The Syncrude slaughter is certainly getting attention in that the image of 500 wild ducks drowning in toxic sludge is enough to give nightmares to all except the hardest of Alberta Oil ideologists. Not to mention that its timing coincided with Alberta trying to convince its biggest customer that the Oil Sands are green as can be.

Syncrude has said sorry, although it is in a way that says “sorry we got caught,” the image a guy in one sad little boat going out to rescue a whopping five ducks (two of which survive) nicely illustrating their actual concern. Alberta’s government has acted agast but maintaints that its environmental policies are adaquite. Harper pretends he has nothing to do with it even though the tar sands and the astronomical profits made possible by lax regulation are the life’s blood of his attempt to create an Alberta Centric Canada. Oil apologists dismiss the deaths of the ducks in that ducks die all the time, either by hunter’s gun or, and this is there favourite, en mass under the deadly blades of windmills.

The deaths of the Alberta 500 is disturbing in and of itself but ducks do die all the time. Personally I think any duck in Canada should be able to land in any body of water and expect not to be pulled down into a black mire of poison but I can accept that different people have different visions of Canada, some of which I guess include vast tracks of mined out landscape dotted with massive lakes of deadly black ooze. The thing these apologists seem to not be comprehending is that it is not that 500 ducks died horrible, agonizing deaths that is at the heart of this issue. It is not that catastrophe could have been averted if only the canons had been operating to warn off the unfortunate water fowl.

The real issue here is that the Tar Sands operations are destroying water at a fantastical rate. This water can never be recovered, it can never be made safe or potable. It is water that has been used to scrub out the oil from the tar sands and is laden with such a toxic stew of poisons that it will likely remain deadly forever.

We don’t even know how much water they have already destroyed and how much they plan on destroying. It must already be in the billions of litres, if not more. How many of these lakes have already been created? The pipes shown gushing this stuff out into the open environment show no intention of slowing down, and in fact more are planned to be built as we speak. These lakes of death are kept in only by the largest earthen work walls in the history of man kind. Which brings us to the other issue of all this destroyed water.

What is going to be done about all this toxic material? Is there a plan? The fact is that all this toxic, deadly poison is not going to stay put. Water inevitably flows to the sea and this stuff has a long way to go to get there. Every step of the way this stuff will wreck havoc on all forms of life, duck, human or otherwise. And there is a lot of it. Billions of litres sitting at the top of two major water sheds. It sits above the great lakes and the heavily populated areas that they support. It sits above the delicate arctic waters which are already under assault by global warming and centuries of pollution. This is not even considering its effects on the sea once it reaches open ocean.

So what is the plan? Are they going to bury it and hope that for the next million years it doesn’t leak or leach or get accidentally dug up? Are they going to maintain their earthen walls and their canon systems till the end of time to keep stray ducks from mistaking the black death below for a life giving watery haven?

They don’t talk about plans, they talk about what a tragic yet unavoidable loss the deaths of the Alberta 500 is. Seems they have the same attitude towards all the future death and destruction their profiteering will bring to future generations. Thanks Dad, like we didn’t have enough problems already.