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Slave River report delayed Jack Danylchuk Northern News Services Published Monday, June 27, 2011
The report was expected to be made public this month, but "the peer review is not complete," according to Jodi Woollam, a spokesperson for Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada. The report will update a baseline study conducted more than a decade ago that found no evidence that pollution from bitumen mining in Alberta was affecting fish and water quality in the Slave River, but urged future investigators to enlist the aid of local communities to monitor the river. "Like everyone else, I would like to know what's in that report," said Francois Paulette, an elder of Salt River First Nation. Paulette was among the residents of Slave River communities enlisted to catch fish over the weekend for scientists from the University of Saskatchewan who are managing a long-term study of fish in the upper reaches of the Mackenzie basin. Paulette said he expected to find further evidence of the deformities that have become increasingly common in the catch from in the river that funnels water from the Peace and Athabasca rivers into Great Slave Lake. "There have been deformities in fish caught in Fort Smith," Paulette said. "It happened in the past, but people never made the connection with the tar sands and pollution. Now that people are aware, they are connected to what is happening." When they weren't catching fish for scientists, residents of Fort Smith and Fort Resolution took training over the weekend in monitoring water quality with equipment on loan from the federal and territorial governments. The baseline study was to be the foundation for a trans-boundary water agreement between the provinces and territories that straddle the Mackenzie Basin. Alberta and British Columbia have been slow to engage on the issue, and Paulette thought it could have been raised during the Western Premiers Conference in Yellowknife. "It was a huge mistake and oversight not to raise the water issues at the western premiers conference," Paulette said, "but the GNWT is just a small player in this. The federal government holds the cards and they are putting the economy ahead of the environment. "The pace of tar sands development has picked up; everyone wants to exploit and extract and the federal government will ensure that development proceeds, regardless."
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