Taps may soon flow again in Cape Dorset

Residents of Cape Dorset will be happy to see water trucks again in their community of 1,300, which has been without running water since April 14. (FILE PHOTO)

(updated 4:15 p.m.)

Dirty laundry has piled up, and baths are few and far between as households in Cape Dorset make do with melted ice for most of their water needs.

If all goes well, the hamlet’s four water trucks water should start delivering more water later today, the hamlet’s SAO, Olayuk Akesuk, told Nunatsiaq News on April 20.

“We’re working on it, and hopefully we’ll have water coming out of the lake today,” he said. “I think we’ve solved the problem, but it depends what the day is like today.”

By the end of the day, trucks delivered 600 litres for each household tank, and by April 21, Akesuk hoped to increase that amount again.

The plan is to pump water directly out of a nearby lake.

“We’re fixing up our back-up pipe. As soon as we have water coming out of that lake into our pump house, we’ll be delivering the usual water,” Akesuk said. “We’re dealing with it, and the community is co-operating with us, So that’s a big help.”

In an email April 18, Cape Dorset resident Sonia Haq said “we’ve a crisis situation developing in our community.”

She said her family had no water supply after April 14 and that they were melting dirty snow to get drinking water and to prepare food.

“I have a small baby at home and we are having very difficult situation here,” Haq said in her email.

She also said the Government of Nunavut office in Cape Dorset was closed due to “unhygienic conditions.”

Cape Dorset’s water problems started on April 14, when water truck drivers discovered the main pipeline running from the lake use as a source of water was frozen.

“We tried to figure out how to unfreeze it,” Akesuk said.

But that water line is very long, running about a mile from the lake to where the trucks load up.

The line appears to be frozen somewhere between two junctions, a length of nearly 600 feet — and so far, no one has been able to pinpoint the exact place where it’s frozen.

The water line last froze in 2003, Akesuk said.

And no one knows why it froze up now, when the weather has been relatively mild.

“It wasn’t cold, cold last week. It wasn’t -40 or -50. We had that last winter, but not last week,” Akesuk said.

Repairs will have to wait until summer when the line can be dug up.

For the past six days, hamlet has hired local workers to chip ice and bring it to a distribution point in the community of 1,300.

As for bottled water, this has been in short supply. Stocks at the co-op sold out in record time after the store offered clients a case of 24 bottles for $1.

The co-op was very helpful to let its stock go at a rock-bottom price, Akesuk said.

During the water crisis, hamlet staff have also worked long days, he said, along with employees from the GN’s Community and Government Services department and environmental health officials.

They’re making sure the water supply— when it gets going full-speed again— will be properly treated and safe to drink.

Cape Dorset is the second Nunavut community to experience serious water supply problems this year.

In Arviat, the main reservoir that supplies water to this Nunavut community of 2,300 sprang a leak, forcing the hamlet to find alternate sources of water.