Expensive strings attached to new water licence

JOHN THOMPSON

The City of Iqaluit has been handed a new water licence that will require sewage plant upgrades in five years, expected to cost at least $10 million.

On July 24, Jim Prentice, the federal minister of Indian and Northern Affairs, approved a draft license recommended earlier this year by the Nunavut Water Board.

The licence includes an order requiring that Iqaluit upgrade to a “secondary” sewage treatment system in five years, at a cost of at least $10 million.

The city’s sewage treatment plant went online earlier this year, after a construction project that cost more than $4 million. But the plant only provides “primary” treatment.

That’s not good enough to satisfy federal regulators, who warn that ammonia and suspended solids – the muck flushed down your toilet – could poison fish, breaking federal law.

Later this month city officials plan to meet with water board staff to negotiate amendments to the license.

“We’re planning on going forward with a full amendment application,” said Jeff Baker, the city’s manager of engineering services, earlier this month.

If the water board accepts the city’s application, the city will be dragged through another round of public meetings, such as the ones held by the water board earlier this year that led to the creation of the new license.

Besides the tough effluent standards, Baker said “there are numerous other smaller issues” that the city also objects to in the license.

Baker said the design is complete to move forward to secondary treatment, but the city still doesn’t know where the money for the upgrades will come from.

Even if Iqaluit does upgrade to secondary treatment, there’s a chance it still might not meet federal guidelines, according to the consultant who designed the sewage treatment plant.

But the water board insists it can’t ignore the law, especially when the city has been fined in the past for violating the Fisheries Act.

In 2002, Justice Robert Kilpatrick fined the city $100,000 after an estimated 822,000 litres of sewage spilled from a broken sewage lift station into the bay.

A similar ruling in the Yukon in 2003 led Dawson City, which had dumped sewage into the Yukon River, to be fined and ordered to build a secondary treatment plant.

Meanwhile, much larger coastal cities in southern Canada continue to pump raw sewage into the ocean, without facing fines.

Other conditions of Iqaluit’s draft water licence include:

* The city must develop plans for a new dump, because the existing landfill is expected to be full in the next five years. The city must also complete an abandonment and restoration plan for the existing site, either one year before the license expires, or one year before the dump becomes full, whichever is earlier;
* The city must install silt fences or curtains to prevent sediment from flowing into Lake Geraldine, the city’s potable water supply;
* The city must trap any run-off from the dump and monitor it for contaminants.