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travelingalberta.com — Funny - and definitely not promoting tourism Alberta. Relax at the Tar Pond hotel - while the kids play frolic on the toxic tailing pond beaches.
kgrandia- 50 diggs
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- PatrickFisher, on 06/26/2008, -1/+2The tailings ponds are actually quite incredible. I'll never forget the first time I stood on one of the beaches. The sour yet sweet smell of bitumen and naptha. The clear, pristine water. The landscape that looks scarily close to the background of NASA's moon videos. The size. Truly incredible and impressive.
Anyways, these sites are stupid. Pointing out all the problems, yet offering no solutions. Then again, what can you expect from a site that can't even properly embed the weather? Their site says it was supposed to be 92F today, with poor visibility and high humidity! In reality, it hasn't gotten to 92F since July 12, 2007, I just looked out my window, and I can see for miles, and the humidity is at a brutal... 25%?
"black sand beaches are quickly replacing thick forest cover" - When you consider that the Athabasca river, the river that the oil sands get their water from, carves its way through the oil sands and literally has "black-sand beaches" that are entirely natural, I don't see what they are getting at.
"Where Caribou once roamed, the haze enhanced northern Alberta sun" - What haze?
"Some of the largest machines in the world remove as much as 4 tons of rock and soil to make one barrel of oil. With one million barrels of oil produced a day, you can only imagine the deep earth spelunking opportunities." - Considering that there's no underground mining, I don't know where this comes from.
I know that OS development has its issues. I'm not arguing that. I'm just wondering why these people need to criticise the OS without even going to see the mines, let alone get their facts straight. I know that the problems I've pointed out with the site are minor and don't deal with the "big" issues. Reality is though, it points to the fact that whoever made this site doesn't know what they're talking about.
PS: some of the small ponds they show in the pictures actually have fish in them. Big fish, too. So sure, there's a great fishing opportunity. - mavicyp, on 06/26/2008, -0/+4if you didn't look at the video and just listened, this comes very close to actually making you want to go there
- newsjunky100, on 06/28/2008, -0/+0This is a brilliant website which helps highlight the effect the Alberta Oil Sands development is having upon the landscape. If this large scale project were occurring is a less remote and more often visited part of North America, public outcry over the devastation to the landscape would have occurred long ago.
- rapport2000, on 06/30/2008, -0/+0They didn't mention the birdwatching opportunities at the OS - drowned ducks and migratory birds in the toxic tailings 'ponds"
- guidewire, on 07/22/2008, -0/+1funny and scary
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