When I was 28, my then wife and I decided to explore the Northwestern United States and Western Canada. We lived in Greeley, Colorado, and traveled up I-25 and I-90. My then wife was a teacher, and we therefore had ample time for exploration. We traveled through Yellowstone National Park up to Glacier National Park. We entered Canada, and drove up the Rocky Mountain Front to Calgary, Banff National Park and through Jasper National Park.
Canada remains my favorite country other than my own. Eventually we drove past the Athabasca River headwaters and got to view the magnificent Columbia Ice Field. We were impressed with the absence of mining and drilling that had already begun to ruin the Western USA.
The Athabasca River teemed with wildlife.....in the river and land our trip passed through. We found the Canadian Northwest to be some of the most lovely mountain scenery we had ever seen.
Fast forward to 2016, and the World Channel, a part of PBS, aired a film that left me shaking my head in disgust concerning the rape of the Lakota tribe in North Dakota by putting an oil pipeline through their sacred land. Now, in 2017, my current wife and I saw a documentary that documented the effect of tar sand mining on the very region that had so deeply impressed me. The damage has become so profound that the striped and scraped earth resembles the appearance of our Moon....lifeless and dead.
The people who are living on these indigenous reserves, as Canada calls them, are experiencing the same horrible health problems that mines that stripped off the surface of the land in Appalacchia, the Mountain West, and Great Lakes regions of the USA caused residents of their parts of the country.
As the drive for exporting oil expands in Alberta, the health of the fish, game, and birds along the Athabasca River is deteriorating. A March 23, 2017 editorial in the Edmonton, Alberta Journal written by five distinguished scientists points out the methodological weaknesses of sampling the river once a year during autumn. The authors of the editorial advocate sampling during all seasons because the river is at its lowest annual flow when samples are taken.
The sampling in the past of water from the river has been done after suspended particles have been removed from the sample. The editorial points out that the suspended particles that are removed by river samplers are a "toxic cocktail" of heavy metal elements and petrochemical hydrocarbons. The authors maintain that isolating each compound sampled doesn't take into account the bonding of these chemicals into a compound of both sources together.
The authors give the example of methylmercury ruining water habitats for fish and birds. Heavy toxins are also
a problem. The authors describe a compound called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons which are more toxic in sunlight than in darkness.
The authors also state that the tributaries of the Athabasca River must also be sampled several times a year to monitor when toxic chemicals enter the Athabascan riparian system. It is also important to mention that the Metis, Chippewa, and related tribes are experiencing an epidemic of unusual types of cancer that historically appear in areas with strip mining and oil sand scraping as is occuring in Northern Alberta.
It is no coincidence that the fracking method of petrochemical recovery has had the same types of problems in several states. Residents of Texas, Oklahoma, and other states where fracking has been prominent report toxification of ground water, increased seismic activity, and a rise in diseases
where oil refineries are plentiful...
such as Louisiana.
The actions of oil sand stripping and fracking are well documented insofar as the resulting damage to the poisoning of acquifers, rivers, and lands and an unusual increase of seismic activity after fracking. Oklahoma, where fracking was most active, has seen an exponential inctease in earthquakes. Some of these were mild, but most of them were moderate to severe. Perhaps the most flagrant propaganda circulated about global warming and damage to riparian systems is spread by gutless excuses for public servants in the Congress of the United States and in state legislatures essentially owned by people who show no concern for their descendants over several generations in the future. The tragic result will be that unregulated capitalists will have raped this world of its ability to repair damage caused by rampant exploitation of the lands, waters, and air by mankind who was entrusted to maintain.
Let's just preserve our resources and do the work we need to do to leave our emotional baggage behind us and be the best people that we can be. We can no longer afford to isolate people or ruin their health for a profit as we did in the past.
Copyright 2017 by Peter Reum -All Rights Reserved
Canada remains my favorite country other than my own. Eventually we drove past the Athabasca River headwaters and got to view the magnificent Columbia Ice Field. We were impressed with the absence of mining and drilling that had already begun to ruin the Western USA.
The Athabasca River teemed with wildlife.....in the river and land our trip passed through. We found the Canadian Northwest to be some of the most lovely mountain scenery we had ever seen.
Fast forward to 2016, and the World Channel, a part of PBS, aired a film that left me shaking my head in disgust concerning the rape of the Lakota tribe in North Dakota by putting an oil pipeline through their sacred land. Now, in 2017, my current wife and I saw a documentary that documented the effect of tar sand mining on the very region that had so deeply impressed me. The damage has become so profound that the striped and scraped earth resembles the appearance of our Moon....lifeless and dead.
The people who are living on these indigenous reserves, as Canada calls them, are experiencing the same horrible health problems that mines that stripped off the surface of the land in Appalacchia, the Mountain West, and Great Lakes regions of the USA caused residents of their parts of the country.
As the drive for exporting oil expands in Alberta, the health of the fish, game, and birds along the Athabasca River is deteriorating. A March 23, 2017 editorial in the Edmonton, Alberta Journal written by five distinguished scientists points out the methodological weaknesses of sampling the river once a year during autumn. The authors of the editorial advocate sampling during all seasons because the river is at its lowest annual flow when samples are taken.
The sampling in the past of water from the river has been done after suspended particles have been removed from the sample. The editorial points out that the suspended particles that are removed by river samplers are a "toxic cocktail" of heavy metal elements and petrochemical hydrocarbons. The authors maintain that isolating each compound sampled doesn't take into account the bonding of these chemicals into a compound of both sources together.
The authors give the example of methylmercury ruining water habitats for fish and birds. Heavy toxins are also
a problem. The authors describe a compound called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons which are more toxic in sunlight than in darkness.
The authors also state that the tributaries of the Athabasca River must also be sampled several times a year to monitor when toxic chemicals enter the Athabascan riparian system. It is also important to mention that the Metis, Chippewa, and related tribes are experiencing an epidemic of unusual types of cancer that historically appear in areas with strip mining and oil sand scraping as is occuring in Northern Alberta.
It is no coincidence that the fracking method of petrochemical recovery has had the same types of problems in several states. Residents of Texas, Oklahoma, and other states where fracking has been prominent report toxification of ground water, increased seismic activity, and a rise in diseases
where oil refineries are plentiful...
such as Louisiana.
The actions of oil sand stripping and fracking are well documented insofar as the resulting damage to the poisoning of acquifers, rivers, and lands and an unusual increase of seismic activity after fracking. Oklahoma, where fracking was most active, has seen an exponential inctease in earthquakes. Some of these were mild, but most of them were moderate to severe. Perhaps the most flagrant propaganda circulated about global warming and damage to riparian systems is spread by gutless excuses for public servants in the Congress of the United States and in state legislatures essentially owned by people who show no concern for their descendants over several generations in the future. The tragic result will be that unregulated capitalists will have raped this world of its ability to repair damage caused by rampant exploitation of the lands, waters, and air by mankind who was entrusted to maintain.
Let's just preserve our resources and do the work we need to do to leave our emotional baggage behind us and be the best people that we can be. We can no longer afford to isolate people or ruin their health for a profit as we did in the past.
Copyright 2017 by Peter Reum -All Rights Reserved
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