Yellowknife (Dec 04/06) - Keith Morrison spends eight hours a day kayaking and rafting down the Slave River during the summer. He knows it well and said he pays close attention to it.

"It's definitely low," said Morrison, owner and operator of Slave Kayak Lodge, a whitewater outfitting company.

He is right, according to Alberta Environment, who monitor the river's levels.

"We are seeing a significant decrease in the flow," said Erin Carrier, Alberta Environment spokesperson, noting that the river is a metre lower than normal.

The river, normally flowing at about 3,500 cubic metres per second, was running at 2,400 near the end of October.

This year a lack of snow and rain were to blame, she said.

The World Wildlife Fund - Canada (WWF) recently presented another reason for the lower levels - one that a lot of people are paying close attention to right now - the Alberta oil sands.

One focus of the WWF report was the Athabasca River, which flows into the Slave River near Lake Athabasca.

The Athabasca's water flows have already decreased by about 20 per cent between 1958 and 2003, and will most likely get even lower, according to the report.

The culprits are the oil sands' use of "enormous amounts" of water as well as climate change, it said.

The oil sand operations use about two to five cubic metres of water for every cubic metre of oil produced, the report continued.

The upstream activity has the Deninu K'ue First Nations (DKFN) in Fort Resolution concerned.

"We live downstream from the development," said DKFN Chief Robert Sayine, "and we're not being consulted on tar sands expansion."

The DKFN is now looking at forcing a judicial review of a proposed expansion of one of Imperial Oil's tar sands in Alberta.

"Everything that happens upstream from us affects us," said Sayine. "We're talking about animals, human health, fish...and it's not just a Fort Resolution problem."

He's right, said Michael Miltenberger, Thebacha MLA and former environment and natural resources minister for the NWT.

"Protection of water is going to be one of the driving things on the political agenda in the coming years," he said.

Climate change, deforestation, and the oil sands are all contributing to diminishing water flows, he said.

"Some small lakes are actually disappearing," he said.

Fluctuations in the river levels make his job a bit more risky, said Morrison.

"It definitely makes things a little less safe for me," he said. "How we're operating here is by local knowledge - where it's safe to go and not safe. All that has changed." However, he said it isn't a big deal - river outfitters are used to adapting to river changes.

Concern about water levels is a good reminder, said Carrier, that people need to think about conservation.

The Slave River's levels are checked at Fitzgerald, just south of Fort Smith.