Alberta mayors square off against oil industry over oilfield water use

Mayors of eight central Alberta communities are squaring off against the oil industry over the industry's use of fresh water to extract oil. They want the Alberta Environmental Appeal Board to overturn a decision allowing an oil company to divert 328,000 cm of water from the Red Deer River to pump down oil wells.
Officials from Ponoka, Lacombe, Innisfail, Olds, Didsbury, Crossfield, Carstairs and Bowden are to testify before the board in Red Deer. Ponoka, one of several municipalities planning to use the river as a source of drinking water, opposes the project because it forever removes water from the aquatic system, said town manager Curtis Herzberg.

Alberta Environment minister Lorne Taylor told the legislature that Capstone Energy requires less than one per cent of the minimum monthly flow of the river.
"The oil and gas industry does a very good job as a whole of managing water," he said.
The provincial Water Act does not allow the government to reject a licence on the basis of use, said Environment spokesman Robert Moyles.
"If there is sufficient water... we will issue a licence." Capstone says only 7 % of the oil in the area has been recovered over the past two decades, but 35 % could be removed using deep-well water injection.

Critics say using fresh water to extract oil is a waste of a scarce resource. They have pressed Premier Ralph Klein's government to force energy companies to consider alternatives.
When the province announced its billion-dollar water strategy last fall, it struck a committee of stakeholders to examine the issue. Taylor said he expects a preliminary report from the committee with recommendations to deal with the issue by the end of March. He said he would probably have that report in hand when he decides whether to uphold or overturn the appeal boards decision.

Liberal environment critic Debby Carlson said Taylor should use his authority to block the Capstone project.
"It has to be banned. Companies have to be forced to use different alternatives."
Herzberg said the Capstone project will require the equivalent of a small community's annual supply of water out of the river and that water won't be returned to the system.
"We don't think it is a good use of the resource."

Ponoka is one of several communities awaiting construction of a pipeline from Red Deer to bring in drinking water.
It draws water from several wells but has imposed summer-long water restrictions on its 7,000 residents in recent years as the water in the aquifer has dwindled, Herzberg said.