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When ExxonMobil, Suncor and other companies mine the oil, they produce toxic waste referred to as tailings. These tailings are a slurry of water, fine sand particles, chemicals, heavy metals and other petrochemical waste.¹⁴⁴¹⁷ Oil companies are dumping this poison into enormous human-made lakes called tailing ponds.¹⁴⁴¹⁹ The so-called ponds together take up an area of 300 square kilometers, enough to cover the city of Vancouver 2.6 times over.¹⁹⁵¹⁸ Alberta’s tar sands companies have produced more than 1.4 trillion liters of poisonous tailings as of 2023.¹⁹⁵²⁰ And the toxic lakes are growing day by day.¹⁴⁴²³

Tailing ponds make people ill. They are full of poisons such as lead, arsenic, benzene and mercury.¹⁴⁴²⁵ The chemicals cause nervous system damage, higher rates of cancer and rare types of childhood cancer. ¹⁴⁴²⁷ When oil producers aren't injecting it underground, the slurry from tailing ponds continuously seeps into Alberta’s groundwaters, lakes and rivers.^{144291443119521} Even as far as 200 km (124 mi) away from the Alberta extraction sites, cancer rates have increased by 30 percent.^[2]  The disposal of wastewaters by injecting them underground can cause significant earthquakes.¹⁵⁴²¹ The industry’s typically slow responses to leaks do not help either. In 2022, it took Imperial Oil half a year to identify the source of a leak form one of its tailing ponds.¹⁵⁴²⁵ Nine months later, the same company was linked to one of the largest wastewater leaks in Alberta’s history.^1542314435 In 2024, Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation filed a lawsuit against Alberta’s Energy Regulator for not having been informed about toxic discharges into their territorial watershed earlier.^1952919531

The tar sands companies have turned the air, water and land of Indigenous First Nations into a sacrifice zone.¹⁴⁴³⁷ New research shows that health-damaging carbon emissions exceed industry-reported values by up to 6300%.¹⁹⁵³⁶ The findings reinforce similar claims Indigenous communities have been making for decades.¹⁹⁵³⁵ The companies have used so much water for oil production that water levels have become dangerously low.¹⁴⁴³⁹ The few fish people are still able to catch are too contaminated to eat.¹⁴⁴⁴¹ Many Indigenous communities are struggling to make enough money to survive.¹⁴⁴⁴³ People are often left with no choice but to work for the industry that has destroyed the land and waters they depend on.¹⁴⁴⁴⁵ The Beaver Lake Cree Nation is now fighting a legal battle to stop the ever-hungry tar sands expansionists.¹⁵⁴²⁹ 35,000 oil and gas sites are eating away at Indigenous Nation's water and lands, as well as their rights to fish, hunt and gather plants.^1444715431 For this reason, the people of Beaver Lake Cree Nation have decided to sue the governments in Canada and Alberta that authorized the tar sands mines and other destructive industrial projects on the Nation’s traditional lands.¹⁴⁴⁴⁹ Their goal is clear. They do not want to stop one specific mine, project or company, but “all of them at once”.¹⁴⁴⁵¹