Earth Equity News

Oil Sands Will Pollute Great Lakes, Report Warns. By Martin Mittelstaedt, Toronto Globe and Mail, October 8, 2008. "The environmental impacts of Alberta's oil sands will not be restricted to Western Canada, researchers say, but will extend thousands of kilometres away to the Great Lakes, threatening water and air quality around the world's largest body of fresh water. In a new report, the University of Toronto's Munk Centre says the massive refinery expansions needed to process tar sands crude, and the new pipeline networks for transporting the fuel, amount to a 'pollution delivery system' connecting Alberta to the Great Lakes region of Canada and the U.S. It warns that the refineries will be using the Great Lakes 'as a cheap supply' source for their copious water needs and the area's air 'as a pollution dump.' The report, which is being released today [Wednesday] at a conference at the university, says that as many as 17 major refinery expansions around the lakes are being considered for turning the tar-like Alberta bitumen into gasoline and other petroleum products. While not all will be undertaken, enough of them will be to have a regional environmental impact. Proposed pipeline and refinery projects around the lakes are expected to lead to total investments of more than $31-billion (U.S.) by 2015, spending similar in scale to expenditures at many oil sands projects. For this reason, the report says the various projects, when taken together, threaten to 'wipe out many of the pollution control gains' achieved around the lakes since the 1970s."