THE HIDDEN DIMENSION: WATER AND THE OIL SANDS Liberal Report from the Study of the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development on the Impact of Oil Sands Development on Canada’s Freshwater Residual Bitumen. [...] The question of the industry’s freshwater impacts has attracted less notice, among the media and the public, than the more heated and rancorous debate about the oil sands, GHG emissions, and climate change. [...] This lack of attention to the effects of oil sands development on such a vital—for human health, the environment, and the economy— resource is what motivated the Liberal members of the House of Commons environment committee to propose that the committee conduct an in-depth study of the water-oil sands nexus. [...] Nor should one underestimate the intensity of the reaction that any suggestion the industry is contaminating water in the region can provoke among oil sands promoters and defenders—even those in the normally staid realm of the public service. [...] Because the industry withdraws vast amounts of water from the Athabasca in order to separate sand from bitumen in surface mining and to generate steam to pump bitumen from the ground in in situ operations, the oil sands industry can also harm fish, fish habitat, and the wider environment by lowering water levels in the river.