Canada Outlines Oil-Sands Environmental Monitoring

The new system reflects the federal government's recently heightened role in the main industry of the western province of Alberta. Canadian provinces have responsibility for much of their own resource and environmental regulation, and Alberta has bristled at times at what officials have described as federal encroachment.

But promoting and protecting Alberta's lucrative oil-sands industry from critics has become a top priority for the government of Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper - even more so after the U.S. rejected construction of a new Canadian oil pipeline for environmental reasons late last year.

"We need the best way of collecting scientific information needed to do our job, and to ensure that transparent and accountable monitoring is in place in the oil sands," federal Minister of the Environment Peter Kent said.

Kent led federal government efforts to create a new system after studies by a University of Alberta scientist exposed several problems with the existing programs, including work showing pollution from industry smokestacks was finding its way into the watershed through snowmelt without being detected.

The new monitoring system will be implemented starting this spring and will ramp up over three years, more than doubling the number of water testing stations in the province to 43 and increasing the frequency of tests to monthly from annual testing, officials working on the new monitoring system told reporters Friday. Air, wildlife and habitat testing stations will be similarly increased and the number of contaminants tested for will be increased, they said.

The governments will rely on data provided in part by the industry, but the data will be standardized and reviewed by scientists, and the raw data will be posted online, the officials said.

In 2015, the government will commission an independent peer-reviewed study of the data, and again every five years afterward.

Though Kent acknowledged in remarks Friday that the old environmental monitoring system was flawed, he said Canada had the best environmental record among oil-producing nations, and that it "should not be held to higher standards" than nations without the same level of environmental protections.