We have to recognize that there are enormous gaps. The federal government has a few monitoring stations that perform some very basic measurements. But from the headwaters up the Mackenzie to the Arctic Ocean, there's very little monitoring of either the surface water or the surrounding groundwater. That's one of the challenges we have. We have all sorts of anecdotal reports. In the community where François and I live, two years ago the river was down about ten feet. Dr. Schindler has reported that in the prairie provinces the flows have diminished. The water that flows through the Peace and Athabasca down into the Slave and into the Mackenzie has diminished from 30% to 80%.
We know that when they built the Bennett Dam, the Peace-Athabasca Delta, which was then one of the biggest deltas in the world, was pretty well done away with. The only time it came back was when they had those sink holes in the Bennett Dam. They released all the water for a few years and the delta reflourished. We don't have much scientific information, so we're relying on what we're seeing and hearing, together with what little information is out there. That's one of our biggest collective challenges.