Yale Environment 360: Tar Sands Industry Approaching Tipping Point On Water Use, Pollution?

[hatrack]

EDIT

A growing number of scientists and economists believe the tar sands industry has already reached a tipping point in its dependence on both surface and groundwater. They contend that the timing and magnitude of these diversions are drying up wetlands, disrupting water flows, and potentially threatening riparian habitats thousands of miles downstream along the Mackenzie River basin, which drains 20 per cent of Canada.

“Nowhere in the world are we seeing this amount of groundwater being used for industrial development,” says William Donahue, a freshwater scientist, lawyer, and special advisor to Water Matters, an Alberta-based think tank. “The scale of these withdrawals is massive and totally unsustainable.”

Henry Vaux, a natural resource economist at the University of California, Riverside, and lead author of a recent report on the Mackenzie River Basin by the Rosenberg International Forum on Water Policy, says it’s time that the tar sands industry’s exploitation of water be addressed.

“It’s an alarming scenario,” says Vaux, whose report links heavy water use by the tar sands to potentially harmful changes in the Mackenzie River Basin, including water pollution, wetlands destruction, and changes in drainage patterns in the Mackenzie headwaters. “Given the rate of expansion in the industry, it’s going to get a lot worse.”

EDIT

http://e360.yale.edu/feature/with_tar_sands_development_growing_concern_on_water_use/2672/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+YaleEnvironment360+%28Yale+Environment+360%29

[cprise]

1. K&R