Vincent McDermott Writes Stuff

These days, the site of Lorne Shearing’s first job in the oilsands is looking good.

When Shearing first arrived at Syncrude's East Mine in 1988 driving heavy haulers, he was one of hundreds of workers scraping, carving and plowing the land with vehicles the size of homes.

After 33 years as a mine that went 60-metres deep, the area was turned into a tailings pond in 2000. In 2012, Syncrude launched a project far more ambitious than any mining project: turn the mine-turned-tailings pond into one of the most complex and fragile ecosystems in the boreal forest and make it thrive.

“The 25-year-old’s I hire today, when they’re 55, they’ll stand in the North Mine and say, ‘Wow, I remember when this was all a mine,” said Shearing, who is now manager of Syncrude’s Mildred Lake site. “That’s pretty cool for me to imagine and think about.”

These days, Shearing's former workplace is known as the Sandhill Fen. For the last five years - the project’s birthday was last month - Syncrude has been trying to turn the former industrial site into a fen, a type of wetland with a peaty soil ideal for storing carbon. Like a sponge, the landscape filters water and stores it during dry periods. It is considered vital to the health of the forest.

But rebuilding an entire wetland is a long, arduous process. And the science is so new that researchers are still figuring out what it will take to get the wetland to stand on its own within the boreal’s ecosystem.

“The standards for wetlands are still being developed and researchers are looking at the best ways to assess them,” said Eric Girard, a vegetation specialist with Syncrude.

“Is it sustainable? Will it function through time? Is this what we would find in a natural local ecosystem?" he said. "At this time, no one is really sure what the main points are to look at. That’s why we are doing this research.”

Reclamation has focused on upland forest and vegetation, but Sandhill was the first time a company attempted to rebuild a fen. Research for the project began in 2008 with construction completed in 2012.

There are seven universities and dozens of undergraduate and graduate students conducting research with environmental experts at any time in the area.

Major hurdles for the project involve water.

Wetlands are low-lying features that get much of the water they need from the curves and height of surrounding areas. To funnel enough water into the fen, Syncrude had to build a high enough watershed.

Beneath the project, an artificial clayline was built to stop salt and calcium leaching towards the surface, although they still find their way into the water. The elements are in leftover sand that’s had bitumen removed.

Maturing plant life will need extra water to sustain itself, but an environment that is too lush will suck more water out of the ground than nature can replace. Complicating matters is that Wood Buffalo has more evaporation than precipitation, said Girard.

But the biggest obstacle may be an immaterial one. Five years is nothing to nature, and a 2015 video from when Syncrude won an award from the Alberta Emerald Foundation mentions peatland layers take “thousands to tens of thousands of years to develop” naturally.

With oilsands operators tasked with reclaiming mines and tailings ponds, researchers hope they can find ways to accelerate nature’s timeline. After all, 57 hectares is small for a watershed compared to the amount of land industry will have to reclaim, said Girard, and understanding that hydrology is key.

“This is a big research project and there’s lots of little research projects in the larger research project,” said Syncrude spokesperson Will Gibson. “We’re thinking about what we’re going to be learning here and applying how it’s going to inform our future reclamation efforts 20 years from now, 30 years from now.”

Syncrude and Suncor Energy - which opened the Nikanotee Fen four years ago - have not released budgets for their fen reclamation projects, although Gibson wrote in an email his company has spent “considerably more than it would normally cost to do reclamation work” because of the amount of research being done.

Already, there are early successes. Bears, insects and birds - including the endangered common nighthawk - have been found in the area. Trees, willows and shrubs are returning to the watershed. Peat is forming and storing carbon.

“These are good things and the fact peat is forming is a sign we are on track,” said Girard. “But we still need to build our knowledge to establish those guidelines for certification.” 

Thursday, August 17, 2017 / Fort McMurray Today