Cleanup at radar sites on hold again this summer

DWANE WILKIN

­Nunavut Tunngavik Incorporated has given up trying to convince the Department of National Defence to remove potential toxins from old Distant Early Warning (DEW) Line sites.

Cleanup at the abandoned radar posts, meanwhile, has been put on hold indefinitely.

After two years of fruitless negotiations, NTI and the military can’t agree on how to carry out the cleanup at DEW Line sites in Nunavut.

“Our efforts are maybe more effective in claims implementation somewhere else,” said Bruce Gillies, NTI’s environmental manager.

NTI had wanted the military to investigate landfills at each of the 15 sites in Nunavut and to excavate any toxic materials for shipment south.

Too costly

But Anthony Downs, environmental director for the National Defence, said to do so would cost $600 million­more than twice the $242 million it has budgeted for the cleanup.

“I would have difficulty justifying that to the Canadian public,” said Downs . “Landfills exist all over the world and they will be there forever. To excavate and move them south I think would be going beyond what we do in other parts of the world.”

The Defence Department says it can offer a reasonable level of protection by sealing the landfills with liners and covering them with a layer of gravel. A similar protocol is currently being used to clean up sites in the western Arctic, with the approval of the Inuvialuit Development Corporation.

It was hoped an agreement would be in place to begin cleanup in Cambridge Bay this summer, but “at this point we probably won’t be able to,” Downs said.

Downs warned there’s a risk in postponing the cleanup in Nunavut bceause at some of these landfills, there are already contaminants leaking into the environment.

“They’re not an immediate threat to human health, but they are the kind of thing that could get into the food chain,” Downs said. “The longer we wait, the more that material will continue to leach into the environment.”

Still licking wounds

Contaminant include heavy metals, fuel contamination, demolished buildings, and some PCBs.

The impasse over environmental protocol haunted everybody this week as NTI officials gathered for a board-of-directors meeting in Cape Dorset.

“There are some contaminants on the DEW Line that should be contained at containment facilities down south,” NTI president Jose Kusugak said. “DND is doing and suggesting that as long as they live up to (Inuit employment provisions of) Article 24, everything is hunky-dory. That’s not the position we take in what’s called a cleanup.”

NTI’s Gillies criticized Canada’s environment protection laws for lacking the necessary power to compel the military to follow through with a more thorough approach to the cleanup.

“There was a point where we said, ‘we’re finished spending money on consultants and trying to be creative in this process and trying to improve the procedure.’ We’re closing the books on it.”

Last fall the Canadian government agreed to a deal with the U.S. government worth $100 million in compensation for environmental damage resulting from northern military installations operated by the U.S. Air Force in the 1950s and 1960s.

The sum is $142 million less than Canada had asked for. It will be used by the Department of National Defence as a credit toward the purchase of U.S. military equipment.

“The money DND budgeted for these materials will be redirected to these (cleanup) projects,” Downs said.

Agreement between the Inuit birthright corporation and the military on cleanup protocol is not required by law, but compliance with employment provisions contained in Article 24 of the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement is.