From oilsands cave to wetland: Is Syncrude’s reclamation examination working?

Like a outrageous cookie cutter, the excavator lifted a frozen cut of wetland to exhibit centuries-old layers of peat and soil.

Eric Girard had no thought during a time whether a scholarship examination would even work, whether Syncrude could indeed transplant that square of wetland to a former oilsands cave and have it regrow.

The idea was to study ways to retrieve an open-pit mine and spin it behind into a healthy wetland, pronounced Girard, an agrologist and foliage dilettante with Fort McMurray-based energy company.

“It [was] all new,” he said. “Because we are perplexing techniques no one has ever tried.”

Half a decade after a work started, Girard and his group pronounced this week they have achieved some success with their multi-million-dollar reclamation plan called Sandhill Fen.

• Oilsands reclamation a failure, says ecologist

Lorne Shearing, Mildred Lake cave manager, left, and Eric Girard, an agrologist and foliage dilettante with Syncrude, spoke to a media on Tuesday. (David Thurton/CBC)

The association showed off a fruits of a investigate to a media this week, and talked about skeleton to enhance and request a believe gained to another site. 

But scientists who investigate Canada’s wetland contend it competence be too early to celebrate.

Lee Foote, who once worked on a Sandhill Fen project, commended a company’s efforts but pronounced he doubts Syncrude will ever lapse portions of a franchise into a primitive fen.

“It’s not a matter of either we can snap your fingers and go true to a finish and total wetland,” said Foote, a highbrow of wetland ecology and supervision during a University of Alberta. “The bigger doubt is, can we go to a broker organic wetland that’s distant improved than unclothed sand, stone and water?”

Wetland scholarship lab

Syncrude’s Mildred Lake upgrader north of Fort McMurray is a large industrial formidable of buildings, smokestacks and labyrinthine pipes.

But usually 5 kilometres down a highway lies Sandhill Fen, a 17-hectare plot sensuous with cattails, song birds and dragonflies. Nestled in a watershed, a slough is surrounded by sand-capped hummocks.

As recently as 2000, a area was still an open-pit mine.

Leaving Sandhill Fen #ymm Can we tell this wetland used to be an open array mine? #oilsands pic.twitter.com/opCamnTiBT

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@CBCDavid

Five years ago, Sandhill Fen became Syncrude’s outdoor lab, where a association has experimented with regenerating a tolerable watershed, work a Alberta supervision requires all oilsands franchise holders to eventually do.

Wetlands make adult about 70 per cent Syncrude’s 102,000 hectares of oilsands leases. Girard pronounced a association skeleton to retrieve about 30 per cent of that land as lakes, bogs, rivers and fens. The rest will incited into forest.

It has been 5 years given Syncrude began reclaiming on aged oilsands cave now called Sandhill Fen. (David Thurton/CBC)

A slough absorbs H2O during complicated rains and offers service to a desiccated landscape in times of drought. By formulating one, Syncrude researchers contend they’ve schooled profitable lessons about how most H2O is needed.

They’ve also schooled about a ideal conditions indispensable to furnish peat, a decomposed plant matter that is a vicious member of fens. So far, Girard said, they are usually saying millimetres of peat commencement to form.

“This is a immature ecosystem,” he said. “This is usually a starting of a wetland.”

‘Go a small bit slower’

Though Foote doubts oilsands companies can entirely retrieve wetlands, he pronounced he hopes the companies infer him wrong.

Until then, he would rather see on-going reclamation, where companies can usually ensue with some-more growth after they’ve entirely reclaimed a land they’ve disturbed.

“I would like to see things go a small bit slower,” he said. “As we learn more, we are authorised to speed up.”

But a University of Alberta researcher pronounced he doubts that will happen.

“Of course, a dollars subterraneous are going to expostulate people to pursue each final tub of oil,” Foote said. “And that infrequently needs a small bit of pull back.”

Syncrude declined to contend how most it has invested in Sandhill Fen. But in an educational paper, Foote estimated that oil companies would have to spend between $4.3 billion and $12.9 billion to retrieve all the oilsands wetlands.

CBC News and other media outlets were given a debate Tuesday of Sandhill Fen. (David Thurton/CBC)

University of Waterloo researcher Jonathan Price, who works on Suncor’s Nikanotee Fen, pronounced a jury is still out when it comes to reclaimed wetlands. Especially given a scale and cost of work required.

“It is intimidating,” Price said. “Because when we demeanour during a satellite picture and see a pinch of area we are operative at, and a outrageous area that needs reclamation, we commend there are going to be outrageous hurdles ahead.”

Nevertheless, he said he’s vehement about what has been achieved and stays committed to bargain how to pattern a ideal conditions for fens to thrive.

Syncrude straightforwardly admits that a towering of work remains, and substantial costs still need to be factored in. But Girard said Sandhill Fen is usually a beginning.

“I consider if anyone who would come here and unequivocally take a time to see what was combined could see a potential,” he said.

Syncrude is confident enough in a science, he said, that subsequent winter a association will use what is has schooled to deposit in seeding another 87-hectare wetland and forested area.

Follow David Thurton, CBC’s Fort McMurray correspondent, on Facebook, Twitter or hit him via email. 

Article source: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/oilsands-environment-open-pit-mine-wetland-sandhil-fen-1.4252851?cmp=rss