The first comprehensive report on water pollution from Alberta’s tar sands estimates that 11 million litres of contaminated water is leaking into the environment every day.

The report shines new light on how tar-sands pollution is regulated and describes current practices as a “monitoring mess”.

Matt Price, the report’s author, charges that monitoring and reporting on tailing-pond leakage is handled behind closed doors and is a classic case of the fox guarding the hen house.

“You’ve got an industry-funded and industry-dominated body monitoring industry activities,” Price told the Straight in a telephone interview.

Prepared by Environmental Defence, a Toronto-based group, the report calculates that over four billion litres of contaminated water leaked from tailing ponds in 2007 alone.

“Should proposed projects go ahead on schedule, by 2012, this annual leakage rate would increase five-fold to 72 million litres a day”, the report says.

Titled “11 Million Litres a Day: The Tar Sands’ Leaking Legacy”, the report explains that oil companies operating in the tar sands extract bitumen—a form of petroleum—from a mixture of sand, silt, and clay. Hot water is used to separate the bitumen, and then unwanted materials are dumped into tailing ponds. Toxic substances are present in the waste streams.

According to the report, tailing water produced by the tar sands is “widely acknowledged” to be harmful to human health.

Price explained that tar-sands tailing ponds leak because their walls are simply made out of materials extracted from the earth, without any industrial liners.

According to the report, tailing-pond leakage is monitored at two levels. Companies are required to self-monitor leakage into groundwater by drilling wells and supplying their findings to the government of Alberta. As well, the federal and provincial governments have delegated much of the responsibility for monitoring surface-water quality to a multi-stakeholder body called the Regional Aquatic Management Program.

But according to the report, RAMP is “funded and dominated by the tar sands companies” and many independent stakeholders which once participated in the organization have since distanced themselves.

Environmental Defence’s report charges the federal government with failing to enforce the Fisheries Act, which prohibits the deposition of harmful substances in any place where it could enter water systems frequented by fish.

Environment Canada responded to an interview request via e-mail and stated that specifics could not be commented on until a review of the report was complete. Alberta Environment did not respond to an interview request.

Price stressed his deep concern about the potential long-term effects of tailing-pond leakage. “It is kind-of what we’ve termed a ”˜slow-motion oil spill’,” he said.

According to the report, Environmental Defence’s study used industry information from project applications to calculate conservative estimates for overall tar sands leakage rates. Calculations were conducted by the Pembina Institute.

On October 28, the Vancouver-based Ethical Funds Company called for the suspension of new oil sands development pending the completion of conservation and land use planning.The group’s report warned that a “heady mix of litigious, liability, regulatory, and reputational risks” are in store for any company involved in Alberta oil sands development.

You can follow Travis Lupick on Twitter at twitter.com/tlupick.