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Recreation and Community Centre Staff

Environment Pipeline Spills

By RENÉE FRANCOEURThe once-lush wetlands

around Zama City in north-ern Alberta, about 100 km south of the Northwest Ter-ritories border, are slick with toxic wastewater after one of the largest spills in Alberta’s history.

About 9.5 million litres of contaminated water from oil production soaked into 42 hectares of land, reaching within 1.5 km of the Zama River on June 1.

The cause of the leak re-mains under investigation.

Crews have shut down the affected water injec-tion pipeline, contained the spill and begun cleanup and remediation operations, said a recent release from Apache Canada Ltd., the company running the Zama operations.

A f leet of “specialized equipment has been deployed to support environmental remediation efforts, which include wildlife, amphibian and vegetation studies,” the company said.

According to Apache, the Zama River has not been im-pacted and there is no risk to the public.

The Dene Tha’ First Na-tion, which has traditional traplines in the affected area, is worried the spill

9.5 million litres of toxic wastewater spill near Zama

may contain a number of materials, including hydro-carbons, sulphurous com-pounds, metals, radioactive materials and chemicals that have contaminated the water and may have killed fi sh, birds and wildlife, compro-mising the health of First

Nation members and their Treaty 8 rights to harvest in the area.

According to a press re-lease, a Dene Tha’ field technician visited the site on June 6 and noted all plants and trees affected by the spill had died, and that “the

contamination had saturated the muskeg in the area.” He also found spill material in an uncontained culvert, prompting concerns that the spill may not be fully contained.

On June 13, another fi eld technician advised that “fl uid

is still being released from the pipe, but is now contained within in a storage pit that is pumped out into holding tanks. Given the amount of dead vegetation in the area - which was clearly visible from a helicopter - Dene Tha’ worries that the spill may have been occurring for a long period of time, al-though Apache has advised the pipeline breach was re-ported on June 1.”

According to the First Na-tion, the Energy Resources Conservation Board (ERCB) did not contact Dene Tha' to discuss details of the spill until 11 days after the date Apache believes the spill occurred.

They are calling for the Alberta government to re-quire companies to imple-ment more effective safety measures to help decrease the number of spills.

This is the second leak to affect the Dene Tha’ First Nation in just over a year. Approximately 22,000 bar-rels of oil were released into the muskeg about 20 km southeast of Rainbow Lake in northern Alberta last May after Pace Oil and Gas discovered a pipe-line leak.

A following spill last June near Sundre, Alta.

pol luted the Red Deer River after about 475,000 lit res of oil gushed out from a leak.

Similarly, a spill of 4.5 mil-lion litres in April 2011 near the community of Little Buf-falo, Alberta charged Plains Midstream earlier this year for three counts of violat-ing environmental protec-tion laws.

“There have been discus-sions with the Dene and a meeting with the government is scheduled for this week, I believe,” Nikki Booth, a communications represen-tative from Alberta's En-vironment and Sustainable Resource Development de-partment, told The JournalMonday.

“Obviously, these things are unfortunate, but we have a number of measures in place through EPEA (the Environmental Protection and Enhancement Act) and the ERCB also has a num-ber of things in place, and we have expectations of the company when it comes to cleanup and contain-ment and we are on site to monitor those things and make sure they are done properly.”

There was no delay in reporting the spill, Booth said.

Phot

o: D

ene

Tha’

Fir

st N

atio

n

The Dene Tha’ First Nation of northern Alberta is worried about the effects of the recent toxic wastewater spill will have on wildlife in the band’s traditional harvesting area.