July 22 Husky Energy Inc crews worked on Friday to clean-up an oil spill into a major western Canadian river, a government official said, with efforts focused on ensuring it does not contaminate the drinking water of communities downstream.
Advertisement
The company said late on Thursday it shut and isolated a pipeline on its Saskatchewan Gathering System, after roughly 200,000 to 250,000 liters of heavy oil and diluent spilled from the line, running into the North Saskatchewan River.
The City of North Battleford received notice that some oil of the Husky Energy oil spill near Maidstone will reach the City tonight and it will be more oil than anticipated.
The province also advises people to avoid recreational contact with the water where the oil plume has passed, and Kotyk said fishing in the affected parts of the river is not advisable.
This advisory will stay in place at least for the next three days. Workers there raced to stretch a 30km hose to draw drinking water from another source.
Prince Albert city council is holding a special meeting to discuss what Toye calls “drastic” water conservation measures that call for a fine of $1,000 if anyone is caught breaking the rules.
On Friday, Prince Albert officials warned residents to stock up on water by filling bathtubs and water jugs, in the event the city would need to shut down its water intake. In a Facebook post by the Government of Saskatchewan, it said crews are using vacuum trucks to clean up the spill.
Prince Albert’s water strategy covers two months, but Toye stated its supply might be strained longer.
“We haven’t have a spill like this, so we’re not sure”, he said. He said: “The water is quite dirty with suspended particulates and whatnot, and in some cases you can get oil attached to those particulates.If you run into these semi-floating blobs of mud and oil, that can be more problematic”. “We don’t have incidents of this magnitude very often”, said Kotyk, who added it’s been a number of years since there’s been an oil spill into water.
The neighboring province of Alberta is considering pipeline options to bring crude oil from its tar sands to ocean ports, after a cross-border proposal that would have run through the U.S.to the Gulf of Mexico was shut down by the US government.
Advertisement
Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall also said he didn’t see the Husky spill affecting the case for pipelines.
