Water Quantity Framework guidelines set; environmental groups say they’re not enough.
Posted Mar 14, 2015 11:15 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
New guidelines have been announced by the province regulating water usage by the oil sands.
The long awaited Surface Water Quantity Framework and Tailings Management has new rules on how much water oil companies can extract from the Athabasca River.
However these new rules don’t include a base flow meaning companies can still take water even if there is a low-flow, meaning water can still be taken from the river when there are dangerously low levels.
Jesse Cardinal, coordinator for Keepers of the Athabasca, said the Alberta government needs to re-evaluate our reliance on oil.
“They’re missing all of the conversations outside of the tarsands. We’re never going to have a world class environmental standards or world class environmental protection unless we diversify our economy.”
She said this framework doesn’t solve any issues but just acknowledges that they exist.
