For nearly a year, dangerous levels of arsenic and other heavy metals have been seeping out of four tailings ponds at the Kearl tar sands project, and into the groundwater and waterways that sustain indigenous communities and wildlife in northern Alberta, Canada.

For nearly a year, ExxonMobil subsidiary Imperial Oil and the Alberta Energy Regulator (AER) knew about the toxic seepage, and did not inform indigenous communities about the severity of the problem.

So for nearly a year, indigenous communities unknowingly consumed game, fish, and plants from land and water that had been contaminated with toxic wastewater.

It is clear that as long as the Kearl tar sands project continues to operate, and continues to fill leaking tailings ponds with arsenic-laden water, the people and wildlife living in the area won’t be safe.

Sign the petition to demand that government officials shut down the dangerous Kearl tar sands project now!

The only reason that indigenous communities of Fort Chipewyan were informed about the tailings ponds seepage is because one of the ponds overflowed last month and spilled two Olympic swimming pools worth of industrial wastewater onto Crown lands.

Built on porous land, the ability of the tailings ponds to contain the wastewater was always an uncertainty. And now that the worst case scenario has happened, Imperial isn’t even sure what exactly is causing the problems. So their current solution is to collect the arsenic-laced water after it leaks out of the ponds, and then put it back into the ponds until they figure out a better solution.

And meanwhile, since the tar sands mine is still operating as if nothing is wrong, toxic wastewater is continuing to be added to the increasingly unstable tailings ponds.

No matter what Imperial Oil says it will do to contain the mining wastewater and stop this from happening again, there is no getting around the fact that the structure of the tailings ponds isn’t sound and never will be. That is why the only way to stop the mine from continuing to contaminate the area’s water, and to ensure that it never happens again, is to shut down the mine for good.

Act now to help the indigenous communities of Fort Chipewyan protect their water supply from Imperial Oil’s toxic wastewater.

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