Tailing ponds are one of the greatest environmental challenges that the Oil Sands Industries of Alberta and other locations in the world face today. Tailing Ponds can be described as large “dump holes” in which the industry exposes of all the waste materials obtained from the refinement of Bitumen - a raw material which can be processed into oil. Tailing Ponds include many different types of waste materials such as water, fine silts, residual bitumen, salts and soluble organic compounds. They also include solvents that are added to the oil sands during the separation process. After the oil has been extracted from the sand the residue is dumped into the tailings and quickly settles to the very bottom. A layer on top of the hardened sand is a mixture of clay and tailing called fine tailing. This mixture of clay and water is highly unstable in the environment as it takes many years to settle and solidify, even after many years the texture of this mixture may be that of yogurt. it may take as long as or even more than 30 years for a tailing pond to fully be reclaimed.
The main reason why I chose this ecological issue of tailing ponds is because as a Canadian citizen who lives in Alberta, Fort McMurray - a city which has often been labeled the least environmentally …show more content…
As I said before tailing ponds are often described as “dump holes” that literally have huge amounts of waste materials stored in them. Another main issue caused by the presence of tailing ponds in certain location is the threat to that area's native species. For example there have been several cases where birds have flew down to tailing ponds thinking that these tailing ponds contain fresh water. This has lead to the mass death of many birds and other animals that approach these ponds and become extremely sick because of the consumption of toxic
The main reason why I chose this ecological issue of tailing ponds is because as a Canadian citizen who lives in Alberta, Fort McMurray - a city which has often been labeled the least environmentally …show more content…
As I said before tailing ponds are often described as “dump holes” that literally have huge amounts of waste materials stored in them. Another main issue caused by the presence of tailing ponds in certain location is the threat to that area's native species. For example there have been several cases where birds have flew down to tailing ponds thinking that these tailing ponds contain fresh water. This has lead to the mass death of many birds and other animals that approach these ponds and become extremely sick because of the consumption of toxic