” and it is water, laden with contaminants, that is piped off industrial developments in the Alberta Oil sands. ......

[CaliforniaPeggy]

1. ...

[AnotherDreamWeaver]

2. K&R. No Keystone pipeline, we don't want more of this. nt

[Harmony Blue]

3. This is really bad stuff

and sad to watch happen.

[Little Star]

4. It's headed our way. Fast. :(

[truedelphi]

5. How are climate deniers any worse than all the Democratic Leadership

Last edited Wed Aug 28, 2013, 02:20 AM - Edit history (1)

Fracking Damage Deniers?

Obama is trying to sell us this shit by claiming it is part of "natural gas as clean energy" and all that hooey.

And at least Republicans don't run on an environmental platform.

[Coyotl]

12. Outright LIE to bash Obama.

Alert sent.

Why would you define Dems as "Fracking Damage Deniers?" Don't you read DU. We are Dems and we are down on fracking and no Dem I know denies fracking's problems. I guess you miss what happened in ND between the Dems and the Rs on this issue.

When you say Obama is a shit salesman you should be more explicit. Otherwise, we don't know what flavor, cones or sandwiches, etc!

[truedelphi]

13. When he was here on the West Coast, Spring 2013, he told

Reporters that he would probably be approving the Keystone XL Pipeline because otherwise poor people would have trouble paying their utility bills. San Francicco Chronicle carried the exact quote.

It is true that Hillary Clinton came out against the Keystone XL Pipeline, but she conveniently waited to be outraged about it

One ) After her own State Department asked to have it approved!

Two) After the 2010 election, the count for votes for the Keystone XL Pipeline was pretty much now in the hands of the majority in the House, who happened to be House Republicans - so at that point it was much safer, in terms of keeping her puppet masters' appeased, for her to say she was against it.

How do you explain the Obama Administration totally gutting the entire power and ability of the EPA in terms of studying the harm and risks caused by fracking?? Watch the movie Gaslands II and then get back to me.

This agency, the EPA, is only as good as its people are. When the agency sacked its director, Lisa Jackson, when the agency told its mid level people to back off on the needed studies of the fracking fluids, all this shows us who Obama is in terms of the environment. When this stuff happened, Bush had been gone for years. There is only so much that can be blamed on him.

And Democratic former Governor Ed Rendell, boy oh boy has he ever cashed in on fracking! First he got it approved inside of Pennsylvannia, no holds barred, and water table be damned, and now he is one of the top energy company people, for a Texas energy firm.

[Coyotl]

14. Probably ... wild accusations without backing them up with facts, ....

I see which club you are in.

[truedelphi]

25. Newscasters saying what I am saying, and

Quoting the NY Times:

http://www.khastv.com/news/local/Obama-may-be-leaning-towards-XL-pipeline-approval-201535061.html

[NickB79]

30. Obama has been clear on his support for fracking

Under the auspices of it being "more environmentally friendly" than conventional means (despite evidence to the contrary):

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/27/obama-fracking-support_n_3510651.html

Groups like the Sierra Club aren't buying it, but the oil and gas companies are. That tells me all I need to know.

[freshwest]

6. About a decade ago, was checking out Canadian farmland. The low price in Alberta was great.

Prairie land the cheapest I'd seen, old farmsteads for sale as the owners had left and gone to the big city. This is a pattern I've seen IRL, too. Now I see why.

They must have sold the land and the rights as some American farmers did years ago, as shown in the movie, Gasland. This is what my farm would have turned into, a nightmare.

Development plans, zoning laws, who is buying what and why, water and mineral rights, none of that information was mentioned. The only way to know would be to go a local records office to see what was going on.

Great wealth, long term planning and scams. No new by any means; but fracking has changed the game. The land will not be worth anything to the people of the future.

[truedelphi]

26. In his words, right above yours, Coyotl refutes the idea that

Gaslands is anything but rhetoric devised by those SOB's who hate Obama. Maybe you could clue him in - you've witnessed the economic damage that the fracking has done.

[MrMickeysMom]

7. How sad...

There is a dinosaur museum in Alberta...

Now it can be dedicated to the earth...

[WCLinolVir]

8. A horrific war against our planet and our lives.

[DeSwiss]

9. K&R

[Supersedeas]

24. now there's at least one thousand words in the post

[dembotoz]

10. so syria is not the only country using poisons on its own land

[reformist2]

11. This makes me wonder, where does all the fracking water go?

I think I've heard they collect it, but do they really???

[Harmony Blue]

17. No it is dumped nearby

because collecting and transporting it to be treated is a lot of money.

[truedelphi]

27. Each single drilling operation takes a million gallons of fluid.

There aren't enough trucks in the world to cart off the effluvia.

And if there were, where in the world would they dump it?

This is nothing more than the destruction of our eco system - the land, the water, the air.

[reformist2]

29. So they claim fracking doesn't pollute the water supply, but they just go dump the chemical water?!

Something doesn't add up here! o_O

[truedelphi]

34. But apparently it does add up quite nicely for the One Percent

Who happen to control our entire government.

The EPA was doing ground breaking work, in terms of doing science that linked the "Fingerprint" of the molecular structure of the fluids that caused harm and could track it back to specific fracking formulas owned by each company. This type of research would have made it possiblr for harmed home and land owners to have grounds to sue.

Then suddenly Lisa Jackson, who headed the EPA was dismissed, and the mid level employees in charge of such scientific investigations were told to sit with their thumbs up their butts.

I guess Obama just had to follow the memo that the George Bush the IInd's energy crowd left him. No way around it - he can't make Republicans or energy companies unhappy.

[Berlum]

15. This whole Tar Sands-Pipeline cluster*ck is an insane Planetary Rape

[MineralMan]

16. The spill killed 103 acres of forest.

The pipeline, owned by Houston-based Apache Corp., is near Zama City, a northern Alberta town near the province’s border with the Northwest Territories. The spill covers 42 hectares, or 103 acres. Just as with the Cold Lake spill of bitumen, this wastewater leak may have begun back in the winter.

Read more at http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2013/08/26/toxic-wastewater-spill-alberta-kills-dene-tha-landscape-150968

Alberta, Canada is 255,541 sq mi in area. That is 163,546,240 acres. The spill killed 103 acres of forest. That is .0000063% of the area of Alberta.

Hardly a "gutting" of Alberta. The spill was bad, but it did not "gut" Alberta. Bad headline.

[Harmony Blue]

18. That gutted an integral part of the ecosystem in Alberta

so yes it is a gutting.

[MineralMan]

19. It's a bad thing. Perspective is important, though.

Farms also destroy ecosystems, and in far larger amounts. Perspective.

[AikidoSoul]

20. I'm surprised that you trivialized this post

This is just one of many thousands of poisoned areas of Canada. Think about how the wind carries the toxic plumes from this area for many miles. Petrochemical poisons. When people breathe the toxic plumes -- the neurotoxic chemicals go straight to the brain. There is no blood-brain barrier between the nose and the brain. That's why anesthesia is often delivered via that route. That's why many drugs are sniffed, because the rush is immediate.

Think of all the toxic brain injury in the world. Think of kids with learning disabilities. Think about memory loss, and many neurodegerative diseases that are becoming epidemic.

Yeah.... it's only one more site. But one by one by one by.....thousands. They all add up.

We should mourn this event... not trivialize it.

Oh yeah..... there's the toxic soil and the water table to consider too. Soil is mobile, and water travels in streams under the earth taking the toxicants long distances from the site of the spill.

[MineralMan]

22. I am trivializing nothing.

I am insisting on accuracy of reporting. There is a difference.

[NightWatcher]

21. Well shit, lets pump that through the middle of our country

...with no benefit for us, just a huge downside when a spill happens.

[a kennedy]

23. Was in Alberta for a vacation a few years ago......most beautiful area I'd seen in a long time.....

and this make my heart ache.

[SammyWinstonJack]

28. Keystone XL.......YaY!

[leveymg]

31. Thank "Progress": You can't make an omelet without killing all the trees and plants.

There are reasons they put off mining tar sand all those decades. This is one of them.

[avaistheone1]

32. Damn, there is so little press on this.

[malaise]

33. There was a time when they only did this in developing countries

Now it's anywhere, anytime with little exposure