Innovation Anthology #673:
Syncrude is reclaiming its end pit oil sand mine to a peatland.
Called the Sand Hill Fen Project, it involves filling a hole that’s 50 meters deep. It has a surface area of 57 hectares.
As environmental scientist Jessica Piercey explains, many of the challenges centre on understanding hydrology and water quality.
JESSICA PIERCEY: Because it’s built on top of tailings, water quality is always something we we’re watching and we’re tracking. So we’re lucky that there are natural saline fens which is saltier, right. So our tailings water is also saltier. So a challenge that we’ve had to overcome and deal with is separating those water tables. So where you have a lower, deeper water table that is more of a salty water. And then we’ve built hummocks and those uplands are really able to generate their own fresh water from snow and rain. And so the concept is that we’re separating the water tables so we can have a fresh water wetland system over top of a deeper saltier system, which you see in Mother Nature all the time. So this is one of the concepts that we’re testing with one of the research program.
Thanks today to SYNCRUDE
You can hear the full interview with Jessica Piercey at InnovationAnthology.com
I’M CHERYL CROUCHER
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Sponsor
Syncrude
Program Date: 2015-03-17