White-clad workers stood on opposite banks of a small pond near Little Buffalo on Thursday, stretching brightly coloured flags across the water.

The flags are meant to keep wildlife away from the tainted water and the greasy black ring of oil that rims the banks. Black plastic sheeting and orange web fencing has been set up to keep out mammals and amphibians. Effigies of owls and raptors have been placed in the bush and on top of poles, some of them emitting eardrum-rattling recordings of hawk calls.

The 150 workers hired by Plains Midstream Canada would likely be enough to keep most animals away anyway. The workers combed the site for blackened branches and other debris, using skimmers to pull oil off the water and rapidly extending a road made of rig mats to circle the entire contaminated area.

"It's still in the early stages now," said an exhausted-looking Stephen Bart, the company's vice-president of operations. "We'll do everything possible to get it all."

Luckily for the company, a beaver dam contained the spill at one end.

Still, there's no doubt mopping up all the oil from the tangled bush and wetland at the site will be a finicky, arduous task.

Company president David Duckett said workers are taking oil off the site 24 hours a day. He didn't know exactly how much it would cost to finish the job. "It's going to be a significant cost."

During a first-quarter earnings report Thursday, Greg Armstrong, the chairman of the parent company, estimated it would cost less than $25 million, a portion of which would be covered by insurance.

Garrett Tomlinson, a spokesman for Bernard Ominayak, one of the men claiming to be chief of the Lubicon Cree Nation, said the band is pleased the spill appears to be contained.

Local teacher Lillian Whitehead is worried the rest of the pipeline, built in 1966, won't hold. "It's probably going to break again. Something that old, if it's broken now, it will probably go again."

hbrooymans@edmontonjournal.com