Cumulative effects of fuel spills in Nunavut and N.W.T. not being well tracked, experts say

Environmental experts are worried the cumulative effects of gas, oil and fuel spills aren't being adequately tracked in parts of the North. 

As of last week, the N.W.T. and Nunavut together recorded roughly 437 contaminant spills in 2024. That number changes frequently as entries to the two territories' shared spills database are amended.

The database tracks spills and leaks of things such as petroleum products, sewage material, and mine tailings, on land and in waterways. The cause of such spills could be anything from a highway accident to a leaky fuel tank to faulty equipment at a mine site. 

Fifty-six per cent of those spills in 2024 happened in Nunavut, though only a handful of those were in the thousands of litres. Some were just a few litres in size and in some cases the exact size of the spill is unclear.

Still, some experts like Stafford Reid are worried about the cumulative effects of all the spills, in particular those involving petroleum products. Reid is a marine spills management expert at EnviroEmerg Consulting in B.C. 

To be able to measure those cumulative effects, Reid says it's important to document how far a spill has spread beyond the immediate area, and how long it lingers in that environment. That's something he doesn't believe is happening much.

"You often show these hundreds of spills as dots on the maps and you find that location, the source and amount, then it sort of stops there," Reid said.

In a statement to CBC News, Nunavut's Department of Environment said it does not track cumulative impacts of spills.

"However, if a spill occurs on a site previously affected by historical activities, [the Environment department] gathers evidence to distinguish recent impacts from past ones," the statement reads. 

The department said the parties responsible for a spill are tasked with measuring how far it has spread. Environment department officers then verify that with tools like photo-ionization detectors. 

Most of the spills in Nunavut's waters list a federal department as the lead agency. 

Environment and Climate Change Canada said there are federal environmental emergency regulations – but they account for the acute risks in an environmental emergency, and not cumulative effects. 

Residual environmental impacts 

Lynne Couves, program director of Pembina Institute's renewables in remote communities program, worries about what we don't know if cumulative effects of spills aren't being tracked. 

"What is happening to the ecosystem? What is happening to communities? What is happening to the plants, to the water, to the land?" Couves asked.

According to Canadian drinking water standards, one litre of gasoline can make one million litres of drinking water unfit for human consumption.

Andrew Dumbrille, the North American advisor to the Clean Arctic Alliance, worries the environmental effects of a spill can linger, even if it's officially considered "fully remediated." 

"There isn't any magic that can make them go away. They bio-accumulate and persist, and so the frequency of spill, the volume of spills, all contribute to this cumulative impact around those toxins in the environment," he said.

Stafford Reid adds that diesel is difficult to clean up because it spills over booms, and "you have to have enough thickness of the [diesel] to actually make it worthwhile recovering."

Nunavut's Environment department says it follows Canadian Environmental Quality Guidelines to determine when a site is considered restored, but the "uneven distribution of contaminants" can make it difficult to measure how much of a spill is recovered.

"Monitoring and sampling are the focus," the department said in a statement. 

Money and social impacts

There are other also other impacts beyond just physical damage to the environment even after a spill is cleaned up. 

Reid argues that even after a spill is considered "remediated," local residents may still see evidence of its environmental effects, which can serve to "trivialize the narrative that this doesn't have a community and social impact."

Then there is the cost to clean it up. 

"Money is also a cumulative effect. And we need to keep in mind what those overall costs are over a period of time," Couves said.

The Insurance Bureau of Canada estimates the clean-up bill for a spill from just an oil tank can be, on average, hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Ultimately, Couves and Dumbrille accept that spills will continue happening, so they believe phasing out dirty fuels should be the priority.