The government of Alberta has accepted recommendations to consider injecting oil sands wastewater underground as a means to address volumes of toxic tailings accumulating on oil sands mining sites.
The suggestion is one of the first five recommendations set out by the Oil Sands Mine Water Steering Committee, which was established by the province of Alberta in 2024 to assess options for managing the water stored in oil sands tailings ponds, which is the waste product that results from extracting bitumen from oil sands ore.
In its June 12 recommendations report, the committee says that injecting mine water underground through deep well disposal provides a “practical solution” to managing excess untreatable tailings water by isolating the water from the environment and thereby “preventing potential harm” to surface water and groundwater resources….