Teams work to clean up Red Deer River oil spill

Stewart Rood has spent much of the past week in an inflatable zodiac boat with a team of University of Lethbridge environmental science researchers scouring the Red Deer River and its swollen tributaries looking for signs of oil.

In the days since a pipeline rupture spilled as much as 480,000 litres of sour crude oil into the important central Alberta river system, teams have been working to clean up the spill, but also to gain insight into how oil spills impact fresh water.

Rood didn?t know what to expect when he arrived at the waterway that supplies drinking water to close to 90,000 people. He had heard the June 8 spill by Plains Midstream described as everything from catastrophic to minor.

?You see very little impact from the spill,? said Rood. ?It?s a fairly small spill on a fairly large river . . . you actually only rarely find small pools of oil.?

The pipeline rupture into the river system cutting through farm and vacation country northwest of Calgary near Sundre coincided with spring rains and early flows from the mountains to the west. The result left what Rood describes as a ?bathtub ring? of oil deposits on shoreline plants.

?Everyone is hopeful the Red Deer River will recover to the point that we will not see any consequence of the spill,? Rood said, noting his team?s research will try to determine effects of oil spills and turn it into a set of guidelines for developing oil pipelines around waterways.

?River crossings are especially prone to pipeline breaks,? he said.

In the aftermath of three pipeline spills in Alberta, environmentalists are calling for a major review of pipeline safety in the province. The Alberta-based environmental group The Pembina Institute contends it?s enough to call the first major review of the integrity of Alberta?s extensive pipeline network in seven years.

About 230,000 litres of heavy crude oil spilled from a pumping station on Enbridge?s Athabasca pipeline near Elk Point in northern Alberta this week. It followed a spill of 800,000 litres of oil from Pace Oil & Gas near Alberta?s boundary with Northwest Territories border in May and as much as 480,000 litres from the Plains pipeline rupture.

Industry figures show at least 3.4 million litres of hydrocarbons have leaked from pipelines in Alberta every year since 2005, though officials say more than 99 per cent of the product in the country?s vast pipeline network is delivered without incident.

?A public review would address growing concerns among Albertans,? said Nathan Lemphers, senior policy analyst at Pembina.

Pipeline safety is an issue for the Alberta government as it looks to support oilsands development in the province and plans by Calgary-based pipeline companies Enbridge, TransCanada and Kinder Morgan Canada to build controversial new export lines to the United States and the B.C. coast.

The already highly political issue gained an even greater level of public awareness this week when an advertising company denied Greenpeace Canada space on one of its billboards in downtown Edmonton.

The oversized sun-bright yellow ad had the words: ?When there?s a huge solar energy spill, it?s just called a nice day. Green jobs, not more oil spills.?

Alberta Premier Alison Redford has said she?s not opposed to a broader review of pipeline integrity once the investigations into the recent leaks are complete. She also said legislation to overhaul the regulatory system in the province this fall, for implementation next summer, will improve oversight and efficiency.

Officials responding to the rupture on Plains Rangeland South pipeline have said it will likely take months ? and possibly a year ? before the Red Deer River is restored to its previous condition.

?It?s pretty tragic,? said University of Alberta aquatics ecologist David Schindler. ?The Red Deer has been relatively free (from damage).

?It?s a disaster to see it join the rest of the mess we see in the southern part of the province.?

There was a spill of more than 28,000 litres of oil by Pembina Pipelines in the Red Deer River in 2009.

Alberta Environment officials said the waterway will be closely monitored for years to come after the latest spill.

?I have every confidence it will be equal or better than its previous ecological condition,? said Curtis Brock, water-quality specialist with the province, which is overseeing the remediation efforts by Plains Midstream. ?There?s going to be a slight alteration (to the river), but nothing out of the ordinary for what has occurred. It?s going to take a little bit of time.?

Plains said it has consulted with more than 1,675 landowners and residents along the river and Gleniffer Reservoir.

At times, the company has had up to 285 response personnel on-site and used skimmers, booms and absorbent materials to collect oil along the river and at Gleniffer Reservoir. The crews have also collected vegetation, trees and open-water debris.

Treating or removing oil-soaked soil can be a challenge.

?Bulldozing the shoreline is actually pretty devastating to some ecological processes,? said Rood, who had used the Red Deer River as a reference to measure damage on the Bow and Old Man rivers in south Alberta. He said it?s too soon to tell whether there will be long-term impacts to the Red Deer River.

Brock said the cleanup by Plains is going well, but cautioned it is a major endeavour and the company has been careful to use low-impact response strategies so it does not make ?the treatment to be worse than the symptoms.?

With files from The Canadian Press

? Copyright (c) The Calgary Herald

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