Will there be any barges at all this summer?

On paper, the NWT’s 2024 summer barge resupply season is still going ahead. In practice, some communities along the Mackenzie River don’t think it will happen.

Water levels along many parts of the river are the lowest on record, lower even than those that disrupted barge sailings last year.

If barges can’t safely navigate their way from Hay River north to the Sahtu – or from Tuktoyaktuk south, which the GNWT has already said it will try – then the season will have to be scrapped.

In a statement this week, the Sahtu Secretariat described itself as an “entire region cut off from the south” and suggested it had already concluded no barges will come.

“No new school in Colville Lake. No new health centre in Tulita. No new arena in Fort Good Hope,” the Sahtu Secretariat wrote, listing the projects that will be delayed if construction materials planned for the barges can’t make it north to those communities.

Fuel supplies would also be affected, as would grocery prices, the secretariat added.

In Norman Wells, Sahtu Secretariat advisor Todd McCauley – a former regional superintendent for the NWT’s Department of Infrastructure – told Cabin Radio: “If you look at the bay here, it’s all mud and sludge. I can’t see how a barge could get in here.”

“We are fairly confident that no barging will happen this year,” he said.

In a statement, the Department of Infrastructure said its Marine Transportation Services division was “monitoring the situation and its potential impacts on cargo deliveries to Tulita and Norman Wells, and will provide updates as they become available.”

“MTS is currently accepting cargo at the Hay River terminal for Tulita and Norman Wells. However, customers are being reminded that in deciding to ship cargo with MTS, there is no guarantee that MTS will be able make deliveries as planned,” the department’s statement continued.

“We understand that it may cause uncertainty and we are committed to providing customers with more information as soon as it becomes available.”

Water levels are being monitored not just on the Mackenzie River but also on Great Slave Lake, where they are similarly low. That would affect the summer barge service to Łútsël K’é, on the lake’s East Arm.

In its statement, the GNWT said customers for the Łútsël K’é barge need to have their cargo at MTS by August 1.

‘This will be ongoing’

Sahtu communities are increasingly forcefully calling for a permanent Mackenzie Valley Highway to be built.

If the barge season is called off, that will leave air freight as the only option until the next winter road season. Buffalo Airways has already launched a discounted air freight service to help the Sahtu this summer.

Meanwhile, the changing climate is gradually shortening the lifespan of the NWT’s winter roads.

A permanent highway would end the Sahtu’s reliance on barges and winter roads.

It would also cost more than a billion dollars. Realistically, that money can only come from the federal government, which has so far provided comparatively small sums for related projects but no commitment to the overall package.

McCauley’s advisory work at the Sahtu Secretariat is related to the region’s campaign for the highway to be built.

“We need to build the highway,” he said, questioning what will happen in future years if water levels don’t swiftly bounce back to something approaching normal.

“We had a talk with a hydrologist who said if we had three years of steady rain in the summer, we could get our water levels back to where they were. But right now, the watersheds along the river are so dry that any rain just gets soaked up into the ground,” said McCauley.

Even if Ottawa gave the green light now, building a highway would take years and need to come through an environmental assessment. (Work on that assessment is under way.)

In the meantime, McCauley said, “the GNWT needs to come up with some sort of mitigation plan.”

Asked what that might involve, he said: “I wouldn’t have a clue where to start on that. There are so many different variables here.

“We need a medium-term solution to get us by. I don’t think the river is going to come up for the next couple of years, I think this is going to be ongoing.”