The Yukon government has installed three new water monitoring stations in the North Yukon.
The instruments collect information like river level and flow rate. There are 64 water monitoring stations across the Yukon, operated jointly by Environment Yukon and Environment Canada.
One of the new stations is near the mouth of Dalglish Creek in the Peel River basin.
The other two are both upstream from Old Crow in the Porcupine River basin. One of those is on the Eagle River at the Dempster Highway, and the other is near the mouth of McParlon Creek.
“The health of our water systems has always been a top priority in North Yukon and it’s great to see our government acting to ensure we maintain the water quality through baseline data collection,” said Darius Elias, MLA for Vuntut Gwitchin, in a press release. “The more surface water knowledge we have, the better management decisions we can make. I believe this decision reflects the values that Yukoners hold because water is essential to all aspects of our lives.”
The cost for installing and operating the new water stations is $147,700 for this fiscal year. An additional $119,000 has been set aside for next year’s operations.
Northern Cross contributed helicopter time and other services because it is already doing exploration work in the area, and will benefit from the collected data.
All of Yukon’s water data can be accessed at yukonwater.ca. Data from the new stations will be available later this year.