Time Immortal

So the leader of the federal NDP, Jack Layton, was recently on the John Gormley show, talking about the Alberta oilsands.

His claim?  That no reclamation has ever been done up near Fort McMurray.

He confidently trotted out increased water pollution, more cases of human cancer and poisoned fish — all the result of the oil sands projects near Ft. McMurray.

Suspicious of this — I’ve seen data that says Jack is dead wrong on this — I asked him about reclamation, where the mined soils are returned to a natural state. He, again confidently expounded that “reclamation has never taken place at the oilsands”.

Oops.

Sorry, Jack…you’ve been caught in a lie.

Count Roland writes in with some follow-up thoughts on this article.

I agree with you and Premier Stelmach.

However, A similar incident is reported to have happened at a Conoco-Phillips site elsewhere in the oilsands.

If that is the case, then perhaps the government should not only investigate both companies but also reflect on its own regulations and staffing levels (tough to keep adequate in today’s economy) to ensure that it can inspect in a timely manner to ensure compliance with the pertinent regulations, regulations which should be more environmentally conscious. Also, a program that penalizes companies for non-compliance, as well as for being below average in environmental stewardship and stockpiiles some money and gives extra money to sites above average in quality would also tend to improve environmental standards through voluntary means (if the carrot and stick are big enough…)

Pace to most environmentalists, but simple government fiats towards higher standards without incentives ensure, at best, minimal compliance. The people, the environment and the governmant are better served by using market measures to drive policy as opposed to laws which may be difficult to enforce. Positive and negative reinforcement work better than empty praise and punishment.

I can’t really disagree with that, O Reader. I applauded Ed Stelmach’s conviction that the Syncrude incident with the ducks would be investigated further, and I certainly think that there are probably more than a few different examples one could find in Fort McMurray of companies who flout various environmental regulations. Certainly, that is the impression I get from speaking to a sister of mine who works, currently, with a consultancy group that periodically does environmental evaluations in the region of that city.

And perhaps that will be an outcome of these investigations.

The problem, as I see it, will not be getting someone to agree to use “the stick” so much as it will be getting that someone to use “the stick” fairly. It’s ludicrously easy to point to the oil companies and cry out over the environmental havoc they may be wreaking. It’s substantially more difficult, because the issue is more politicized, to do the same about supposedly “green” operations, like wind farms or hydro dams — even when wind farms are far more devastating to avian populations than even ten Syncrude tailings ponds would be, and even when hydro dams destroy (through flooding) vast tracts of land that even Syncrude’s draglines would be hard-pressed to cultivate.

Still, overall, Stelmach has been good at keeping his promises, and there is a distinct hope that something will come of this investigation.

Good for Ed Stelmach — he’s exactly right.

Premier Ed Stelmach says Syncrude isn’t off the hook despite the fact the oilsands company placed full-page ads in major newspapers to apologize for an incident where about 500 ducks died in a toxic tailings pond.

“People may go through a stop sign and hurt someone, and they apologize, but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t the full investigation,” Stelmach told reporters at a charity walk in Calgary on Sunday.

“You can apologize for the event, but we will continue to investigate the incident and make sure . . . to attach the responsibility for obviously a break-down somewhere.”

Hundreds of ducks died a week ago today after they landed on a tailings pond at Syncrude Canada’s Aurora mine north of Fort McMurray. The pond contains a toxic mix of byproducts left over after oil is washed out of the sand. Most of the ducks sank under the weight of the residue.

I’m not usually a fan of government intervention, but I will say that I am glad the the Alberta govermnent will be investigating whether there was any negligence on the part of Syncrude in regard to the issue of these ducks. It would be nice if the government also took a look at how many thousands of avians get killed every year as a result of wind turbines in the southern parts of the province, of course…every travesty such as this merits investigation.

It’s tragic that hundreds of ducks have been killed because of improper measures taken by Syncrude to implement measures to prevent the avians from landing in a tailings pond near Fort McMurray, Alberta.

At the same time, Kate raises a valid point:

Got to hand it to those environmentalists - they have the media well trained. A few hundred ducks expire in a Syncrude tailings pond and it’s international news. The tens of thousands sliced and diced each year (in the US alone) by wind generators? Not so much.

It’s sad how so much of almost everything these days is not driven by any kind of objectivity, but by narrative alone. And don’t get me wrong, narrative is all well and good…if one is writing fiction. When one is attempting to convey the news or discuss real-world issues, though? Not so much.

Dude thinks Edmonton ought to hold on to YXD, the outdated and too-small-for-modern-aircraft Edmonton Municipal Airport that is situated just north of the downtown core.

Risking Lives on Dangerous Highways

Councillor Caterina draws on the article “QE2 Highway Badly Needs Upgrade” in the December 28th, 2007, edition of The Edmonton Sun, as further evidence that service at the City Centre Airport needs to be restored:

“The [Ed Stelmach] government may consider knocking some sense into the complacent Edmonton Airports Authority. To hopefully relieve some of the pressure on the QE2, it should move to restore full, Airbus service out of the City Centre Airport. Otherwise, the Queen’s highway will continue being another of Alberta’s death freeways -a situation that is not acceptable to anyone.”

Caterina says, “We need to look at revisiting this issue before more deaths occur on the QE2, Hwy 63 to Fort McMurray and Hwy 43 to Grand Prairie“

“If we compare the Bullet-Train idea at a cost of 5 to 6 Billion or the cost of upgrading the QE2 highway each way, there’s no comparison.”

“Only a fraction of the cost would be needed to restore the City Centre Airport to full service.” Says Councillor Caterina

“Combing rail and bus service would aid as well” advises Caterina “Imagine a “Hub” that could be created at the Muni. Air linked with Via Rail next door, Bus terminal on site, and LRT servicing both the City Centre Airport and NAIT.”

How nice that the good city councillor seeks to capitalize on the highway death toll in Alberta by lobbying for costly upgrades to an airport that a) has no real room to expand beyond its current land footprint, and b) is too small, within that current land footprint, to accommodate modern aircraft takeoff and landing distances, except when said aircraft are minimally loaded with both passengers and fuel:

Now for the not so funny joke. Create a hub, for what, Calgary?

What Tony forgets is that we also would have to do runway work to get anything larger in there. Plus, if I recall correctly, the [Maximum Take Off Weight] for the next gen 737 is greater than the runways [at YXD] can support, both in capacity as well as length. Add a warmer day and our ~2300-2300 ASL altitude, and you aren’t getting off with much fuel (aka range). So, hello Calgary and Vancouver.

So, RJ’s and Dash 8’s. All day, all the time. Hello, business person. Welcome to Edmonton. You had to connect in Calgary anyway, endure another deplane/enplane PITA, so next time, just get off the plane in Calgary and do business here.

A bit more detail:

While his ward lost with the Muni being closed, he should try to close the muni and have new developments on it creating new tax dollars/jobs/people instead of small Dash 8’s buzzing around Kingsway/Royal Alex. Does anyone remember the old generation 737’s landing there? Came awefully close to Kingsway and the new gen 737’s are just too big.

FYI:

YXD runway 12/30 5868 ft (1789 m)
YXD runway 16/34 5700 ft (1737 m).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YXD

Boeing 737’s take off distance at MTOW ranges from 1990 m to 2540 m depending on the model.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_737#Specifications

The only way the 737 — arguably one of the most commonly-used passenger airplanes in Canada — could get off the ground at Edmonton’s Municipal Airport is with a decent tailwind, minimal fuel, and only a fraction of its total capacity worth of passengers. Turning ‘the Muni’ into a transport hub would result in a net benefit not for Edmonton, but for Calgary — planes out of the Muni bound for any destination farther away than Grand Prairie or Calgary wouldn’t have enough fuel to reach where they were headed for.

A decade ago, the Municipal Airport was reduced to charter and private flight service, and realistically should just be closed outright; no city Edmonton’s size has successfully supported two airports, and Edmonton’s larger International Airport (YEG) is more than large enough to not only see an expansion in domestic and international service, but to do so while simultaneously absorbing charter traffic out of YXD.

And then all that prime land space just north of Edmonton’s downtown core could be put to better use — for example, as a residential area. It would be almost ideal for that, close as it is to a major hospital, a major shopping center, NAIT, and Grant MacEwan College.

Whatever — I’m just glad that Tony Caterina isn’t my councillor.

That said, O Reader, it might not hurt to drop him a line and tell him what you think of his absurd proposal:

Councillor Tony Caterina
2nd Floor, City Hall
1 Sir Winston Churchill Square
Edmonton, Alberta
T5J 2R7
Phone: (780) 496-8333
Fax: (780) 496-8113