If the Mackenzie Valley Highway isn’t built soon, Norman Wells Mayor Frank Pope doesn’t see how communities in his region will be able to resupply.
“The rivers are getting lower every year and resupply is becoming more and more difficult, especially when it comes to diesel fuel and resupply of groceries and stuff,” said Pope.
To make matters worse, this past winter road season was disastrous compared to previous years, he said.
“Normally the heavy traffic is hauling up into here for eight weeks, nine weeks if you get a good cold winter. This year, I don't think we even got four weeks of resupply.”
Pope said many people take advantage of the winter road to drive south to shop and get out of town for a while. This past season, he said, a trip that would normally take seven hours took 20. Excavators were dispatched to haul vehicles up hills.
And those were the lucky ones—there are a lot of trucks parked in Yellowknife still, said Pope, belonging to people who couldn’t finish their trips home to the Sahtu and had to fly from the capital.
Unseasonably warm weather this past March forced intermittent restrictions and early closures for many of the NWT’s winter roads.
Environment Canada meteorologist Brian Proctor told News/North, at the time, that this event—an atmospheric pressure ridge that funneled warm temperatures up from California—was difficult to link directly with climate change.
Large temperature fluctuations and unpredictability, though, are forecast to increase as the climate warms.
“I think I’d probably go as far to say it’s a crisis situation,” said Pope, “especially for places like Colville Lake, Deline.”
If the winter road season remains unreliable, and water levels remain low or get lower—which may happen when B.C.’s planned Site C dam on the Peace River is built, noted Pope—then Sahtu communities’ already tenuous seasonal transportation system is on shaky ground.
“I tell ya, if we don't get this Mackenzie Valley Road completed at least as far as Norman Wells in the next couple of years, this crisis could become even more devastating,” said Pope.
The Department of Infrastructure did not answer News/North’s queries regarding these concerns by press time.
The Mackenzie Valley Highway Project has been tiptoeing forward over the past few years, with the construction of the Inuvik Tuktoyaktuk Highway and then a $180-million federal investment last year to conduct studies and undertake a few bridge and access road projects.
Infrastructure Minister Wally Schumann told the legislative assembly in March that the GNWT had conducted initial public meetings on the project in Norman Wells, Tulita, Wrigley and Fort Simpson.
“Discussions focused on the way forward for environmental reviews and permitting of this project, and how to maximize benefits to the people of the region,” said Schumann.
Pope said the time for action is now, not only for the road but for mitigating the effects of climate change already being felt in the region.
“We find that some of the riverbanks in the community are starting to deteriorate very greatly and we’re planning to do some studies on that and try to figure out the remediation plan on some of the areas that are close to our public roads,” said Pope.
He said he hopes these issues will get the air time they deserve in this fall’s territorial and federal elections.