SAHTU
Since it was abandoned in 1945, the Northwest Territories' portion of CANOL Trail has sat idle, left to the elements and overgrowth, with few signs of change.

Joe Handley and Keenan Kakfwi hike a section of the CANOL Trail last month, while on a youth leadership hike. Handley, along with Sahtu MLA Norman Yakeleya and Garth Wallbridge, organize the hike for a group of Sahtu youth every year. - photo courtesy of Garth Wallbridge

The 372-km stretch of road, built by the U.S. Army as part of the CANOL project to transport crude oil from Norman Wells to the Pacific Ocean during the Second World War, is now little more than a broad trail strewn with wrecked old work vehicles, long-abandoned buildings, and unknown amounts of waste crude oil and other hazardous material.

Changes are now on the horizon, as a commitment to establish a territorial park at the site gains momentum.

Plans to create the Doi T'oh Territorial Park are rooted in the Sahtu Dene and Metis Land Claim Agreement, which took effect in 1994. Norman Yakeleya, now MLA for the Sahtu, was then chief negotiator for the Sahtu Dene people on the agreement, and remembers well the resistance both the territorial and federal governments put up to any thought of reserving land for the park.

"We fought tooth and nail for that," Yakeleya recalled. "They did not want to give it to the Sahtu people willingly. We had to argue for it, we had to convince them, because they did not want to add it to the land claims agreement."

Plans to include a park added another chapter to the land claims agreement, he said. This specified that land along the CANOL Trail was to be transferred from the federal government to the territorial government to allow for the creation of the Doi T'oh Territorial Park.

Little progress was made to create the park until more than a decade later, under then-premier Joe Handley's government.

"It kind of languished," said Handley. In 2006, his administration and the Sahtu government created a management plan for the proposed park, as was required in the Sahtu land claim agreement.

Plans to create the park will not be complete, however, until the federal government cleans up hazardous material along the trail, and transfers ownership of the land to the territorial government.

Now that the federal government has started work on an environmental assessment and clean-up plan, the park project has taken on greater momentum.

The CANOL Trail is one of 20 contaminated sites in the NWT, included in a list of closed mines rife with hazardous waste. Staff from the government's Contaminants and Remediation Directorate, a division of Indian and Northern Affairs Canada, are now surveying the trail for hazardous pollutants and other risks to the environment and human safety. Once done, the directorate will draft a plan to clean up and remove all hazardous contaminants from specific areas along the site, including pump stations, emergency shelters, and storage areas. Each of those areas are called "an area of concern," said Julie Ward, program manager for the contaminants directorate.

The chief concern, as far as pollutants go, is crude oil, said Ward, which was left in pipes and tanks along the road. Other assessments by Indian and Northern Affairs in the early 1990s also found some areas where soils were contaminated by oil spills.

"It's related to the historical activities along the trail," said Ward. Other concerns, according to a 2010 INAC report, include "asbestos-containing materials, lead-containing paint, hazardous fluids and materials associated with abandoned vehicles and physical debris such as dilapidated buildings and bridges, drums, abandoned pipeline and rusty vehicles."

Ward said INAC will have a complete assessment of the site done within two years. A clean-up plan will follow, to be completed within three to five years.

"That's done in consultation with the GNWT as well as the communities that are most affected by these sites," Ward said. Once land and water use permits are in place, and contractors found, the clean-up is ready to begin.

INAC will establish an estimated cost of the clean-up at the end of this year, Ward told News/North last week. Generally, she said, the department spends "about one-tenth" of all costs in assessment.

Current assessment work along the trail is being carried out by three companies - SENES Environmental Consulting, Franz Environmental, and Willow, which is running the logistics of the operation, Ward said. Some $1 million was spent for last year's activities, and $2.5 million this year.

Plans call for the park to cover the length of the CANOL Trail in the NWT some 376 km long and three km wide, with 1.5 km extending out from each side of the existing trail, Handley said.

"I suspect the trail will be kept as a nature trail, primarily for hikers," as well as for canoeists and kayakers who wish to access rivers and streams in the area, he said.

"This is up to the Sahtu people, and a management board that would create the park."

Even though the federal government's commitment to the clean-up of the CANOL Trail is following a coherent procedure with a distinct timeline, Handley remains guardedly optimistic about progress and commitment towards the creation of the territorial park.

A promise from the federal government to provide some $700,000 for a regional-level project to remove telegraph wire from the trail evaporated just last month, he said.

"I've been working with the Norman Wells Land Corporation to try to get money to clean up, roll up, or take away a lot of the old telegraph wire that is strung along the trail," said Handley, pointing to evidence that caribou and moose have died after becoming tangled and trapped in the wire.

"Everybody agrees it has to be cleaned up. There's no good reason to wait until the reclamation plan is done."

The promise for funding for the project through the Canadian Northern Economic Development Agency, which was to employ people of the Sahtu, was reportedly "put to other priorities," said Handley, though he suspects politics motivated the decision.

"I suspect that I, as a Liberal candidate (for the Western Arctic), am not viewed by the Conservatives very well," he said. "I think there's some political favouritism going on.

"It's frustrating, when you see good projects that the regions agree to, that create a lot of employment - and you have it withdrawn."

Handley, whose government passed a management plan for a territorial park on the CANOL Trail in 2006, has since continued to lobby governments to clean up the site and set up the park. Plans for the park have hit delays since they were established as part of the Sahtu land claim agreement in 1994. He suspects the site clean-up will be more expensive and take much lot longer than expected, unless the territory sees to it that the federal government follows through.

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