At the "Resilience of Boreal Landscapes" workshop held at the University of Alberta in January 2013, Brett Purdy with Alberta Innovates reviews the current regulatory reclamation policy for oils sands projects. He points out that recently released Best Management Practice guides now cover three purposes, planning, operations and now monitoring. He points out that Steam Assisted Gravity systems will have a different process and timeline to reclamation than the open pit oil sands mines, so expectations for reclamation objectives will have to be different. Resiliency might involve looking at factors that we anticipate will change over time. This will involve establishing targets based on natural systems.
Brett Purdy is a reclamation research specialist and Director of Restoration Ecology and Ecosystem Management, Alberta Innovates, Energy and Environment Solutions.
