Environmental Stewardship: Towards a SWIFT Reclamation of Oil Sands Tailings Ponds in Alberta

May 25, 2026

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• Oil and Gas
• Rivers
• Wildwater
• WLA Archive

 

Wildlands Advocate article by Celine Fawaz, Gustavo Zago, & João B. P. Soares

Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering, University of Alberta

Read the PDF version here.

 

Tailings ponds in Alberta hold massive volumes of fine-clay slurry. Our Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Alliance Society project — SWIFT — aims to reclaim larger quantities of water and turn fluid tailings into stable, reclaimable lands at a faster rate using advanced, tailor-made coagulation–flocculation chemistries, developed in collaboration with CarboNet and Alberta Wilderness Association (AWA).

A pond like no other pond

From a distance, an oil sands tailings pond may look like a lake. Upon closer inspection, it is something else: a vast settling basin for industrial wastewater that is a mixture of toxins, water, ultra‑fine clays and silts, traces of bitumen, and other organics.

Those fine particles are the major issue. They are so small and so strongly held apart by their surface chemistry that they can remain suspended for years. Over time, they form what is called mature fine tailings (MFT), an oily yogurt-like slurry that can take decades to consolidate on its own.

Meanwhile, the tailings inventory keeps growing. The Alberta Energy Regulator (AER) reports that total regional fluid tailings volumes increased from 1.075 billion cubic metres in 2014 to 1.505 billion cubic metres in 2024. Regulators also require that tailings be monitored, reported, and progressively treated: the totality of a project’s fluid tailings should be “ready‑to‑reclaim” ten years after the end‑of‑mine life.

Why dewatering matters: Safety, water, and reclamation

Fluid tailings are not just a bookkeeping problem. They are a long‑term liability on the landscape, and they elevate environmental risk. Larger ponds mean greater consequences if containment fails, and more contact between contaminated water and surrounding soils and aquifers.

Water is also at the centre of the issue. Water is needed for bitumen extraction from oil sands, as well as for ecosystems and communities. Indigenous communities have raised concerns about impacts on treaty rights (hunting and fishing) and about long‑term health and cultural consequences when water quality is threatened.

Ultimately, reclamation requires more than settling. If tailings remain too wet, they cannot be shaped into stable landforms or support vegetation. And if the recovered water remains cloudy (turbid) with fine particles (fines), it is harder to recycle because the fines can accumulate in the system and worsen the problem.

The standard treatment recipe, and why it is not enough

Across many mining operations, a common approach is to add an inorganic coagulant (a salt‑like additive that reduces charge repulsion among the fine particles) and a polymer flocculant (macromolecules, typically from the polyacrylamide family, that act like bridges between the coagulated fine particles), so that particles clump into heavier flocs that settle faster.

Even though this standard approach can help, it often falls short in two ways. First, the treated solids can still be too wet to allow soil reclamation. Second, the recovered water can remain turbid because the finest particles evade capture by the traditional coagulant/flocculant systems. In oil sands operations, those remaining fines can be recycled back to the plant and then build up over time, an industry‑coined nuisance known as Frankenfines.

Part of the reason why standard treatments are insufficient is simple: oil sands tailings are not uniform. Their mineralogy, chemistry, and bitumen content vary from site to site, and even within the same pond over time. A one‑size‑fits‑all chemical recipe is rarely optimal. Achieving acceptable performance can demand high chemical dosages, which raises costs and adds to the chemical load in recycled water and soil.

What is the SWIFT main innovation?

Our NSERC Alliance Society project is called SWIFT: Sustainable Water Intelligent Flocculation Treatment. The idea is to replace the off‑the‑shelf chemical recipe with a smarter, tailored pair: a bifunctional coagulant designed to grab onto the specific fine particles present in a tailings stream and connect strongly to a matching functional polymer flocculant.

In everyday terms, think of it as a two‑part fastening system. One component finds the fines and neutralizes their repulsion (the bifunctional coagulant) while the other component (the functional polymer) links those particles into a stronger, more water‑releasing network. You can envision this process as adding purpose‑built hooks to a net, so it holds what it catches and squeezes out water more effectively.

Because SWIFT is designed around the chemistry of the tailings at hand (oil sands or other mining operations), the goal is better performance at lower dosages: faster settling, clearer recycled water, and denser solids that retain less water. We believe SWIFT can assist tailings ponds in achieving a truly reclaimable state.

Why this partnership matters

This project brings together three complementary strengths:

• University of Alberta’s Group of Applied Macromolecular Engineering (GAME): GAME develops and tests new polymer flocculants and coagulants, and measures how effective they are in terms of settling rate, water clarity, strength, and water retention of the resulting deposits.
• CarboNet: This industrial wastewater‑treatment company helps define real‑world constraints and accelerates the path from bench testing to pilots and, eventually, field trials.
• AWA: AWA brings the much-needed (and unfortunately often neglected) environmental and social lens to the work, helps keep outcomes aligned with ecosystem restoration and Indigenous concerns, and translates results for the public through outreach — including sharing updates in the Wild Lands Advocate.

That mix — science, scale‑up experience, and environmental stewardship — is deliberate. Tailings are not only a technical challenge, they are a societal one. Only a diverse approach can solve current and future problems associated with oil sands and mineral tailings reclamation.

What success looks like

No single technology has been able to eliminate tailings ponds at an acceptable cost across the board. We do not believe SWIFT is a magic wand, either, such solutions do not exist. However, our team is convinced that SWIFT provides a new, practical direction for this important field by using novel chemistry to adapt to tailings, instead of forcing tailings to fit existing commercial treatment products.

Success for us means measurable outcomes that matter to Albertans in particular, and Canadians in general: clearer water returned to reuse, less accumulation of fine solids in the environment, and deposits that reach ready‑to‑reclaim criteria sooner and more reliably. If we can help reduce the time tailings spend as perpetual slurries, and reduce the footprint and risk that comes with it, that is environmental stewardship in the most concrete sense.

The risks and hazards of tailings should not be watered down; the tailings themselves should be dewatered.

Sidebar: A mini glossary

Coagulant: an additive that reduces the electrical repulsion between suspended particles so they can come together.

Flocculant: a macromolecule (often a polymer) that bridges particles or small clumps into larger flocs (aggregates of these particles).

Ready‑to‑reclaim (RTR): a regulatory and engineering milestone indicating treated tailings are on a trajectory to stable landforms suitable for reclamation.

Sidebar: Three facts worth remembering

• Tailings are not just water: they contain ultra‑fine mineral particles and residual organics that resist settling.
• Tailings chemistry varies widely, which is why one formula rarely works everywhere.
• Efficient tailings treatment is more than just faster dewatering: it reduces long‑term environmental risk and speeds up land reclamation.