Police corruption is not a uniquely Albertan phenomenon, in fact I'd say it's the global norm. Therefore it doesn't particularly raise eyebrows anywhere.

Deformed fish & cancer... like I said, the bitumen has been leaching into the river for centuries. It's not new, though I'll concede that the initial developments from the 60s/70s didn't give any care for the environment - but that was also a standard global attitude. I assure you that you cannot take or return as much as one litre of water from a watercourse without the verification and approval of the governmental authorities.

Incidentally, I assume you own things like mobile phones, laptops, iPods... or are only some environmental disasters cool enough to protest about?

So, basically it's true. Albertans don't give a shit. Oh well, you get the government you deserve I spose.

There are deformed fish all over the world. Correlation is not causation.

There are always higher rates of cancer. Finding 'cancer clusters' is trivial. Correlation is not causation.

If someone actually proved that these things were causing cancer and deformed fish, we might be concerned. Until that happens, correlation is still not causation, and knee-jerk 'do something' reactions have caused far more harm than waiting for someone to actually figure out whether there's a problem.

Fracking typically occurs well below the water table, so there's no known mechamism for it to cause this. There are plenty of places with methane in the water already, from purely natural sources.

Ancient.

Because it's bullshit, and most Albertans who know something about fracking know that it's bullshit. Fracking has been around since the 1920s and usually you're going down around a mile which is far below the water table. The new thing is that you can maneuver the wellbore, which makes it more effective. If anything that would take it even further away from the water table.


Key words: "rural area", hardly anyone lives there.

Lakes surrounding Fort Mac - once again, hardly anyone there, which doesn't excuse it but it's an industrial operation. All I can say is try driving from Edmonton to Fort Mac and you will see why no-one is excited by it.

Well I think people are concerned about that one, seen various things in the press about it.

That happened many years ago, I remember seeing it on a documentary.


I find it hard to believe it is caused by fracking, Alberta has some of the toughest fracking regulation in the world if not the toughest and her argument fails on the basic fact that it makes no sense.

There's plenty of foul water in Alberta, it's a semi-arid environment.

The only way that would happen is through negligence, okay if the company is negligent, have at it but it's not some general thing to be worried about.

I fixed it for you

We get the goverment we vote for.

ahh ExKiwiLass at it again...so much rage!

is this you EKL?

Jings doesn't even live in Alberta so I think tis a bit of a stretch to quote him and make the leap to 'Albertans don't give a shit.'

OK, so the first happened in 1999, so it is fairly outrageous, but hardly current

Fracking and Rosebud all seems a bit of a tragedy to me and points to higher regulation of fracking and better record keeping. I am not sure whether anything has changed for that. But they frack in BC too!

Horrors happened in the early oilsand years , just as they did in the early nuclear years in UK (and in fact many industries everywhere, I suspect the pulp industry of BC too). They built a tailings pond in the river which is terrible BUT Nowadays regulations are way way tougher and there is so much (effective) work to prevent process affected water going off site, with a lot of monitoring and regulation. Its tragic they did what they did in the 60s, but that's not uniquely Albertan and would be applicable all over BC with tailings.

Air pollution and air pollution getting into water ways is still potentially an issue; but the reality is all development could stop and still those lake levels you mention would be high because of what went on 30-50 years ago and has simply stopped going on now.

Well, I guess if denial pays the bills, then denial it is.

Albertans I know complain about water being smelly after fracking but don't do anything about it, it's a it is what it is scenario. If it doesn't affect their daily lives oh well.

We spoke to our neighbors before getting a water treatment system installed and apparently when they built the house the well water was lovely, then along came the oil companies and did some fracking, we believe they got paid out.

Apparently Alberta has a higher than average digestive (bowel, stomach, intestine etc) system cancer rate

that's not good - do you have any links to the study?

yeah, it's the 'it is what it is' thing I don't get. It's just so sad. It was heartbreaking listening to the story of Rosebud - really heartbreaking, those people have lost everything. Without decent water you really have nothing, doesn't matter how much land you have or how pretty it is. She sounds like she has had a really rough time from both teh government and the company - refusing to test her water, refusing to talk to her, stonewalling etc. etc.

FWIW, I wish none of the environmental degradation studies were true. I wish we could oil & gas ourselves up the wazoo and it not matter one iota to the planet. It would be waaaay easier for all of us, let's face it.

One web article said that Canada has no environmental water standards...is that true ?