Environmental News 24.6.13, Part II: Who Needs a River System When There is Money to be Made? Despite the fact that, according to scientists, the Mackenzie River System in Canada, plays a crucial role in cooling our warming climate, developers, miners, and its own government are intent on poisoning, damming and destroying this massive so-called ‘Amazon of the North.’ If growing threats to the Mackenzie watershed aren’t better controlled, “loss of the refrigeration capacities of the basin is simply going to feed further warming,” says Henry Vaux, chair of an international panel for the Rosenberg International Forum on Water Policy. “…the resiliency of the basin and its ecosystem, and the resiliency of its hydrology, is [at risk] and its capacity to respond [well] to economic development is lessening.’ He continued. Forest covers around 63 per cent of the Mackenzie basin and wetlands vital to numerous species of migratory birds and other wildlife make up another 18%. But the oils sands boom is bringing with it toxic waste, including arsenic, mercury, lead and benzine, which is stored in vast tailings ponds across the once pristine environment. Researchers have also found high levels of toxic pollutants, linked to the oil sands, in the Athabasca River that eventually flows into the Mackenzie and north to the Arctic.
Posted on: Sun, 23 Jun 2013 20:26:06 +0000
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