2008.02.01

The Globe & Mail has been running Shifting Sands, a week-long series of articles on the underside of the Alberta tar sands boom.  For those who haven't seen them, I recommend them all, though my preferred articles are Part III, on the possible long-term economic and demographic effects of the boom on small towns in the Atlantic provinces; Part V, on the future post-boom economy (using Norway as an example); and the latest part, Part VI, on the growing environmental problem caused by it.

A few choice quotes from the latter:

Today, says Randy Mikula, the head of tailings research at Natural Resources Canada who has been studying the problem since the 1980s, there is enough suspended clay floating in the ponds to fill a ditch 20 metres wide and 10 metres deep from Fort McMurray to Edmonton to Ottawa.

By 2010, Suncor says it will have reclaimed its first tailings pond, a 217-hectare body of waste water that sits next to the Athabasca River, but the company is doing so by moving most of the watery tailings to another, newer, lake.