Since April 22 (Earth Day) the gushing British Petroleum oil well in the Gulf of Mexico and its disastrous environmental impact has been in the news on a daily basis, but a an oil operation of equal importance in Canada has gone unreported. The Alberta tar sands mining operation has a footprint the size of Florida and is wrecking havoc on the land, wildlife, the First Nation population, the Athabasca River, and an aquifer that may extend as far east as Manitoba.

While Canadians have become complacent about the tar sands destruction, the development has recently been getting attention in the United States and Europe. It is the largest development of its kind in the world and rivals the open pit coal mining operations in Virginia in size. It is also North America's single largest industrial contributor of greenhouse gases.

There are actually two types of extraction going on in the tar sands, one uses the open pit method which we tend to hear most about because it is above ground; the other pumps steam into the tar to soften the tar so it can be pumped. Neither is environmentally safe and both use a vast amount of water to obtain the bitumen, which is more like asphalt than oil. The open pit method uses five barrels of water to get a barrel of crude; the steam method uses 25 barrels of water per barrel of crude.

The tar sands operation is supposed to be regulated by both federal and provincial ministries. Environment Canada has responsibilities for such activity under the Canadian Environmental Act, the Species at Risk Act, the Migratory Bird Convention and the Fisheries Act yet none of these acts are being enforced with any rigour.

Recent testimony presented to the federal Standing Committee on Environmental and Sustainable Development, a parliamentary committee struck to write a report on the impact of the tar sands operation, is shocking. Testimony came from scientists, bureaucrats, lobbyists, aboriginal chiefs and environmental groups. The committee wrote a 300-page draft report giving reasons to support a claim that Ottawa has mismanaged its mandate in the oil sands operation. The committee abruptly adjourned and destroyed its report. What do they not want us to know?

Although the federal government has a mandate to protect fish from tar sands pollutants, the environment ministry has done only one study on the affect of tar sands pollutants on fish and that study occurred in 2003. The ministry is not involved in the design of tailings ponds because they don't contain fish.

The tools for policing industry withdrawals of water from the Athabasca River are inadequate for the job. The river is slowly being pumped dry and the mining companies will have reduce the amount of water they get from the river in the future or find it elsewhere. The only other source would be the aquifer.

Industry pollutants that are leaking into the river include bitumen, heavy metals and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons which run-off into the river. Forty thousand residents who live downstream from the project complain about the impact the tar extraction operation is having on their way of life. In particular they want protection for the Mackenzie River Basin, a vast watershed that supports their way of life.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper talks about Canada as a future "energy powerhouse" and the tar sands operation is central to his energy policy regardless of its impact.

The damage being done by the tar sands bitumen removal cannot be repaired. The area cannot be decontaminated. Fish and wildlife cannot be replaced. The suffering of downstream residents will last for generations.

We cannot ignore what has happened in the Gulf of Mexico, but we shouldn't ignore the Alberta tar sands development either. Both are causing environmental devastation beyond anyone's imagination and both are the result of mismanagement on the part of government ministries.