Demonstration Pit Lake research & monitoring program for evaluating permanent aquatic storage structure technology & closure management for generating a self-sustaining ecosystem

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Alberta's oil sands play a vital role in the provincial, Canadian, and global economies, supplying stable, reliable energy to the world, and important revenue to Alberta and Canada. However, Alberta's oil sands development has faced severe and increasing criticism by Canadian and international environmental groups because of its huge environmental footprint and adverse environmental impacts. To address these concerns, pit lakes have been proposed as possible land/water reclamation approaches to simultaneously treat process water and manage tailings. Pit lakes are used globally by mining industries as permanent features in the final reclaimed landscape. However, to date, pit lakes have not yet been approved for permanent use in the oil sands mine industry by the Alberta Energy Regulator. In the proposed NSERC Collaborative Research and Development (CRD) Program, we will develop a comprehensive and multidisciplinary research program designed to monitor and evaluate if the combination of Permanent Aquatic Storage Structure (PASS) technology that uses inline flocculation and coagulants to create a treated fluid tailings deposit and aquatic closure management design for a pilot scale Demonstration Pit Lake (DPL) facility will lead to a self-sustaining boreal lake ecosystem in an accelerated timeframe. The findings of the proposed research will provide operators and government agencies with essential information on the design and operating parameters for pit lakes. The DPL project - a world-class demonstration scale research facility in northern Alberta - will help address regulatory and knowledge gaps in term of process water treatment and tailings management. Moreover, the results from the comprehensive analyses of the toxic effects of process water on selected test organisms will help government regulators set guidelines for the safe release of treated process water into the environment, aiming to protect both the environment and public health.