Communities take monitoring project to heart. (Environment).

Cultural differences can have a big impact on how industrial activities are perceived. Sometimes concerns are valid, sometimes they are not. A community-based environmental monitoring program can help to build community trust and manage these perceptions.

An Environmental Monitoring Program spearheaded by the Athabasca Working Group (AWG) aims to set a factual record of potential changes in the environment due to uranium mining in Northern Saskatchewan through testing and documentation.

"There was a 'show-me' question hanging out there," says Mark Wittrup, Cameco Corporation Director, Environment. "We're taking a broad, community-based look at the situation and asking people living in the area what they need to know to be confident about feeling safe."

A series of consultations between AWG members - Cameco, Cogema and residents of Saskatchewan's most northerly communities in the Athabascan basin - led to an impact management agreement in 1999. Early on in the process it was decided the program had to involve community-based environmental monitoring.

With input from the communities, sampling sites were chosen in areas upstream of the communities where there could be no effect from uranium mining operations, the reference site, and downstream from areas that had potential to be affected. Residents were trained in how to take and handle samples and the field program was initiated in June 2000.

Bill Layman from La Ronge was hired as the project's northern co-ordinator based on his familiarity with the area and his highly identifiable outgoing personality.

"Our northern co-ordinator is instrumental in getting the work done," Wittrup says. "He's able to get the information out to people and anyone who knows Bill knows that if there's bad news it's not going to be hidden."

Generally, one or two people in each community have been trained to take samples. Air and water samples are collected along with lake mud, fish, animal and vegetable samples. Initial training work by consulting firm CanNorth Environmental Services (part of the native-owned Kitsaki group), has given way to more local control, although CanNorth still collates the data and writes the report.

"Right now it's the northern coordinator and people in the community who are taking the samples, labeling them and sending them south," Wittrup says. Excluding analytical costs, 75 per cent of program expenditures go directly to northern participants and businesses.

Standard analytical procedures are used by an independent lab at the Saskatchewan Research Council to study the samples. People in the Athabasca communities are interested in the results and want straight answers that will deliver an acceptable comfort level.

"We needed a good way of communicating the results back to the communities and this year we've produced a simple four-page brochure directed specifically to each community," Wittrup says. Full reports are also available online or from either mining company.

The study, now in its fourth year, has found no environmental impact from uranium mining on the Athabascan communities. In the event there are any detrimental effects, the Athabasca Impact Management Agreement lays out compensation alternatives including relocation, repair, cash and other options to be determined.

Community involvement in environmental monitoring is just one initiative of the AWG. Created in 1993 the AWG addresses major concerns of the region such as employment, training and business, environmental protection and benefits to the community.

Donations have been made to the Athabasca Health Facility and many other programs and projects; summer students from the region were hired and post-secondary scholarships have been regularly awarded through the Benefit Sharing Program sponsored by the AWG.

The AWG evolved from meetings between high-ranking corporate officials and the communities in the mid-1990s. This model for interaction between communities and companies was made in the north without government involvement.

"As uranium companies we get a lot of attention," Wittrup says. "We are pleased that this attention resulted in a community-based environmental project that is quite advanced and forward-looking."