Grise Fiord residents face water shortage

DWANE WILKIN

­The hamlet of Grise Fiord has placed residents on half-rations of water in a bid to stretch dwindling supplies into midsummer.

By then, warmer temperatures will have caused the glacial river carrying water to the hamlet’s reservoir to begin flowing again.

“Our projection is, if there is no extra water usage, then we just might make it,” Lizzie Palituk, senior administrative officer for the hamlet of 167 residents said.

Conservation efforts began last month after local authorities realized the hamlet’s 5.9 million-litre reservoir was being depleted faster than anticipated. A second, million-litre backup tank stands empty now because the river froze at the end of the summer last year, before it could be filled.

The recent addition of nine new homes also increased demand on the hamlet’s water reserves, Palituk said.

“If we had filled up the two tanks there wouldn’t have been a problem, even with the new houses.”

Grise Fiord Mayor Jarloo Kiguktak praised residents for their conservation efforts. Some households are laundering less frequently, others are topping up their water supply with chunks of iceberg.

“We’ve been doing that a long time ago before we got the water tanks, so it’s nothing new for us,” Kiguktak said.

“Last year I was hauling ice for myself.”

Each autumn as the ocean freezes, icebergs become trapped in pack-ice three or four kilometres from the hamlet, at the southern tip of Ellesmere Island. Blocks of fresh-water ice are hacked away with an axe or chisel, and carried back to the settlement in qamutiks (sleds), towed behind snowmobiles.

One qamutik-load equals about 410 litres of water, Kiguktak said.

Meanwhile, the hamlet’s water-truck drivers have been instructed to keep household water tanks half-filled only.

“Every time a house gets filled, what we’re doing is only filling half of what they would have got” if there were no water shortage, said Kiguktak.

Last year water from the glacier didn’t begin to flow until mid-July, though in previous years it has been possible to to start filling the hamlet’s reservoir at the end of June.

As a last resort, the mayor said it would be possible for the hamlet office to collect and haul ice for the community for the remainder of the winter.

However, “we really haven’t talked about it yet because we’re not sure if we’re really going to run out of water.”