Dead Ducks Spoil Ron’s Day

Pity poor Ron Stevens, Alberta’s deputy premier, who is in Washington to spin the oil sands story and tell Congress that the province represents an “environmentally responsible source of energy supply to the United States”.

The timing could not have been worse for Ron but the dirty and polluting legacy of oil sands was once again revealed when hundreds of dead and dying ducks were found in a pond of oily, toxic sludge in northern Alberta.

The sludge was in waste water, known as a tailing pond, that belongs to Canada’s biggest oil sands producer Syncrude Canada and the episode could see it being fined C$1 million. Migrating waterfowl are supposed to be kept from the poisonous waters at the mine, but they were not resulting in the death of some 500 birds.

Someone should also fine Ron for telling porkies….