Around 50 people packed the gallery area in the Athabasca County council chambers with concerns about the proposed sand mining pit south east of town. The Tower Road and 827 Action Group gave the commission a 15-minute presentation through the group's spokesperson Tom Habib.
Habib pointed out that there are 49 households involved with the group and more residents are joining. They are representing over 170 people who signed the petition and while not all households have signed on, or joined the group yet, there are an estimated 90 homes within a one-mile radius of the proposed site.
“Looking at the broader landscape, this purple line is a one-mile buffer, which represents the people that will be most affected by this proposed mining facility,” Habib said pointing out the information on the projector screen. “You can count up all the red dots; there's about 90 homes within this one-mile radius (and) well over 200 residents and a couple of residential subdivisions.”
Habib went on to explain the human health effects an open sand pit mine would have as well as the impact on property values which have shown to drop as much as 30 per cent using information from a U.S. study.
After the meeting Habib clarified via e-mail stating, “The property value graph I showed was not from Alberta, it was from the USA, but it was the most appropriate (and clearest) analysis I could find. The graph was reproduced from this report: https://research.upjohn.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1225&context=reports.”
The sand deposit is about 95 per cent silica, according to AMI's technical report, but it is unknown what fraction of that is respirable. However, unlike regular sand and gravel operations, it is much finer and as such much more would be respirable.
“This is not your everyday sand or gravel operation. Crystalline silica — you won't even know that you're breathing it in — the particles are so small, a couple of microns in diameter,” Habib explained. “This is known to cause a number of serious health effects; silicosis and lung cancer are at the top of that list, as well as many other acute and chronic effects of varying severity.”
The group also expressed concerns with potential contamination to the aquifer. There is no way to know how many people’s wells could be affected without knowing how big the aquifer is.
“At the simplest level, they're digging down into the water table exposing the aquifer so any run-of-the-mill diesel spill if there's a piece of equipment working in the bed, anything like that, the impacts of it are heightened because it has immediate access to the aquifer,” Habib explained. “It doesn't have to go through several dozen feet of ground to get there, it's just immediately available.”
Reclaiming the used water also poses grave risks Habib pointed out.
“The company has talked about how they want to recycle 90 to 95 per cent of the water, but to actually do that they have to put in these chemical flocculants that bind up all of the sand and silt in the water so it can settle out faster to allow them to recycle the water on top,” he said. “The chemicals they use for that process have a number of human health effects — I tried to find out specifically what the company would be using but they wouldn't share that with me — but the most common chemical used poly acrylamide breaks down into a neurotoxin and carcinogen, so brain damage and cancer.”
After the 15-minute presentation none of the councillors had any questions, but did thank the group for the information and most of the Tower Road group left the chambers. Towards the end of the meeting the committee circled back to the presentation where Coun. Christie Bilski said it needed to be considered.
“We need to keep this in the forefront,” she said.
Athabasca County CAO Ryan Meier mentioned that no permit has been issued for Athabasca Minerals Inc., on the project.
“When we have a completed application in front of MPC, that’s when we make all the considerations,” he said, adding it may take six months to a year before he expects AMI to resubmit the application.
The first application was returned to AMI citing a need for 36 points of clarification.
Coun. Penny Stewart disagreed saying, “Sometimes if there’s a permit it’s too late. We need to be proactive.”
Councillors Dennis Willcott, Kevin Haines, Warren Griffin and Travais Johnson all took a wait-and-see approach and recommended the presentation be forwarded to AMI for their review and possible rebuttal.
“I want to see what they’re proposing,” Johnson said. “Right now, I’m on the fence.”
Stewart did ask for more research be done by the county either by contacting or meeting with areas where similar mines exist, so they are informed if the application does come back from AMI.
