Jack Danylchuk
Northern News Services
Published Monday, August 20, 2007

FORT SMITH - One day last September Francois Paulette looked out on the Slave River that runs by his home in Fort Fitzgerald and was startled by the view. Conditioned to seasonal changes in the river, he could not recall ever seeing its granite bones so high and dry.

"Something is happening here that is not right," Paulette said recently on a break from organizing a conference prompted by concerns over the quantity and quality of water in the Slave River and the Mackenzie basin.

"It's the nature of people," he said, thinking about the accumulation of changes he has witnessed on the river in his lifetime: "Unless something drastic is happening in their backyard they don't get up and say something."

Sponsored by Akaitcho First Nations and hosted by Smith Landing First Nation, the four-day conference opens today in Fort Smith. The theme is Tu Beta T-Sena - water is life, in Chipewyan, and he expects 300 or more people will turn out to have their say.

Justin Trudeau, the keynote speaker, will set the tone for discussions on water quality and use and the duty to consult. Between feasts, hand games, and drum dances, elders will school youth in traditional knowledge on the use and protection of water.

Paulette expects delegates to next week's conference to draft recommendations that will set out "how we can work co-operatively on water issues. Industry can't just go in and do what they want, as they did in the past. The climate has changed on that; they have to consult First Nations. The courts have said that."

The usual reaction to low water on the Slave River is to look west to B.C. Hydro dams that for 40 years have controlled the flow of water on the Peace River. The largest tributary in the Mackenzie basin, the Peace becomes the Slave River as it swings north and absorbs the outflow from Lake Athabasca, and accounts for 80 per cent of the flow at Fort Fitzgerald.

Last fall, the finger of blame pointed south at tar sands projects in Alberta that drink deeply from the Athabasca River, a major watercourse in the Mackenzie basin and almost directly upstream from Fort Fitzgerald. They were right, but for the wrong reasons.

Autumn has always been a time of low water in the Mackenzie basin. The Athabasca glacier still sends a diminishing trickle on the long journey to Beaufort Sea, but the main water source - snow laid down in winter storms off the Pacific - passes through the basin by the end of July.

Without summer rains, the natural low water cycle is magnified. Last summer, following a winter of low snowfall, drought parched the upper reaches of the Mackenzie River basin - brought on, some contend, by climate change that can be tracked back to the tar sands developments.

"The tar sands are to blame as much as anyone, but not for the reasons that people are jumping on," said Jack Van Camp, executive director of the Mackenzie River Basin Board. "It's not because they are using so much water to produce bitumen, it's because they are the worst contributor to greenhouse gas in Canada and changing the climate patterns."

Established a decade ago, the Mackenzie River Basin Board is a forum for discussion on managing and sharing waters of the Mackenzie basin by the federal, territorial and provincial governments of the Yukon, Northwest Territories, Alberta, British Columbia and Saskatchewan.

Creating the board was the first step toward negotiating bilateral agreements between the territories and provinces on how they would share basin water, and followed studies prompted by the devastating impacts of B.C. Hydro dams on the Peace River.

The W.A.C. Bennett and Peace Canyon dams upended the natural regime of the Peace River, shifting peak flows from summer to winter, when demand for electricity is highest, and wrought havoc on the complex hydrology of the Peace-Athabasca delta.

So far, only the Yukon and Northwest Territories have reached an agreement on sharing water form the Peel and Arctic Red rivers. The GNWT is aiming for an agreement with Alberta in three years, said Bob Bailey, deputy minister for Environment and Natural Resources, but that objective isn't firm.

Indian and Northern Affairs Canada manages water in the Northwest Territories, said Bailey, and "Alberta would prefer to settle with B.C. first. They want to know what they're going to get from B.C., what they will use, and what they will pass on to us."

Dennis Bevington is skeptical. Steeped in northern water issues for almost 30 years, the MP for the Western Arctic doubts that British Columbia and Alberta will surrender their effective control of the Peace and Athabasca rivers without active intervention by the federal government.

"B.C. is in no hurry," said Bevington. "Every year they delay means millions of dollars in revenue from the sale of electricity."

"Without the bilateral agreements there is no responsibility for the quantity and quality of water that flows between jurisdictions. We've been calling for a moratorium on development until these issues are addressed, but we're going to the help of the federal government to move Alberta."

David Schindler, a world-renowned ecologist and water expert at the University of Alberta, said Northerners can't rely on the Alberta government to police water use and quality in the Peace and Athabasca watersheds.

"For the past 15 years, the whole Alberta system has been pervaded by the mentality that industry can police itself. It has turned out to be a dismal failure," Schindler said, and pointed to the work of the Cumulative Environmental Management Association.

The NGO was tasked 10 years ago with establishing instream flow needs for the Athabasca River - data the Alberta Energy and Utilities Board said in 2004 was critical to maintaining the integrity of the river in the face of ever-growing demands for water by tar sands developers.

"That information was to appear in 2005, but the data base is inadequate to assess the needs of the ecosystem and navigation," Schindler said. "So we are just now designing the monitoring programs that we thought were in place 10 years ago."

The impetus to track changes in the Mackenzie basin seemed to diminish after the board was established, said Schindler, who was a member of the Northern River Basins Study that led to its creation. Instead of continuing, the study was replaced with the Northern River Ecosystems report that comes every five years, but lacks detail.

Despite pressure to slow the pace of tar sands development, the Alberta government has approved projects that are expected to double demand for water from the Athabasca River, which is licensed to supply 349 million cubic metres a year to the oil industry - more than twice the volume Calgary draws from the Bow River to meet its needs.

"The oil sands haven't been using that much water so far," said Schindler. "Climate change has been the main influence on river flows. As the average temperature rises, and the period of evaporation grows, more water will leave the climate cycle."

The Athabasca River flows through bitumen deposits that leach naturally into the water. Run-off from the mines also finds its way into the river. As the average stream flow diminishes, the concentration of pollutants will rise. "The data bases we've seen aren't good enough to show that, but I predict that is almost certainly the case," said Schindler.

There won't be dramatic changes in the rivers, Schindler said. "A gradual decrease in fish populations will be a first sign of that water quality is being lost."

In Fort Chipewyan, 100 km upstream from Fort Fitzgerald - buffered from pollutants in the Athabasca River by the filtering action of the delta - fishermen have complained of frequent deformities in their catch. Last year, the village's medical doctor created a furor when he suggested that a high incidence of cancer in the community might be traced to drinking water drawn from Lake Athabasca.

"Bile duct cancers are occurring at about five times the normal rate in Fort Chipewyan," said Schindler. "The problem, and main reason for disagreement, is the small population size. It may be just due to chance. But that number of cancers calls out for secondary study."

Attitudes toward water are changing, Paulette believes. Although the territorial government's detailed business plan devotes only a few lines to water issues, in the last session MLAs passed legislation that declares water a human right.

"Water is becoming a central environmental issue for everyone - not just in this community, but nationally and internationally," said Paulette.

"If we destroy that we'll be destroying ourselves, ultimately."