Check this article out about the oil sands in Canada:
http://wenatcheeworld.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080823/BIZ/66421
here’s the money quote:
Residents of Fort Chipewyan, Alberta’s oldest settlement about 170 miles downstream from the projects, are worried that toxins from the ponds could seep into the river and drift into their drinking water. They say they have caught deformed fish in Lake Athabasca and the river that feeds it.
John O’Connor, once the doctor of the native community of 1,200, found five cases