Iqaluit wants new cemetery completed by year’s end

The City of Iqaluit wants its new cemetery site, located near Rotary Park overlooking Tarr Inlet, with a budget of $500,000, to be finished by the end of this year, Meagan Leach, the city’s director of engineering said.

This new site replaces a previous choice, located near the Road to Nowhere and picked in 2009. That site suffered from delays, cost overruns and engineering problems.

“We’re hoping to get the work done this year,” Leach said.

Iqaluit’s Engineering and Public Works Committee of the Whole reported that it recommends council proceed with the development of the new cemetery at a new site — known as “Alternate Site #2,” at a council meeting April 30.

There were other options for the city to consider: finish work on the Road to Nowhere site “as is,” completing another design for the Road to Nowhere site to include more graves, or “optimizing it,” using the Apex site near Rotary Park, or using another Apex site.

That site is located on the right-hand side of the road leading into Apex, adjacent to an area where some new infill development is planned.

“You can’t see it from the road, you would have to walk in,” Leach said.

However, the Apex site near Rotary Park is the most cost-effective option, she said.

Construction on the Road to Nowhere site, which has cost the city a lot of money, was eventually halted due to terrain issues that would have led to a reduction in the number of potential burial plots.

That site would have had a capacity of “less than 10 years,” Leach said.

The road going into Rotary Park will be easier to maintain year round than the one at the Road to Nowhere site, which would need big upgrades.

“It drives right past the [proposed] cemetery,” Leach said, of the Rotary Park access road.

Parking and maintenance at the Apex site would also be easier, she said.

The Apex site near Rotary is bigger and would allow for more plots — about 950 in total, at least 20 years of capacity, and the site isn’t “pure bedrock.”

“We were aiming for 20 years of capacity. This site has room to expand past 20,” she said.

A geo-technical review of the Apex site last August found that it is the strongest site of the site options when it comes to soil conditions for a cemetery.

The next steps for the preferred Apex site are for the city to hold a community open house to show people conceptual designs and plan for the new cemetery.

Then, if council approves the concept, there will be more detailed designs, tendering and then construction – slated to begin mid to late August, Leach said.

However, how much this new cemetery will cost “will come out as we proceed with the project.”

“We still need to complete the design to figure out what the cost will be,” Leach said.

The $500,000 included for the new cemetery site in the city’s 2013 budget includes design costs, she said.

And that new site is across the street from a subdivision development.

Before people chose to go ahead with any lots in that area, they were notified that the cemetery might be moved to a location across the street.

“People were aware of that,” Leach said.

The new design of the cemetery is intended to “tie in with the area,” she said.

The city has been seeking a new cemetery since at least 2003, and almost didn’t get a go-ahead to approve $108,000 in emergency funding for the proposed Road to Nowhere cemetery in 2010, which had to go to a tie-breaker in city council.

Here’s an aerial view, taken in summer, of the area near Rotary Park in Apex that Iqaluit City Council has chosen for community’s next cemetery. (PHOTO COURTESY OF THE CITY OF IQALUIT)