Just as air traffic control networks are no guarantee against human error by pilots, a tailings pond deterrent system cannot yet completely rule out mistakes by wildlife. “It’s not 100 per cent effective,” says Martindale. “When a bird chooses to land, they aren’t scared by all the sights and sounds. What we’ve done is significantly reduce the occurrences of birds landing on the pond.”

An array of rules requires oil sands plants to do their best to prevent mishaps. “I believe the first thing to get the ball rolling was the federal Migratory Birds Convention Act,” recalls Preston McEachern of Alberta Environment. The Canadian legislation has a pedigree dating back to a 1916 agreement with the United States. The law was strengthened and brought up to date in 1994.

“In addition, there is Alberta’s Environmental Protection and Enhancement Act, which wants companies to minimize their impact on wildlife and the landscape,” McEachern says. The provincial legislation translates international and national commitments into action. “The act contains general philosophical statements or very hard requirements, depending on how you read it,” he says. “They become hard requirements when they are written into an approval for a tailings pond application and have evolved over 40 years of oil sands development.”

Efforts to keep birds off the ponds may have started with workers firing blank shotgun shells. “Everybody is paying much more attention to making sure those deterrents are in place in the springtime, when the ice is cleared off the majority of the pond,” says McEachern. “Some of the facilities have what might be called the Cadillac of deterrents, using targeted radarsystems which detect when birds are flying in and then shoot cannons off.” Birds do not become accustomed to the sound the way they do to the rhythm of older systems that only fire noisemakers at regular intervals.

Environmental protection is no new issue in the oil sands. But heightened enforcement is at hand, with Alberta’s oil industry watchdog unveiling a thorough tightening of tailings pond regulations. “The new directives represent a cultural shift in oil sands management,” says Davis Sheremata of the Energy Resources Conservation Board. “The public and industry will see a dramatic change in how tailings ponds are regulated.”

McEachern says environmental authorities are sending a message. “We are saying to industry now, ‘You will have these things in place.’ We tell them to limit their harm to waterfowl and report deaths to the government, so we can ensure they are meeting their requirements. A lot of the companies are investing heavily in research.”

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