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ACTION ALERT: Call Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach and Prime Minister Harper to Demand Action on the Toxic Tar Sands! – Sierra Club of Canada

500 Ducks Die after Landing on Tailings Pond

Only
a week after Ed Stelmach announced his government would be spending $25
million dollars to paint the black tar sands green, more than 500
migratory ducks are dying after landing on a toxic Syncrude tailings
pond.

NOW is the time to demand ACTION from
the Albertan government! The tar sands are a dirty, toxic, and
environmentally devastating megaproject that endangers not only the
lives  of animals, but of people living in downstream communities and
Albertans working and living in the tar sands region.

The
tar sands lie along a major migratory bird pathway, and tailings ponds
are a feature of all open-pit mines in the tar sands region. This
development is clearly in contravention to the Migratory Birds
Convention Act, which states:

5.1 (1) No person or vessel shall deposit a substance that is harmful to migratory birds, or permit such a substance to be deposited, in waters or an area frequented by migratory birds or in a place from which the substance may enter such waters or such an area.

As
the Alberta government continues to approve all proposed tar sands
projects (no proposal to date has ever been rejected), Alberta is
looking at having tar sands tailings lakes which combined will cover an
area greater than five Sylvan Lakes (a lake the size 42.8 square
kilometers).

After this accident, the
Alberta government is painting itself as an unfortunate David to the
growing Green Goliath – a movement that is calling for a no new tar
sands approvals. What our government should be asking is, if it took a
whistleblower to report this disaster, how many more have gone
unreported in the past? How is the Alberta government going to monitor
future tar sands projects if it can’t even reliably keep watch over
existing ones?

ACTION is needed to ensure
our political decision-makers know that the Canadian people are calling
with one voice for a TAR SANDS TIME OUT!  It is time to
stop unmitigated tar sands development! 

Continue reading “ACTION ALERT: Call Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach and Prime Minister Harper to Demand Action on the Toxic Tar Sands! – Sierra Club of Canada”