30 Fairmont Park Lane S
Lethbridge, AB
T1K 7H7
Phone: (403) 328-1804
Friday, December 11, 2009
The Editor
The Lethbridge Herald
P.O. Box 670
Lethbridge, AB, T1J 3Z7
A front page story in the Herald of 09/12/08 indicates; “Oilsands pollution worse than thought”. A report attributed to Dr. David Schindler estimates 3.5 tonnes of “raw bitumen and carcinogenic polycyclic aromatic compounds” are falling within the environs of the Syncrude and Suncor plant near Fort McMurray. Wow! Isn’t that impressive? Maybe not!
Readers know that Alberta’s roads are paved with asphalt. Information on asphalt from the Environment Canada website indicates some 30 million tonnes of asphalt containing about 1.5 million tonnes of bitumen is used on Canada’s roads annually. It is apparent, from the change in texture of road surfaces, in the months and years after paving, that a fair amount of that is evaporated and/or worn from the road surface ending up in the air, soil, and water. Is Dr. Schindler’s finding significant in comparison with that? Lethbridge paved quite a few streets this summer. Maybe the Tides Foundation and the Walter and Gordon Duncan Foundation, that funded this oil sands environmental impact study, should also have financed Dr. Schindler and colleagues to determine the resultant levels of bitumen contamination in our lands and water.
It might clearly show that the report in the Herald is just another of the countless barrage of environment related scare stories and activities that deserve to be ignored. One wonders if environmental organizations have ever heard the story of the boy and the wolf.
Yours truly,
Duane Pendergast