Nanisivik dock scheme runs aground after Nunavut board gives DND a failing grade

Prime Minister Stephen Harper announces the future creation of Canadian Forces facilities at Nanisivik in 2007. (FILE IMAGE)

Here’s how the old port at Nanisivik looked in 2005. (FILE PHOTO)

The environmental scrutiny of a long-delayed naval dock at Nanisivik has ground to a halt for the time being and will remain stalled until after the Department of National Defence submits a revised project proposal to the Nunavut Impact Review Board.

Bernard Valcourt, the northern development minister, told the defence department in a letter dated April 6 that its Nanisivik dock proposal doesn’t pass muster.

“…I am required to return the proposal to the proponent for clarification and resubmission to the Nunavut Impact Review Board…” Valcourt said in the letter, which was copied to Peter MacKay, the defence minister.

“Should National Defence choose to resubmit its project proposal, it will need to be revised to include the outstanding information and clarification requested by the Nunavut Impact Review Board,” Valcourt said.

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty’s budget this past March cites $116 million over five years to pay for the Nanisivik project, but right now it’s not clear when or if that money will be spent.

At the same time, various documents stored on the NIRB’s public registry suggest that DND foot-dragging is largely responsible for lengthy delays in moving the highly publicized naval station through the early stages of the Nunavut regulatory system.

“[D]espite repeated requests and several opportunities to do so, essential information has not been provided and significant information gaps in the project proposal remain,” the NIRB said in a Jan. 16 screening decision. (See document embedded below.)

For example, the NIRB cited a two-year gap, between 2009 and 2011, when DND did not respond to repeated requests for information.

Valcourt accepted that screening decision, and said in his April 6 letter that the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement requires him to send the proposal back to DND for a do-over.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced the much-ballyhooed Nanisivik “naval base” in August 2007.

And in November 2008, the defence department submitted the first version of its Nanisivik proposal to the NIRB.

Under the 2008 version of DND’s dock plan, the department would upgrade a berth-and-wharf structure left behind by Breakwater Resources, the erstwhile operator of the decommissioned Nansivik lead-zinc mine.

They planned a tank farm comprising five big tanks of naval distillate fuel, three big tanks of diesel fuel, 60 drums of aviation fuel and 16 drums of gasoline.

DND also planned a “shore support building,” a helicopter landing site and a cargo landing and marshalling area.

At its peak, a construction camp would have housed about 100 workers, who would have used the airport at Arctic Bay to get to and from the work site via the old Nanisivik-Arctic Bay road.

In March 2012, DND quietly informed the NIRB that it had developed a significantly reduced version of the Nanisivik dock plan.

The smaller version of the Nanisivik docking facility would comprise only two fuel tanks for naval ships, two tanks for diesel fuel and 15 drums of aviation fuel, and would operate only in the summer.

About 50 to 60 workers would stay in pre-built trailers during construction.

But since 2008, the project, including the 2012 revisions, hasn’t even made it through the NIRB’s screening stage, and an actual environmental review appears a long way off.

In his April 6 letter, Valcourt accepts recommendations that the review board submitted to him this past Jan. 14 in a 46-page screening decision.

The review board’s chairperson, Elizabeth Copland, told Valcourt the DND proposal contains “insufficient” and “inadequate” information.

The “screening” stage is just the first step in the environmental scrutiny of a development project and occurs prior to an environmental review.

In a screening decision, the review board, after looking at a project proposal and receiving comment from stakeholders, normally recommends the type of environmental review the project should receive.

But after more than four years of back-and-forth exchanges of correspondence and information, the NIRB says it still doesn’t have enough information to do a proper screening of the Nanisivik project.

“It is the NIRB’s opinion that this project proposal remains insufficiently developed to permit proper screening,” the review board said in its January decision.

And that, the NIRB said, is because the defence department has not provided adequate answers to numerous questions posed by various stakeholders, which include the Qikiqtani Inuit Association, the Government of Nunavut, Environment Canada, Transport Canada and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans.

Those information shortcomings include:

• inadequate information on how public concerns were incorporated into a revised and downgraded project design that DND unveiled in March 2012;

• insufficient information on how traditional knowledge was considered in development of the dock proposal;

• insufficient analysis of potential impacts on community services in Arctic Bay, including the airport, medical services, policing, and the handling of water and waste water;

• insufficient information on the gravel source;

• inadequate information on potential impacts on marine wildlife;

• inadequate information on potential impacts of noise on marine wildlife during wharf upgrades;

• inadequate information on impacts on the marine environment from a proposed protection system to control erosion;

• insufficient discussion on potential socio-economic impacts on Arctic Bay from the use of Arctic patrol ships, potential interaction between patrol ships and hunters, and the use of the patrol ships in search and rescue efforts;

• insufficient discussion on the status of the road between Arctic Bay and Nanisivik and who will be responsible for its maintenance in the future.

The Nanisivik facility is intended for use by the federal government’s proposed fleet of Arctic patrol ships, as well as Coast Guard vessels and possibly other forms of shipping.

The Rideau Institute and the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives issued a report recently asserting that the $7.4 billion patrol ship scheme is a potential disaster.

130116 09DN018 Screening Decision Report OEDE