Iqaluit tries new waste management practices at overloaded dump

A burn box keeps high volumes of flammable wood and cardboard from entering Iqaluit’s dump by incinerating about six tonnes of waste daily. The city hopes to eliminate all wood and paper at the site by the end of summer. (PHOTO BY PETER VARGA)

Water runoff from Iqaluit’s dump-dousing operation of 2014, collected at this settling pond near the dump last September, will be monitored and treated this year. The city budgeted $500,000 for landfill runoff treatment in 2015. (PHOTO BY PETER VARGA)

Iqaluit’s summer-long dump fire of 2014 cost the city more than $3.3 million to put out, and absorbed the attention of the city’s public works and emergency services departments for much of that year.

The lessons learned from that costly fire are many, says the city’s director of public works, Keith Couture.

His department is applying all those lessons as the dump nears the end of its life cycle — and plans for Iqaluit’s next waste site begin.

“We’re learning the methods that we’ll be using in the new site, so we don’t make the same mistakes,” director Keith Couture reported to city council April 29 during an engineering and public works committee meeting.

“But we still have to manage the site before we close it, and that has become a challenge, obviously,” he said.

“We hope to have a new site open in the next two years or so, and then it will be a matter of transferring the skill level that we learned at the old site to the new site, and then starting fresh.”

Couture said his department’s plan of action at the old waste site, through to closure, focuses on separating waste by type, which limits waste that goes into the dump and allows the city to start recycling and re-use programs.

The city undertook waste-separation in the midst of the dump fire — starting with paper and wood.

Public works also added a “temporary” site for metal waste to a fenced-off field almost a kilometre away, near the city’s tank farm.

Wood and paper products now go to a northern section of the dump, where they are incinerated in an air curtain burner, or “burn box,” Couture said.

The measure keeps a high-volume and highly flammable product out of the waste stream.

The box incinerates “about six tonnes a day” of wood and cardboard, Couture said. That’s still not quite enough to eliminate all wood and paper any time soon.

The director estimated the city will completely burn through all accumulated wood and paper at the site “by the end of August.”

Mayor Mary Wilman reminded everyone that sealift season, which starts in mid-July, would increase volumes of wood and cardboard waste.

“We’re doing the best we can,” Couture answered, pointing out that public works added eight hours to the daily burning schedule.

“We’re certainly striving for the end of August.”

Asked about residents’ complaints of smoke generated by the burn, Couture said that’s generated by wet waste. The city burns dry waste first, to avoid smoke, he added.

“Future plans call for the cardboard to be baled and eventually shipped to southern markets,” he said. “Presently we cannot do that, so we’re burning it all.”

The waste wood and cardboard at the north end of the dump took up a parcel of land formerly used by the Bill Mackenzie Humanitarian Society for a composting program.

Efforts to revive the program, which showed some success from 2004 to 2013, were blocked when the dump fire started and the dump site rearranged.

“Was there any resolution to fixing that issue?” Coun. Terry Dobbin asked.

“The only plan I have is to empty the site so it can be returned to the user. Right now it’s what I call an overflow site, for us to get rid of that [wood and paper] material,” Couture said.

“If we didn’t have that site, we’d have real problems. It’s helping us right now,” he said. “We’re making every effort to remove it as soon as possible.”

Far bigger than the wood and paper sections of the dump is the sprawling waste metal site, northwest of the dump.

Plans call for the city to purchase a metal baler-crusher, which will compact metal waste such as cars and large appliances into cubes.

“Eventually this processed metal will be available for shipping,” Couture said.

He estimated that Iqaluit has more than 500 derelict vehicles “awaiting disposal.” Selling these for scrap “will generate needed revenue to offset operational costs,” he said.

Plans are also in the works to help keep expired batteries out of household waste.

The Source electronics store at Arctic Ventures “has agreed in principle” to collect common household batteries, Couture said. The waste facility will keep them for eventual shipment out of the territory.

Couture’s department also plans to create a salvage area at the waste site which will allow residents to take wood, furniture or other dumped materials that are still useable.

“I’ve seen a lot of white appliances for example [such as washers and driers] that go in with a scratch, and they’re thrown away,” he said. “I see such nice stuff that’s thrown in there and it’s hard to accept, really.”

The city’s new waste site will include a salvage area, as well as separation of recyclable material and hazardous waste.

The city’s initial set-up cost estimate for the site, which will include incineration, is about $14 million.

The department of engineering and public works will issue a request for proposals this month for technical designs of the site, located about six kilometres northwest of the city.

The city’s department of engineering estimates that all new initiatives at the current dump site, as described by Couture, will cost almost $1.3 million in 2015.

The dump fire, which sparked the changes, cost the city almost $3.35 million in 2014 for all operations related to extinguishment, and treatment of the site to safeguard against pollution, according to Coun. Kenny Bell, who served as chair of the city’s finance committee for most of the 2014-2015 fiscal year.

A water runoff retention pond, monitoring and security work at the site of last year’s dump fire will cost the city an additional $500,000 in 2015, according to the city’s engineering department.