A Vacation In Mordor
Ever wonder what it’d be like to vacation in a desolate wasteland? Well, now you can stop imagining and get…excited?
The environmental impact of the Alberta tar sand mines is about to be literally covered up and built over top of. Yes, that’s right ladies and gents, the tailing ponds resulting from the massive amount of water required to extract oil from the sands are being proposed to turn into a Lake District…Now you can have your family fun in the remains of industrialization’s greatest environmental disaster (well, one of them at least). This area, according to Nathan Vanderklippe of the Globe and Mail, has the potential to be “a recreational haven complete with campgrounds, boating, fishing – even swimming.” Now doesn’t that sound nice?
Now the only problem is taking what looks like a pitch-black lake, masking it, and turning it into a cover-up campground operation. Before you know it they’ll probably refer to tailing ponds as the foundation for a future haven. An ambitious idea, minus the fact that instead of improving the environmental conditions in the area, or ceasing the creation of these massive tailing ponds (now hey, there’s an idea!) they’re to be turned into a multi-generation development that will take an approximate 40 years to even consider environmentally stable (because, let’s face it, safe is a bit of a stretch). Even better, this 40-year process won’t even start until the mining is done, and who knows how long that could take.
What are your thoughts on the matter – should this concept be applied to more environmental atrocities? Should there be a movement to inhibit this development? Or should we go along with it and make the best of a destructive situation?
Share your reflections in the comments below, or on Twitter.
image courtesy of celebdu
