NHC failure led to Iqaluit water main leak, city official says

This water main problem, on July 27, was caused by a service line that the Nunavut Housing Corp. had improperly capped. (FILE PHOTO)

Iqaluit’s recent water woes were caused by cracks “all the way through” a service line that the Nunavut Housing Corp. failed to properly cap, the city’s director of public works Matthew Hamp, said Aug. 13 at a municipal finance committee meeting.

“What people probably aren’t aware of is that it was two leaks on the same line,” Hamp told the committee.

City workers discovered the first leak July 27 at unit 191 — NHC property —where a service line was improperly capped “at least a few years ago,” Hamp told Nunatsiaq News Aug. 14.

At the time, the housing company demolished six homes and replaced them with a 24-unit complex, Hamp added.

“We do have a standard of capping those lines so this sort of thing doesn’t happen. Unfortunately, that wasn’t done in this case.”

The city has sent the housing corporation a $35,000 bill for the work required to fix that problem, Hamp said.

But when the city uncovered the service line, Hamp said his crew discovered a city infrastructure problem.

“What we discovered was that the entire line had been frozen at some point, so there were leaks all the way through it,” he said at city hall Aug. 13.

Replacing that line will be covered by the federal gas tax fund, Hamp said. But the city will be on the hook for the staff-hours required to replace that line — about $39,000, so far.

Hamp said he hoped the line would be replaced by the end of September, but while the city waits for materials to arrive via sealift, the city has rerouted water around that line.

Addressing the city’s aging infrastructure is hampered by a lack of clear data, but Hamp said he’s in the midst of addressing that.

Currently, public works is taking an inventory of all water lines in the city, and compiling data from earlier inventories to find out which ones need to be replaced.

“Most of the lines are actually the newer variety… but we still have some of those older lines that are 30, 35 or 40 years old that… should be replaced, in my opinion,” Hamp told the finance committee Aug. 13.

Assessing the existing inventory of water lines is part of an overall effort to look at how the city manages its infrastructure assets, Hamp said — an effort he’s undertaken since starting his job last June.

“We’re starting with the water system, because it’s high on the priority list, in terms of our services that are of prime importance to our residents.”

Nunatsiaq News recently found out that residents in Iqaluit’s Happy Valley neighbourhood have been dealing with problems in the city’ sewage infrastructure for the past two years.

But sewage infrastructure is not in as much need of attention as the water system, Hamp said, because the sewage system is not under pressure like the water system is.

Cracks in sewage lines are common, but simply leak into the ground, often without posing a problem, Hamp said.

Problems arise when sewage lines are blocked, which causes backflow, Hamp said, as in Happy Valley.