DENINU KU'E/FORT RESOLUTION
For the past six months, Nicole McKay has been doing her part to check the water quality in Fort Resolution.

Nicole McKay, a trainee with the aquatics monitoring program of Deninu K'ue First Nation in Fort Resolution, shows a bottle of sampled water to be tested. - Paul Bickford/NNSL photo

The 19-year-old is a trainee with the aquatics monitoring program of Deninu K'ue First Nation (DKFN).

"I really like contributing back to the community and letting them know what's wrong or what's right in the water," she said. "I like helping out."

The young member of DKFN has heard community concerns about the water for many years, explaining her father and grandfather are trappers and hunters.

Among her duties, she takes water samples at the community's water treatment plant and sends them to a lab in Yellowknife for testing.

She also enters the collected data into the aquatics monitoring program's computers.

McKay said she especially likes being out on the land. One of her duties is to collect readings every three months from an air sampling device on Mission Island.

"I like the fieldwork where I go take the samples and bring them back and ship them out," she said, adding her first visit to the air sampling device was on a snowmobile.

"It was pretty deep, the snow, but I still made it out there."

As her training continues, it is hoped she will take readings from equipment placed in Great Slave Lake and the Slave River by the Slave River and Delta Partnership to record such things as turbidity, or water clarity, and pH levels in the water.

The aquatics monitoring program has funding to keep McKay working in her part-time position - 15 hours a week - until the end of March.

If more funding is obtained, it is possible she might stay beyond March, and her title will change from trainee to technician.

McKay would be happy to continue working with the program.

"I like what I do," she said.

It is also possible that she might use the training to seek employment at a mine in the NWT, perhaps doing sampling or working in a laboratory.

"It doesn't matter which mine, but I just want to get my foot in that door," she said.

One of the goals of the aquatics monitoring program is to get people ready for work in the mines. For example, under an impact benefit agreement recently signed by DKFN with De Beers Canada for the proposed Gahcho Kue diamond mine, the company will be hiring environmental monitors from DKFN.

The band's aquatics monitoring program is a partnership with Environment Canada, and the data being collected will help analyze the water, air and fish.

"I'm pretty interested in science," said McKay. "That was one of my main courses in school that I was taking. I really liked it. I really like science and learning new things."

One of the things she still has to do is travel to Saskatoon for training with Dr. Marlene Evans of Environment Canada and the University of Saskatchewan.

"I was supposed to be there to go get further training with her, but I couldn't do that because I had no ID," said McKay, explaining she did not have the necessary photo identification to allow her to fly to Saskatoon.

Now, she is expected to travel to Saskatoon before March to learn how to analyze data and display it in graphs so it can be presented at meetings.

McKay said so far, she has learned a lot about water.

"When I take the samples, it's interesting to know that the water changes every day," she said, explaining that in some months there is more turbidity and the colour of the water is different.

She also said the water is clearer in the winter than in the summer.

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