Ed and I were on a reconnaissance mission, scouting out the area and seeing what people think in advance of a delegation of church leaders we will be taking to Alberta in May. Their task? To try and understand and formulate a faith-based response to the social, economic, and ecological impacts of the largest industrial expansion in the world.
Relatively speaking, we had a bit of a soft start, meeting with representatives of two of the local First Nations and then some industry types who also happen to go to the United Church. Then we took a little drive to see a couple of the biggest and oldest projects: Suncor and Syncrude.
On the way, we saw a land reclamation project at Crane Lake, courtesy of Suncor.
Beautiful, no?
Well, when you look beyond the barley plantings and the young larch and poplar trees, no. That's Syncrude in the background.
And this is a cannon at nearby Mildred Lake, one of Syncrude's tailings ponds. It fires a round every 15 seconds or so, to prevent ducks from landing on the huge reservoirs of toxic waste that remain after bitumen is removed from the tar sand to make synthetic crude.
It has the unfortunate impact of preventing ducks from landing at nearby Crane Lake, too. We saw five ducks. I heard a couple of songbirds, and we saw a few dragonflies. A pretty sparse boreal experience. Still, I suppose that the cannon method is an improvement over the old practice of letting the ducks land in the tailings and then shooting them.
Tailings ponds eventually dry up, and leave behind piles of fine white sand. These form the post-industrial landscape of Mildred Lake, and driving through, we felt as if we were on the moon.
Violet Clarke, a Treaty 8 Elder, said that she didn't know why they persisted in still calling it a lake.
And this was just the beginning.
1 comment:
This is very eye-opening. We really need to get our heads out of the sand (no pun intended) and start taking care of our earth.
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