The massive daily pollution occurring at the Athabasca Oilsands can be eliminated by pumping the waste effluent into large holding tanks. After each tank is filled, the oily water is allowed to settle and thus naturally separates into layers - the top being lighter oil, the middle mostly water (routed for further cleaning), and the bottom heavy oils and sand. So once we know how many days it takes to effectively separate components, then we can calculate how many tanks are needed to handle the volume of waste water (currently 12 barrels water used per 1 barrel of oil, only 2/3 recovered). The extracted oil and heavy oil will pay a part of the costs of building tanks and maintaining the clean water recovery.
The purified waste water could be exported to the USA (which usually wants more Canadian water) as industrial grade water, which would reduce the US industrial demands on US public clean water sources, and better protect the pristine Arctic waters.
There is no price too high to conserve the nearby rivers pure water and to preserve and the worlds Oceans and the precious lives therein. I recently watched the Disney movie OCEANS and have to applaud their sponsors and the production crews efforts. They strive to educate the public about the dangers facing all life in our worlds oceans - like the charitable group OCEANA, and Jacques Cousteau family, along with many scientists and worldwide supporters like you.
There are ways to substantially reduce the above ground mining damages too (why not ONLY underground mining ? - next blog). I would personally prefer using low environmental impact oil from the Middle East, but that is risky ocean shipping, and unreliable due to wars of religion and territory. So given how close we are to USA, and the massive Chinese investments in Canada (including NORANDA Mines), we are stuck with Alberta Oilsands which holds about 170 Billion barrels.
So we, the international public, have to pressure the Alberta Govt ( Premier Stelmach and his elected members ) and the Alberta public (including Prime Minister Harper of Calgary, Alberta and all of his Alberta Federal Government politicians ) to all get onboard with passing effective, enforced laws to ensure that big oil profits and wealth is used to quickly fund this easy solution. China now owns majority control of Syncrude, Ontario Teachers Pension funds controls most of SUNCOR's stock. President Obama and American public has a major say too, since the USA is a major importer of oilsands bitumen/oil. So it is really in the hands of international public, not just Alberta/Canada's people and governments to blame. Will you pressure your governments to pressure ours ? Will you pay 5 cents per litre or 25 cents per gallon more for gasoline just to guarantee reducing oilsands pollution ? A small price to pay... a large benefit for future generations and saving other nature lives today.
The fault of need is everyones, so the solution must be too. The first step of responsible, adult behaviour is to eliminate oilsands pollution. Come on everyone, we can solve this !!
