This Is What Criminal Insanity Looks Like: 'Every Plant And Tree Died'

A massive toxic waste spill from an oil and gas underground blowout in northern Alberta, one of the largest environmental disasters in North America, occurred around June 1, but Texas-based Apache Corp. didn’t reveal the size of the spill – over 1000 acres – until June 12. Even then, the whole truth was untold.

Environmental disasters having a direct negative impact on humans have been predicted to escalate in size, number and intensity as fossil fuel extraction becomes riskier to suck as much as possible out of Earth. 

Dene Tha First Nation members have been outraged that nobody told them for days that 9.5 million liters of salt and heavy-metal-laced wastewater had leaked onto wetlands they use for hunting and trapping – to live.

“Every plant and tree died” in the area touched by the spill, said Dene Tha First Nation Chief James Ahnassay.

As the Globe and Mail reports, the Apache disaster is not an anomaly:

The leak follows a pair of other major spills in the region, including 800,000 litres of an oil-water mixture from Pace Oil and Gas Ltd., and nearly 3.5 million litres of oil from a pipeline run by Plains Midstream Canada.

After those accidents, the Dene Tha had asked the Energy Resources Conservation Board, Alberta’s energy regulator, to require installation of pressure and volume monitors, as well as emergency shutoff devices, on aging oil and gas infrastructure. The Apache spill has renewed calls for change.

After initial speculation that the leak stemmed from aging infrastructure, Apache Corp. officials revealed that the pipeline was only five years old and had been designed to last 30 years.

The incident comes on the heels of accusations from the provincial New Democratic Party that Alberta Energy Minister Ken Hughes is withholding results of an internal pipeline safety report pending the U.S. government’s decision regarding Keystone XL. The report was commissioned last summer by Alberta Energy after a series of toxic spills — including the Plains Midstream Canada spill that leached 475,000 liters of oil into the Red Deer River, a major source of drinking water for central Alberta.

According to Winnipeg Free Press, “an engineering firm completed the technical report last fall and presented the findings to the government, which sent the findings to the Energy Resources Conservation Board for a review that was to be completed by March 31.”

Hughes denied delaying the report but declined to give a release date, saying only that it would come “fairly soon.”

A recent Global News investigation found that over the past 37 years, Alberta’s extensive network of pipelines has experienced 28,666 crude oil spills in total, plus another 31,453 spills of a variety of other liquids used in oil and gas production — from salt water to liquid petroleum. That averages out to two crude oil spills a day, every day.

As concerns mount over Apache’s delay in detecting and reporting its extensive toxic waste spill, Bloomberg reported Tuesday that TransCanada is not planning to use the external leak detection tools recommended by the Environmental Protection Agency for its proposed Keystone XL pipeline.

As a result, the State Department concludes “Keystone XL would have to be spilling over 12,000 barrels a day — or 1.5 percent of its 830,000 barrel capacity — before its currently planned internal spill-detection systems would trigger an alarm.”

Greenpeace says Canada’s tar sands oil production is the most dangerous project on Earth.

Source: ThinkProgress