Australian businessman Ken Falconer, earlier this year, said he wanted the T&T Government to forge ahead with tar sands mining. He said the industry could improve T&T's economy, and claimed his company had better technology to do this that would not harm the environment. The technology could also be applied to oil spills, fires and recycling tyres in the Beetham dump, he said.
Speaking via Skype from Vancouver, Canada, Falconer–president of the Canadian firm Environmental Recovery Solution (ERS), and the technical designer of a tyre recycling plant–said Trinidad's Beetham fires and La Brea oil spills were both preventable disasters that could have been managed, minimised or averted using his firm's technologies.
Falconer said ERS initially targeted the tar sands in Trinidad as a start to the use of "clean green technologies" in the country and the world.
Oil spill clean up withouthazardous chemicals
Falconer said ERS technology could remove hydrocarbons from beach sand without using toxic chemicals such as Corexit, so that the clean sand could be returned to its original site and recovered oils could be sent to the refinery for sale.
He said his firm has been successfully working with oil spills and refinery wastes for over 20 years. Falconer his firm would be prepared to help with remediation of T&T oil spills and refinery wastes.
He also said scrap tyres can be rendered to a fuel with ERS's proprietary technology in a way that produces no emissions; all tyre components could be recycled into marketable products such as oil or carbon black. He said a pyrolysis plant located at the Beetham dump could divert tyres from the dump and reduce the potential for fires.
Value from plastic waste
He said wastes coming to the Beetham dump could have plastics separated and these also could be processed through the ERS technology into oil and inert ash. One ton of plastic waste can be converted into approximately 900 kilogrammes of oil and 100 kilogrammes of ash, he said. The ash can be land-filled, but, being inert, would be of no environmental concern, he said.
Such a plant could even recycle used engine and vegetable oils–anything made of hydrocarbons at its core was "reasonably easy to deal" with, he said.
Hopes for a pilot plant
Falconer hoped ERS could build a pilot plant in Trinidad to showcase its technology to the Government, the public and the skeptics.
But Solid Waste Management Company Limited chairman Nalini Sooklal said no proposal from ERS has been received by her company.
Sooklal cited the Beverage Containers Bill and the Deposit Refund Bill as evidence of the Government's efforts to protect the environment. She also mentioned a plastic recovery facility, which she said could process 500 kilos an hour; a mobile tyre shredder, to be delivered in four months; and the idea of a disposal system rebate.
Bitumen mining pollutes waterways
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A federally funded study on the Alberta tar sands confirmed that pollution contaminated lakes as far as 90 km away from the massive mining project. The study conclusively showed that bitumen pollution "is not natural, is increasing over time and the footprint of the industry is much bigger than anyone thought," said John Smol, one of Canada's leading freshwater ecologists.
"Because of the striking increase in polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), elevated primary production, and zooplankton changes, these oil sands lake ecosystems have entered new ecological states completely distinct from those of previous centuries," concluded the study.
PAHs (and heavy metals) are well known components of Athabasca bitumen and some, such as benzo(a)pyrene, can cause cancers in humans, while others are suspected of being both animal and human carcinogens. PAHS can also affect fetal growth during the first trimester.
The study, published by the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, also confirmed the conclusions of two independently-funded papers by water ecologist David Schindler and Erin Kelly. These now highly cited studies roused the ire of industry and embarrassed the Alberta government by proving widespread water contamination near the mining project.
The first 2009 study found that oil sands air pollution from mines and upgraders blackened the snow with thousands of tonnes of bitumen particulates and PAHS during the winter within a 50 kilometre radius of the project. When the snow melted in the spring, the contaminants washed into the Athabasca River. The pollution amounted to an undisclosed annual oil spill between 5,000 to 13,000 barrels.
A follow-up 2010 study concluded that air pollution and watershed destruction by the oil sands industry annually added a rich brew of heavy metals including arsenic, thallium and mercury into the Athabasca river and at levels up to 30 times greater than permitted by pollution guidelines.
Local residents in Athabasca say all this pollution is mutating and killing fish in rivers and lakes in the area, and affecting their livelihoods and their health.
(Based on a report by Andrew Nikiforuk, published Jan 7, 2013 in TheTyee.ca]