Dr. Stewart Rood puts the oil spill in 2012 on the Red Deer River, downstream of Sundre and upstream of the City of Red Deer in perspective. He covers how severe an oil spill the 2012 event was and the impacts over time. The pipeline under the river was not operating when it broke and the oil spill occurred during the spring flood event, June 7, 2012 on the Red Deer River. His presentation has photographs of spill clean-up and then the subsequent recovery later through the summer.
His monitoring looked at riparian species, the impact of oil contamination and the recovery of the shrubs, saplings and trees. On a control site maintained without clean-up, they observed evaporation of the crude oil, then an oxidized oil (tarry), and then a grey chalky residue. There is leaf drop where leaves were covered by oil but there was little mortality of plants. The effects were similar to a late frost. The oil residue was not toxic to plants; they found plants germinating in the oil residue. Pipelines river crossing breaks typically happen during floods; the floods are usually supply the force causing the pipeline to break.
Based on what he observed with the Red Deer River, the recovery period for pipeline breaks during floods is weeks, not months or years. Braided channels are not good places for pipeline crossings. Braided channels are actively eroding. Removal of vegetation as part of clean-up is not warranted and introduction and optimizing conditions for invasive species can be an unintended consequence.
Dr. Stewart Rood is the Board of Governors Research Chair in Environmental Science at the University of Lethbridge, Lethbridge, Alberta. In 2008 he was awarded a Killiam Research Fellowship in Environmental Management. His presentation was part of the CWRA/WPAC Joint Conference
