September 2012
Columns
What's new in production
The Athabasca River in Alberta starts out clean. Most rivers do, too, I suppose, but this one begins as meltwater from the Athabasca Glacier in the Columbia icefields of Jasper National Park. The water reaches a liquid state for the first time since falling as snow thousands of years ago, and is quite pure and drinkable (you can purchase a bottle of Athabasca glacier water, if so inclined). It’s what happens to that water as it flows downstream—to Great Slave Lake and, eventually, the Arctic Ocean—that has been the subject of so much discussion, because its course runs through the bituminous sands, in and around Ft. McMurray, Alberta.
