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The NWT coroner's office has ruled there is no need for an inquest into the deaths of two Yellowknife teens who drowned last summer after they were left at a wilderness camp near Behchoko, but there is a need for comprehensive safety standards at wilderness camps.

And it's an immediate need that should not go unmet any longer.

It's tragic that two people had to die before the government made this "a high priority," and it's most unfortunate that a year after the deaths of two young men, ages 18 and 15, the government is no closer to establishing safety standards.

In fact, the government has yet to define "wilderness camp."

What factors will determine whether or not a bush camp is held to the government's new standards?

Whether or not any minors are present? Whether public funding is involved?

Will the new standards affect outfitters? What about community or family camps?

Will private operators be affected as well as government-run facilities?

The territorial government has said it's aiming to have new standards in place by next year, but it appears that little progress has been made to date.

If new standards are going to be enforced next year, further information about the regulations and who must abide by them should be made available to the public well before that time.

Camp operators need to know whether they will need to upgrade training, change staffing levels or adjust insurance in time for the summer season.

In fact, camp operators should be part of the process of setting up comprehensive safety standards.

There's a wealth of knowledge in the NWT about living on the land among aboriginal leaders and elders as well as business owners who have been running camps successfully - and safely - for years.

The Department of Justice already has standards in place for its own wilderness camps, according to a department spokesperson. Perhaps these could serve as a launching point - it is definitely past time to launch.

When it comes to setting safety standards for bush camps, the need is there and the tools are there but time is not anyone's ally in this predicament. A delay could mean putting additional lives at risk.

The territorial government must draft new regulations as soon as possible.

Keeping drugs and alcohol out of communities is difficult. To be successful, it requires the co-operation of police, transport officials and residents.

In Sanikiluaq, the number of arrests for bringing drugs into the community has increased since April, when scheduled passenger flights to and from Winnipeg began.

When the flights were chartered by the Government of Nunavut, the GN authorized the airline to search passengers' bags for contraband. The searches stopped when the flights were no longer chartered.

Canada is a democratic country and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms protects Canadians from undue search and seizure.

The airline cannot legally search bags on a regular flight, nor can police without gathering enough evidence for a search warrant.

Police credit community tips for many of the arrests. Since bags can no longer be searched, residents are stepping up to help police keep drugs out of Sanikiluaq.

There is strength in numbers and the people bringing contraband to the island are outnumbered by those who want a safe, sober community for their families.

To keep drugs and alcohol out, they will have to remain vigilant.

The recent leak in a fuel bladder at Baffinland's Milne Inlet storage site and the leak in Hall Beach's main sewage lagoon lead us to question whether the current inspection and reporting practices are adequate.

Several thousand litres of fuel leaked from a Baffinland bladder into secondary containment. The company voluntarily reported the leak a month after the fact and Indian and Northern Affairs Canada praised them for doing so, adding the company was not required to report the leak at all since the fuel was not released into the environment.

At Hall Beach, it was noticed on June 30 the gravel berm of a five-year-old sewage lagoon was leaking and by Aug. 14 an estimated 13,552 cubic metres of sewage had seeped through the containment wall. Indian and Northern Affairs was notified in July. Its inspectors arrived in August on a regular inspection and confirmed the leak.

Yes, the Arctic region is vast, and yes, getting into remote sites requires planning and logistics, but regular and emergency inspections help keep things like fuel bladders and sewage lagoons from contaminating the environment. Those checks should be frequent and stringent.

Leaks happen, but they should be reported and dealt with immediately.

If you look at a map of the proposed Edehzhie protected area, one of its most striking features is the interplay of land and water.

The Horn Plateau juts above the area and is topped with a number of lakes and ponds. Creeks and rivers run down the sides of the plateau like tendrils branching out in all directions to form a network of waterways.

Edehzhie encompasses the Horn River, Willow River, Rabbitskin Creek and Mills Lake. The process to protect this 25,230 square kilometre area is reaching a crucial point. A decision will soon be made on the suggested boundary for Edehzhie.

The question, of course, is how much land should be protected. For Jonas Antoine, the Dehcho First Nations' representative on the Edehzhie working group, the only concern is the water.

Edehzhie is special because of its abundance of fresh water, said Antoine. Water flows out of the area making it an ideal place to protect as a pristine habitat.

Antoine advocates taking a long-term view of the area and imagining what it will look like in 200 years if it's not protected. For Antoine, the water is more important than any non-renewable resources that might be extracted from the ground.

There are, however, indicators that Edehzhie might hold deposits of lead, zinc, uranium and oil and gas. As in many other cases in the Deh Cho, the issue comes down to where priorities lie.

On one side of the line are conservation values and the protection of the land. On the other side is resource development. Floating above the two is the question of what the Deh Cho will need in future years.

Similar questions have been raised with the expansion of the Nahanni National Park Reserve. Some parties have stated expanded boundaries will lock resources away from future development and hinder the economic growth of the Deh Cho.

If there was an easy formula to apply when making boundary decisions for protected areas, now would be the time to use it. The problem is there's no simple solution.

Non-renewable resources fuel economic development but only if they exist in the right conditions and can be easily accessed.

Protected areas are great places to visit and assure the continued survival of plants and animals but they aren't something you can take to the bank.

The amount of fresh water in Edehzhie throws another factor into the calculations.

Water is increasingly being viewed as a valuable resource. Given time, sources of freshwater might become as valuable as today's non-renewable resources. Protecting water now could be the equivalent of setting up a long-term savings account.

In cases like Edehzhie, a decision will be made and a boundary will be set. Some people will be pleased, some will be disappointed and some will be ambivalent.

The evidence of whether or not the right decision was made, however, will only be seen by future generations.

For years and years I've been saying that the youth of our town have been missing out on a great experience in media recording and editing.

Back in my days at Samuel Hearne, I remember wishing for a studio where I could play with video cameras and make short movies.

We had cameras, but there was no way to properly edit our footage and make music for the production.

Yeah, that school was lacking in areas where other Northern schools were flourishing.

Every year, I would take part in the Territorial Skills Competition, held by Skills Canada.

We would travel to Yellowknife for a few days and get to meet with like-minded youth from all over the Territories.

My field of expertise was web development and web design. I was a total nerd for HTML and loved working on a computer, because it was the one skill that was taught to me at Sam Hearne that I had a real interest in.

Once we got to Yellowknife, it was obvious that our little school in Inuvik was not offering the coolest classes I'd ever seen.

Sir John Franklin School in Yellowknife had a lab and video recording suite for student use. The school in Hay River also had a nice set-up for students to use for their projects.

Our poor school didn't offer a class like audio/video or anything of the like during my time.

Now, with the recent news of a state-of-the-art studio being planted in the Inuvik Youth Centre, this could mean great things for the people of Inuvik.

Ideally, this equipment will help the youth of today express themselves through unique and enticing media.

After spending years in an editing suite, recording sound and capturing video, I can tell you that it's a gruelling process, but once you're in the zone it feels great.

I want others in town to feel that same feeling of accomplishment and satisfaction.

Now, it's all fine and dandy for a skilled team of professionals to come through town and teach some kids how to cut and drag some clips to make a timeline, but there is a more important lesson to be taught to the kids of our town first.

It's no revelation that the kids in this town have issues about respecting others' property. Maybe telling the kids that this equipment will be theirs will encourage them to care for the stuff.

I don't see the sense in giving another freebie to the same group of people in our community that wage war on our sense of safety and security.

You don't hear of 40-year-old men and women running rampant through schools, or defacing public property with tips on buying crack.

These are young people that are doing the most damage in our lives and we give another treat, in hopes that maybe they will come around.

I have nothing against the efforts of the visiting group of youth educators or the people who made the trip possible, like the Youth Centre.

I guess I just don't have the forgiving kind of heart or patience needed to keep giving to the void.

To all those youth who are out making a difference and slowly changing the minds of people like me, I applaud you.

You're fighting a good fight and hopefully you can make use of this equipment before it's abused.

A recent walk along the shore near Rankin Inlet turned up some of the most striking scenery I've seen in my life, not to mention a few sluggish siksiks and a couple of the gnarled, abandoned vehicles I've learned are so ubiquitous to Nunavut's landscape.

There's only been about a 30 per cent increase in personal vehicles in the territory since its inception, according to the annual Canadian Vehicle Survey. Surprisingly low, given that every year sealift seems to bring more into each community.

I guess the problem is the vehicles rarely have anything to do once they've outlived their usefulness but to serve their final decaying days as targets for sharpshooters or angry teens with baseball bats and stones.

Once they're here, they're very difficult to dispose of. The cost of freight makes their export prohibitively expensive (unless, as in Iqaluit's case, some private company comes along to take them away), and crushing requires expensive equipment.

So here they stay, adding more weight to our already overburdened landfills, and leaking toxins into the earth as they degrade.

They leave side streets looking more like bombed-out Bosnia than rural Canada, and their mere neglected presence seems to attract more litter like a magnet.

But besides cluttering the landscape in their afterlife, the influx of motor vehicles is causing other, more subtle, changes as well.

Cars tend to create their own culture, one where neighbours speed by instead of pausing to say hello, and teenaged social lives revolve around "going up the road."

One of the most jarring differences I discovered upon landing in Rankin was that cars don't stop for you here as a pedestrian, you stop for them. I even saw an elder nearly sideswiped by a distracted driver in front of Northern the other day.

The mayor of one small hamlet in the region told me this week his council would soon have to start looking at ways to deal with increased vehicles, perhaps with more stop signs or posted speed limits. Extra traffic was changing the way people moved around the community, and without the proper regulations in place it was becoming unsafe.

Finally, they require things like smooth roads and parking spaces, which require other things, like planning, space and money.

If a recent debate over the asphalt millings newly-laid on Rankin's roads is any indication, traffic-related issues are going to continue to suck up more resources and time in all our communities from here on in.

- Darrell Greer, the regular editor of the Kivalliq News, returns later this month