Iqaluit man wants city to fix compost catastrophe at dump site

Jim Little stands in front of a green incinerator the city put on his site to remove some of the compostable material. (PHOTO BY DAVID MURPHY)

Discarded cardboard and plastic bottles sit atop Jim Little’s compost pile, right beside the Iqaluit city dump. (PHOTO BY DAVID MURPHY)

What happens when the city you call home dumps a bunch of garbage on a project you’ve worked on for more than 10 years?

Nothing, apparently.

The 2014 dump fire wreaked havoc on the city for four months. To put it out, the city had to break up the smouldering garbage pile.

But that meant spilling some garbage onto Jim Little’s compost site, located right next to the city’s dump.

Little raised the issue in a passionate plea for remedy at a June 9 council meeting and at least two councillors promised to get to the bottom of the story in the hopes of finding a way forward.

Little has run the Bill Mackenzie Humanitarian Society since 2004 — an organization that collects compostable materials from families in Iqaluit, processes them, and then uses the byproduct to grow flowers and plants in local greenhouses.

At the time of the dump fire, Little agreed to let the city use the land.

“The city said, ‘Well let us use some of your site. We won’t use the [compost] pad, just until the fire gets [out],’” Little said at council June 9.

“I said sure. We’ll do our corporate bit,” Little said.

Little said he was away in the South for much of the dump fire fiasco but when he came back, his site was a wreck.

Metal for a future compost structure was sprawled across the land. There was garbage all over his compost pad. And there were people dumping lumber on his site.

Most of that refuse is still sitting there today and it’s a disaster.

Cardboard covers the land and sits atop his covered compost pile. Little reckons more than half of the 2,200-square-metre parcel of land is covered in spillover garbage.

Right next to his pile of covered compostable material sit an array of discarded and decomposing things: broken hockey sticks, empty chip bags and even the remains of a dog.

He told city council heavy equipment might have destroyed the compost pad’s membrane.

“I go over there, I just get sick. I just get sick to my stomach,” Little told councillors.

“I feel like I’m the enemy. What I’m trying to do is for the benefit of the community. I’m just getting dumped on.”

It’s unclear whether Little still holds the lease on the large piece of land the city leased to him in 2007. He says the city didn’t renew it, but he met the criteria for a renewal.

“We met the criteria. They said they were going to renew it,” Little told Nunatsiaq News later, standing beside the stinking compost pile.

“But it was never renewed. And we never pushed them on it. We kind of ignored it I guess. We just never gave it any thought,” he said.

“We’re trying to work with them, not against them.”

To make things worse — the average citizen doesn’t know this part of the land is reserved for composting.

“They think it’s a dump! And they’re just dumping their garbage,” Little told councillors June 9, his voice raising high.

“Other guys come driving in, looking at our materials. Helping themselves to it. I’m helpless. I don’t know what to do,” Little said.

Little, a former city councillor himself, posed the councillors a question:

“So, are you guys going to take responsibility for this or not? That’s what I need to know. I mean really, I have to know that.”

City councillors said the city will get to the bottom of it.

“This council needs to find out from administration what happened. We need to know why your site was covered, why we’re not assisting you to uncover it, and what exactly the circumstances are,” councillor Stephen Mansell said.

Councillor Terry Dobbin said it’s an unfortunate incident, “but with all the separations there, there’s very, very limited land space.”

But “it shouldn’t have really happened. I wasn’t even aware of it until I went to your Bill Mackenzie AGM,” Dobbin said.

“Maybe we can come to some agreement with something,” Dobbin said. “We just need to rectify it.”

There is a burn box at the site the city uses to get rid of some of the mess.

But when Nunatsiaq News visited, the burn box was sitting dormant.

“Why aren’t they burning? What are they getting paid for? I don’t understand it,” Little said.

Little says he’s gone into debt because of this project.

“We’ve got over $20,000 tied up in this pad, eh? It was all volunteer work, and a lot of donations.”

In hindsight, he says he wishes he didn’t put so much time, effort and money into the compost pad.

“Because I dedicated so much of my time to this, I never put effort into finding other work as a contractor,” Little said.

Little, ideally, would like some sort of reimbursement for what the city did — but he can’t put a figure to how much they owe him.

“I don’t know. We’ve been saving compost here since 2004. You figure my time, six hours every two weeks since 2004. What’s that worth?”

“Did we collect that organic material so the city could bury it in garbage?”