| Protestors say they are concerned that oilsands operations are polluting N.W.T. rivers and causing water levels in the rivers to drop. Oilsands companies withdraw water from the Athabasca River and some oilsands operations are located directly next to the river. The Athabasca River joins with the Peace River to form Lake Athabasca, which flows into Slave River in the North West Territories.
Doug Ritchie, program director of Ecology North, an N.W.T. environmental group, says the government of Alberta is telling people "don’t worry about the tarsands. Hydrocarbons are not entering the water in the Athabasca River or the Peace River. What will happen when tarsands production doubles or triples, quintuples? That’s our real concern. We don’t have enough faith in the government of Alberta to protect the rivers flowing into the Mackenzie River basin."
Ritchie says Ecology North wants to see the government of Alberta put on a moratorium on new oilsands projects until they have completed negotiations on a new bilateral agreement on water with the N.W.T.
Raymond Beaver, the former chief of the Salt River First Nation, located near the Alberta border, says in the past 15 years a lot of elders in the community have died of cancer. He says he’s concerned that the cancer was caused by environmental pollution.
"They consumed a lot of fish and ducks, geese, other animals like moose and bear and whatever else was living along the river…. I believe that what caused the cancer is the pollution from the river itself because they were not people that went out and bought canned food. They pretty well lived off the land," says Beaver.
He’s noticed a large drop in water levels in the Slave River.
"You see all these rocks you never saw before," he says.
Beaver says government and industry always stress the economic benefits of the oilsands "but also people should have their lives too, healthy lives."
"When is the river going to be so bad that nothing is going to be able to live there? I’ve listened to Klein on TV saying, ‘oh yes nobody’s going to stop our development. We’re going to go ahead.’ I would like to invite him to start drinking the water right from the river like the elders do right from the Slave River."
"They should slow (oilsands development) down and come up with a plan to make sure that the water quality is always pure so that there’s a future for everybody that’s using the water," he says. "The Alberta government being the richest province in the country they should be able to accomplish that."
Tom Unka, environmental manager for the Deninu K’ue First Nation, located on the shores of Great Slave Lake, which the Slave River empties into, says he and other traditional land users now carry bottled water when they travel on the Slave River. He says First Nations members have noticed "a rainbow sheen in quiet eddies accompanied by brown foam." There are also more advisories on how much fish people can safely eat.
"Cumulative impacts from the oilsands are very real and pose a threat to the already threatened lifestyle of my people," says Unka. "We hear that the cancer rates are high in the outlying communities bordering on the oilsand development. This is not good news for us. We are already plagued with high cancer rates."
Unka says climate change is also creating major changes in the north. Oilsands development is the fastest growing source of greenhouse gas emissions in Canada.
Lisa Grotkowski, a spokesperson for Alberta Environment, says the government is carefully monitoring water levels and water quality in the Athabasca River.
"We want to make sure there are no environmental impacts on the river and that we’re ensuring the ecological integrity of the water resource," says Grotkowski. "From our monitoring perspective we’re not seeing any negative impacts from development and that’s something we monitor very closely."
She says the Alberta and N.W.T. governments are in the early stages of negotiating a bilateral water agreement, which would include water quality and quantity objectives. She adds that the provincial government also recently set limits to the amount of water that can be withdrawn from the Athabasca River over the course of a year. However, oilsands companies will still be able to withdraw water even during low flow periods, which critics says isn’t protective enough. |
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