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New study launched on Slave River Researchers from University of Saskatchewan to look for environmental effects on area
Paul Bickford
Northern News Services
Published Monday, July 22, 2013
SOUTH SLAVE
While residents on the Slave and Athabasca rivers are still waiting on results from a 2011 study on fish health, the University of Saskatchewan has launched a new study of the river and its delta.
University of Saskatchewan professor Dr. Paul Jones checks a fish from the Slave River in Fort Smith in 2011. - NNSL file photo |
The study explores the impacts of industrial pollution, climate change and other variances on the area.
This new study, called the Slave Watershed Environmental Effects Program (SWEEP), looks solely at the Slave River and puts the magnifying glass on the river and delta themselves, rather than on the fish.
"It's what we call a cumulative effects monitoring program," said Dr. Paul Jones, one of the researchers from the University of Saskatchewan. "So really, what we're looking for is the impact of all the changes that are occurring in the system."
Those potential effects could include climate change, agricultural pesticides, hydrological changes, and possible industrial pollution, such as from the Alberta oil sands.
The study is being funded with $500,000 from the Canadian Water Network, which sponsors research into all aspects of water across the country.
The initiative involves the Slave River and Delta Partnership, which includes the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (ENR), federal agencies, First Nations, Metis councils, the Hamlet of Fort Resolution, and the Town of Fort Smith.
It will include training people in the communities to do health assessments on fish, said Jones.
"Eventually, when our funding is done in two years time, we will hope that the environmental monitoring program will go on in the communities."
Fort Smith's Tim Heron, interim measures agreement co-ordinator with the Northwest Territory Metis Nation, said SWEEP will build software for the Slave River and Delta Partnership and train people in Fort Resolution and Fort Smith on how to use the software, interpret the findings and report back to the communities.
"What they're actually doing under the community capacity building is training people in the community to take their jobs when they're done," he said.
Jones and other representatives of the study were recently in Fort Smith and Fort Resolution to talk about the project. In early June, they met with community leaders to explain the study and get input.
In mid-July, representatives of the study were in Fort Smith for an ENR-hosted workshop to look at the technical
aspects of the monitoring and what the communities want it to look at.
"I plan to be up there for fish work in August, and we will have quite a bit of work over the winter looking at ice dynamics on the delta and the river," Jones said, adding other investigators will frequently be back in the territory to do work over the next two years.
Jones, an associate professor at the University of Saskatchewan's School of Environment and Sustainability, will be developing indicators of the health and quality of fish.
Four other scientists will be looking at many other things, including the toxicity of metals in the water and sediment, the safety and accessibility of drinking water sources in First Nations communities, the freshwater food ecosystem, fish migration, wildlife, organisms in the sediment, and ice processes and flood risk management.
The study will also involve graduate students and field technicians.
"There is quite a big team involved in this," Jones said.
Jones said there was nothing particularly worrying in preliminary findings of the 2011 study, which looked at pike, walleye, whitefish, goldeye and burbot. He said a final report on the previous study will hopefully be completed by the end of the year.
"The contaminant concentrations are relatively low, particularly in the Slave when we compared it with the Athabasca," he said. "In general, the health of the fish seems to be fairly consistent up and down the river. We do see some of those anomalies that people are seeing in fish, but we can't really link that to any one specific location up and down the river system."
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