Mackenzie River down the spread of essential nutrients which builds up in the form of sediments, thus causing the river to become more polluted. Other smaller hydroelectric plants are located along the Snare and Taltson River tributaries, providing power to mines in the Great Slave Lake region. There have been many proposals to dam the tributaries of the Mackenzie River which would lead to further impacts on water quality and seasonal flow patterns. The Site C Dam on the Peace River, which would generate enough power for about 460,000 households, has been controversial since the 1970s, and a final decision on the
Mackenzie River Lakes are remnants. Today's Mackenzie River is very young in geologic terms – its channel formed over a period of no more than several thousand years as the ice sheet retreated. Prior to the ice ages, only the Peel River tributary flowed through what is now the Mackenzie Delta into the Arctic Ocean. The other tributaries of the Mackenzie combined into the "Bell River" which flowed east into Hudson Bay. During glaciation the weight of the ice sheet depressed northern Canada's terrain to such an extent that when the ice retreated, the Mackenzie system was captured to lower elevations in