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Oil Sands Tailings Reclamation

Cleaning up Tailings

All oil sands projects are approved with conditions that the mine and tailings will be reclaimed to “equivalent land capability,” meaning that the land can support land uses similar to those that existed before the industrial activities.

How is reclamation defined?

The province’s definition for reclamation is purposefully vague and incomplete. It makes room for regulatory approvals for the irreversible destruction of peatlands in project areas. The regulations fail to focus on how the primary purpose of reclamation should be to reduce and eliminate known environmental harms and support Indigenous traditional practices.

From the Alberta's Conservation and Reclamation Regulation, a piece of provincial legislation under Environmental Protection and Enhancement Act

CPAWS Northern Alberta recognizes there is an unclear path forward for reclaiming tailings ponds, but the need for a community-supported and environmentally safe option is clear, given the impacts communities have had to deal with for decades.

Industry approach to reclamation

One of industry’s most common approaches for tailings reclamation is to create an end pit lake: refilling open-pit mines with tailings and capping them with freshwater. The goal is for contaminants to settle and the lake to eventually stabilize. However, this method remains untested at full scale, and no end pit lake has yet proven to be safe or self-sustaining.

Alternative Tailings Reclamation Technologies

Alternative tailings reclamation technologies focus on techniques that reduce industry’s inventory of tailings fluids. For example, accelerating the dewatering process so the tailings turn from slurry into sludge, and sometimes further dried into “cakes” which can be transported elsewhere.

These technologies are rarely verified by independent researchers outside of industry and have so far yielded no safe option for treating tailings. Outcomes of research projects are not always transparent. There are no requirements for project results, or project progress, to be publicly shared or published in peer-reviewed journals.

Major decisions for processes to reclaim tailings ponds are expected by 2027.

CPAWS Northern Alberta recognizes that the need for a community-supported and environmentally safe option is non-negotiable. The operations of the oil sands cannot be allowed to continue at the cost of community and ecosystem health.

Treatment and Release of Tailings

As tailings ponds continue to grow and become difficult to manage, the oil sands industry has pushed for a new approach: treating tailings waste and releasing it into the Athabasca River.

Under Canada’s Fisheries Act, it is illegal to deposit any substance that could harm fish or fish habitat into natural waters unless regulations explicitly allow it. Currently, no such regulations exist for oil sands tailings (though tailings ponds are seeping into the environment).

Because tailings volumes continue to increase, the federal government, alongside Health Canada and Indigenous communities, is reviewing whether a regulatory path should be created for treatment and release.

Photo Courtesy of Crystal Stamp-Cardinal, Keepers of the Water

The federal government has proposed two paths forward:

Develop federal regulations that would permit the release of treated tailings into the Athabasca River under specific conditions.
No federal authorization to release treated tailings into the Athabasca River, and instead, alternative options are explored.

Indigenous communities have strongly opposed the treatment and release option, with concerns about the safety of the drinking water, the health of fish and the aquatic ecosystems, and the cumulative impacts of decades of industrial pollution. Trust has already been eroded due to past contamination and lack of transparency.

Industry, however, has deemed the treatment and release option necessary, claiming that other alternatives will not reduce volumes quickly enough to allow for reclamation.

The path forward for a safe reclamation is unclear and we emphasize the urgency for governments to stop approving new oil sands projects and new tailings ponds while such a pervasive issue remains unresolved.

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