Billion Liters Of Water & Muck In The Athabascar.

[DennisS]

I've been reading about the Billion Liter escape of water & muck from a Coal mine containment dike out north of Edson/Hinton area on Fly Fish Edmonton. This is a scary situation. The amount of silt and crap thats going into the river is going to have some interesting effect on spawning areas and likely any fall spawning fish this year .

 

I don't have the link to the story but I'm sure someone that has more computer skills than me can get a link to the story over onto our web site here.

 

This could affect our Grayling & Athabasca Rainbow fishing in this are along with some Bull trout.

 

I wonder what our gov't is going to do about it as it's been kept somewhat quiet.

 

Just like the drying up of the Brazeau River at the Dam.

 

 

Tight Lines Always

Dennis S

[MrOreoCookie]

Here is a link to the story Dennis is talking about. It is interesting to note that the mine was actually in the process of being reclaimed when this occurred.

 

http://www.911metallurgist.com/blog/canadian-river-polluted-by-264-million-gallons-of-muck-from-coal-mine

 

~Skylar

[DennisS]

Skylar thank you for putting the link in for me.

 

Tight lines Always

Dennis S

[MrOreoCookie]

Latest news on the Athabasca spill. Updated Nov 15th 2013

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/alberta-coal-mine-spill-worries-water-expert-1.2428440

 

~Skylar

[MrOreoCookie]

The Alberta government ordered the owner of a coal mine Tuesday to clean up more than a million litres of waste wate that spilled into tributaries of the Athabasca River.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/cleanup-of-coal-slurry-spill-into-athabasca-ordered-by-province-1.2432687

 

Good News? Or To Late? We will have to wait and see.

[DennisS]

Ya I heard that this morning that the mining company was order to clean it up. Too little to late.

 

Tight Lines Always

Dennis S

[dave robinson]

Can somebdy explain to me exactly what is meant by an order to "clean it up".How the HEdouble hockey sticks do you clean up a slurry of coal dust, silt, tar and dissolved chemicals that's already gone more than 40k downstream? Do they expect the company to put giant filters in the Athabasca River to filter all the water in the river somehwere before it get to Ft Mac?

Do they expect the company to vacuum the bottom of 100k of river?

And even if they were to collect more than 200 million gallons of contaminated water, where would they put the mess, in another big pond?

That's the problem with so much of our environmental laws. They deal with the after effect, not the cause or prevention. In the cases of massive spills, the after effects are simply imposssible to completetly clean up (like the Exon Valdez)

We have masssive ponds accumulating due to tar sands extraction and, despite brave statements and a few atttmpts to dry them out, the companys have no real demonstrably successful method to clean them up. Oh and by the way does the public know that most of them produce giant quantities of methane gas which is 6 times as powerful a greenhouse gas as CO2?

[MrOreoCookie]

Hello Dave,

 

Remediation of a river system is a huge task and you are correct that completely cleaning up a spill on this level is nigh impossible. It is likely that they may add specific plants along the river to help bio remediate the water over time in combination with (I hate to say it) dilution of the contaminants themselves in the river system. If they have hit it earlier it is possible they could have setup a filtration barrier within the river to stop the solids flow downstream but at this point I believe we no longer have that option. depending upon the level of contamination of the soil they may need to dredge the river as well and treat the soil before returning it to its original location. I am interested to see how they try to address this as well given my educational background relates to remediation and water treatment. Given the chemicals in the spill though it is highly likely towns along the river will have to adapt their water treatment systems while this is all being sorted out.

[fthillsfisher]

Are there any other members here that use to fish what was Plante creek ?( one of the streams destroyed by the Obed mine spill)

I am also interested if there are any known aerial photos of the damage done to the streams from the spill. I have yet to visit the area, but plan in the spring to walk and view what is probably another fishery I will not be able to fish.