Fort Smith voices distrust around fracking in NWT – Northern Journal

The meeting began with a prayer about water and ended with a prayer about water, summing up the general concern conveyed to a territorial government panel charged with engaging the public on the NWT’s new rules for hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, last week.

Fort Smith residents gradually filled the room on Thursday evening during one of the GNWT’s last community meetings to discuss the territory’s new fracking regulations, where the conversation has been less about the rules themselves and more about people’s great concern over potential impacts to land, water and health since the meetings began a month ago in Inuvik.

“Fracking may be a good idea in your mind, but it’s a bad idea for people who have the cleanest water in the world,” Henry Beaver, a former chief and member of the Salt River First Nation, told the panel. “The people working on this legislation are going to retire and go back south, but we’re going to be here. If these regulations are going to be used, they have to protect Aboriginal people and Northerners of the Northwest Territories.”

Read More: http://norj.ca/2015/05/fort-smith-voices-distrust-around-fracking-in-nwt/