Year 4, Month 6, Day 30: I Was Always There, Right On The Job

All plants and trees died. All of them. The Globe and Mail (Toronto):

The substance is the inky black colour of oil, and the treetops are brown. Across a broad expanse of northern Alberta muskeg, the landscape is dead. It has been poisoned by a huge spill of 9.5 million litres of toxic waste from an oil and gas operation in northern Alberta, the third major leak in a region whose residents are now questioning whether enough is being done to maintain aging energy infrastructure.

The spill was first spotted on June 1. But not until Wednesday did Houston-based Apache Corp. release estimates of its size, which exceeds all of the major recent spills in North America. It comes amid heightened sensitivity about pipeline safety, as the industry faces broad public opposition to plans for a series of major new oil export pipelines to the U.S., British Columbia and eastern Canada.

In northern Alberta, not far from the town of Zama City, the leak of so-called “produced water” has affected some 42 hectares, the size of 52 CFL fields, in an area less than 100 kilometres south of the Northwest Territories border.

No shame, these people. Sociopaths, every one. June 14:

When looking at the devastation wreaked upon Northern Alberta by almost ten million litres of toxic Tar Sands waste, it’s easy to understand why people everywhere are worried about what will happen should the Keystone XL pipeline be constructed across North America. After all, 100 percent mortality of vegetation doesn’t sound too healthy for fauna either. With that in mind, the recent news that internal TransCanada documents labeled anti-Keystone activists as “potential eco-terrorists” is even more disturbing.

If another nation dropped a bomb on Canadian forest land, exterminating everything within a 42-hectare space, it would rightly be condemned as egregious aggression; an act of war. If a sectarian group did the same thing it would justifiably be called terrorism. Why is it that when the same damage is committed by a multinational corporation based in Houston, Texas, it’s simply part of the cost of doing business? Who’s the terrorist in this picture?

Warren Senders