Tar Sands Reclamation Research Task Force Report

• Author(s) / Creator(s)

  • Conservation and Utilization Committee

• The Honourable Mr. Yurko has requested the Conservation and Utilization Committee to establish an interdepartmental task force or project team with additional membership from the Faculty of Agriculture and Forestry and others, if necessary, to define our applied research proposal which the government could propose to Great Canadian Oil Sands and possibly Syncrude for their joint participation. Mr. Yurko has expressed the desire to have the proposal adequately defined by the end of January. Although the Committee was of the opinion that in most cases the onus should be on the developer for his own reclamation research program, the Committee also recognizes that it may be helpful to the developer to define what the content of the research project should be. The Committee was cautioned that reclamation is highly situational due to climatic and materials variations. The Committee has agreed to set up a project team to determine what a tar sands reclamation research project should entail, with membership from the Departments of Agriculture, Lands and Forests, and Environment as well as from the Agricultural and Forestry Faculties of the University of Alberta, the Federal Forestry Research Laboratory in Edmonton, and the Research Council of Alberta. It was suggested that the project team specifically take into consideration the fact that the primary onus for the research should be placed on the industry.\" The research topics recommended are 1isted under main subject area headings. Where field aspects of certain research projects, such as on establishing life in tailings ponds, cannot yet be undertaken, estimated dates of fieldwork start are given. Most topics, if not already begun, can and should be initiated in 1973. More emphasis is placed on field programs than on greenhouse studies, because of the nature of the problems involved. However, some topics can only be studied by laboratory methods for several years, until field sites become available.

• Date created

  1973

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Oil Sands
  • Research
  • Oil sands
  • Tar Sands
  • Tar sands
  • Reclamation
  • Alberta
  • Canada, Alberta, Fort McMurray

• Type of Item

  Report

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/R38G8FH66

• License

  This material is provided under educational reproduction permissions included in Alberta Environment and Sustainable Resource Development's Copyright and Disclosure Statement, see terms at http://www.environment.alberta.ca/copyright.html. This Statement requires the following identification: \"The source of the materials is Alberta Environment and Sustainable Resource Development http://www.environment.gov.ab.ca/. The use of these materials by the end user is done without any affiliation with or endorsement by the Government of Alberta. Reliance upon the end user's use of these materials is at the risk of the end user.