Oilsands monitoring needs scientific rigour: panel

Environmental monitoring in the Alberta oilsands is insufficient and needs to have "rigorous scientific design and execution" to be effective, a provincially-appointed expert panel concluded in a report released Tuesday.

"Monitoring organizations suffer from inadequate funding, weak scientific direction and a general lack of resources to take on the enormous challenge of monitoring," the report states.

The panel, which was announced by Alberta Environment Minister Rob Renner in January, recommends Alberta have an entirely new scientifically-grounded system, managed by an arm's length, permanent organization known as the Environmental Monitoring Commission.

Panel co-chairman Hal Kvisle says the report is not a scathing indictment of the current monitoring system.

"We would observe that within Alberta, some of the most sophisticated environmental monitoring programs that occur anywhere in the world, are in place here already," he said.

Kvisle said current monitoring programs like those run by the Wood Buffalo Environmental Association and the Alberta Biodiversity Institute do good work and the panel isn't recommending they all be shut down.

"It may well be that a number of those programs may continue," he said. "What we're proposing is that a commission be created that would organize all of this and make sure that these different programs are focused on a consistent set of objectives and that we really get the best environmental monitoring data that we can."

The panel made 20 recommendations including clarifying the responsibilities of the federal and provincial governments for environmental monitoring, creating a publicly accessible data system and involving First Nations and Métis people in the new commission's activities.

The report states the stakeholder groups in charge of monitoring are not integrated, have different purposes and, therefore, are not doing a good job.

This lack of integration means cumulative environmental effects of the oilsands are not known.

"Consequently, the overall 'state of the environment' is not well understood," the report states.

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Source: Huffington