The federal government will not put up contamination warning signs in Ndilo.
Instead, the brain trust at Indigenous and Northern Affairs (INAC) will devise a "more permanent solution to the problem" of arsenic "hot-spots" near the community's K'alemi Dene School.
The Giant Mine Oversight Board is calling for arsenic warning signs in Ndilo after Chief Ernest Betsina asked for them at the board's public meeting in May.
Just drive around Yellowknife and the neighbouring Yellowknives Dene community at the far end of Latham Island and you will be inundated with a dizzying array of signage from all levels of government telling us to "do this, don't do that," on public property.
And those include warning people about high levels of arsenic left over from gold mining processes decades ago at Giant and Con mines.
But even that limited signage didn't come easy. It took the release of 30-year-old data on Kam Lake to force the GNWT's hand to post warnings in four key areas: Kam Lake, Grace Lake, Frame Lake and Jackfish Lake. Those are all bodies of water people may be tempted to swim or fish in if they didn't know any better.
But even then, there were some sign doubters.
City Coun. Niels Konge told Yellowknifer at the time he didn't think the lakes needed signs "because at some point people need to take the initiative to educate themselves and take care of their own well-being."
That's just poppycock.
Any government's primary duty is the security and well-being of its citizens. And how are visitors or tourists supposed to fully educate themselves on arsenic dangers?
That's why it's simply a no-brainer that the federal government should install warning signs at any arsenic hot-spots in Ndilo.
A 2,500-page Human Health and Ecological Risk Assessment, dated January 2018, identified several arsenic "hot spots" in Ndilo soil, including near the school.
In an interview last month Andre Corriveau, the Northwest Territories' chief public health officer, said there is not a great need for signs in Ndilo because the potential for human exposure is low.
People would literally have to eat the dirt, he said.
Anyone with young children would know that's not just possible but likely.
And considering that one of the hot spots is near the school, dismissing the need for signs does not seem like sagely advice. In fact, a Ndilo child died in 1951 after eating arsenic-contaminated snow.
In early June, INAC regional director Matt Spence said: "We're going to deal with the problem and therefore we won't need signs, because we will have remediated that area of high concentration."
Well, OK but INAC has been cleaning up Giant Mine for 20 years and people are still asking where the arsenic is.
The federal government is obligated to clean up the arsenic in Ndilo. In the meantime, while we're waiting for that, it doesn't seem like an arduous chore to put up some signs.