ALBERTA OILSANDS A LESSON LOCALLY

Today's K-W Record story "Oilsands contaminating Alberta's water, panel says" should clarify what I've been saying for years about technical reports provided to the public by one of our local polluters. "The six member, government-appointed scientific panel's task was to try to explain why official accounts of pollution in the area clashed so sharply with those of Schindler and his co-authors.". David Schindler of the University of Alberta had his studies of pollution of the Athabaska River published in the National Academy of Sciences. His conclusions were that air emissions from the oilsands were responsible for pollution of the river, in stark contrast to industry and government interpretations. For close to twenty years I have categorically been saying that the technical reports produced by Uniroyal/Chemtura's consultants are psuedo science, junk science and worse. Even reasonably technically sound reports they've produced have been butchered by their client driven, client paid for, self serving conclusions. These conclusions have consistently minimized the extent of the problems and especially minimized cleanup and remediation costs by promoting inexpensive and ineffective solutions.