Here is a story from the CBC of ducks landing on a settling pond in the tar sands in Alberta:

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/edmonton/story ... follo.html

Thanks for posting this. I saw this on the news this morning and it's very troubling. One wonders what else they have failed to disclose?

Having open lakes of toxic sludge is obviously not a solution to dealing with waste products. The size of some of these lakes is shocking.

I read a bit about the tar sands region and find it most disturbing that environmental damage is happening on such a grand scale that I'm quite sure more the 500 ducks have parished.

The production area and tailing ponds spead out farther then observers can watch and manage so likely whole flights of ducks and other migrating species are being lured in and killed as a result of expose to the toxic pools.

The scale of the operation is truely massive.

viewtopic.php?t=1893

I agree Kevin. Another troubling factor here, is that these ponds full of poison appear to be a fairly permanent part of the landscape. They exist at such massive sizes, that there isn't anyway to deactivate them. If we are talking about loosing 500 birds per year over 5000 years, this obviously won't work. Who was the genius who approved this type of waste disposal? The mining industry certainly doesn't get away with this anymore.