In our continuing discussion around water, in this post, we explore the issue of tailings ponds.
As noted in the previous post, “tar sands create 250 million litres of toxic waste — every day”. That’s 91 trillion litres of toxicity per year. But what happens to this waste? It gets put into a "tailings pond," a man-made dyke like so:
The intent, as noted on the site, is to hold the waste from the tar sand extraction, allow the junk to settle, reclaim the water and – the key – "hold the contaminants." That's right. The genius solution for all that toxicity is to just let it sit there in the open air. What can possibly go wrong?
Toxic waste lakes: risks and realities
It’s not hard to see how these toxic-waste-lakes are a disaster waiting to happen.
According to the Canadian Environmental Defense, the oil industry produces 25 million litres of this toxic waste that contains lead, mercury, arsenic and benzene – per day. Since these things are properly sealed, they end up leaking about 6.5 million to 11 million litres per day. That means lead, mercury, arsenic and benzene are going into our water supply.
These toxic pools are deadly to wildlife. Syncrude was fined $2.75 million for 31 heron birds that were killed by their toxic waste-lake in Fort McMurray, Alberta. This was the second fine that they had to pay for killing birds. They also had to pay "$3 million for the deaths of over 1,500 ducks that landed in 2008 in one of their tailings ponds” back in 2010.
Case study: Mount Polley toxic waste-lake disaster
Tailings ponds are not exclusive to the extraction of tar sands. They are also used in other mining operations, such as Mount Polley, who was processing copper and gold. On August 4, 2014, the toxic waste lake breached. It released "25 billion litres of contaminated materials into Polley Lake, Hazeltine Creek and Quesnel Lake, a source of drinking water and major spawning grounds for sockeye salmon.” The same article cites a 2012 Environment Canada that waste-lake had 400,000 kg of arsenic and 177,000 kg of lead. A lethal dose of arsenic is 100g to 300g. In terms of lead, kids are especially vulnerable. A British study found that if a child had more than "five micrograms per deciliter" in their blood, they performed poorly on standardized tests compared to kids who had between 2-5 micrograms per deciliter of blood.
To date, no charges have been laid, and no one has been held accountable for the disaster. Maude Barlow, an activist from the Council of Canadians, noted in Boiling Point that “[t]he controlling shareholder of Imperial Metals is billionaire N. Murray Edwards. He has donated to the B.C. Liberal Party since 2005 and helped organize a $1 million private fundraiser for Premier Christy Clark’s re-election bid in 2013. In December 2015, following an investigation of the spill, the Clark government announced that the mine had operated “within existing regulation” and that there would be no charges laid." However, the British Columbia Auditor General found that "robust compliance and enforcement program were not met."
Why tailings pond and not toxic-waste-lake?
Given what we know now, this is propaganda par excellence. Right up there with book words like "ethnic cleansing" and "collateral damage." For example:
“Those targets that, if struck, have a ten percent probability of causing collateral damage…”
Vs
Those targets that, if struck, have a ten percent probability of murdering innocent men, women and especially children…”
We can see how these two sentences are describing the reality. Still, the latter conveys the inherent criminality of bombing innocent people to death. In contrast, the former wording makes it seem like an accident.
What's the alternative to bombing "brownistan"?
Taking a country by ground forces and not using air power. This will, of course, cause mass casualties on the side of the invading army. Indisputably, a hard sell during election time, but the point is there is an alternative to inflicting mass death by air. It's just assumed that the "brown" people on the ground are worthy victims, and the "white" invading force is not.
The same applies to environmental reporting. By using the term “tailings pond," we probably think of something green like this:
When in reality it’s like this:
These terms are used by the media to hide the heinous truth that underlies them to soothe us into a sense that these things are well okay.
To understand how these things are systematic, we need to go back to Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman's masterpiece, Manufacturing Consent. The book does an analysis of how the media works through 5 filters (Media Ownership, Advertising, Reliance of Official Sources, Flak, and Anti-Communism/Anti-Islam) explained in the following video:
Applying this to the term "tailings pond," we see the role of official sources who would try to hide the reality of how these are really toxic-waste sites. Consequently, “toxic waste lakes” is the more appropriate term.
The propaganda system that besieges our mind is no small matter. It gives an artificial understanding of reality, and we then proceed to act on this information. The fact toxic waste lakes exist – leaking 2 to 4 billion litres per year – is something so scandalous. We should be outraged at the mere existence of these things. Think deeply about how we secure our homes and cars because we're afraid of what people may do. But this poisoning is happening as we speak. Consequently, it’s a massive effort to keep our priorities straight. So when the media screams at us about this crisis or that incident, we should realize that ultimately the real crimes are ignored.