Nunavut hamlet continues to struggle with water scarcity

The Hamlet of Igloolik, offices shown above, has been struggling this spring to supply water to its 2,100 or so residents with a water reservoir that is under-capacity, and still frozen. (PHOTO BY THOMAS ROHNER)

It’s going to take nearly 13 kilometres of four-inch pipe, a quartet of pumps, and a dozen or more flights to deliver all that hardware, to keep people in Igloolik free of dirt and thirst this spring, but that’s how you get things done in the North.

Brian Fleming, Igloolik’s senior administrative officer, said June 18 that the ice is slowly melting in the water reservoir, but still not fast enough to keep up with the needs of the community’s 2,100 or so residents.

Their initial efforts — to truck water from South Lake — failed because the water, having been covered over by ice all winter, smelled of rotten eggs and tasted bad.

“It was pretty brutal,” Fleming said.

Then they went to a second source, Fish Lake, but there were problems with that too.

Critters got sucked up into the truck’s hoses and somehow made their way into people’s water tanks — weird looking flukes, several centimetres long, which have flat, gelatinous bodies and long tails, and which horrified a handful of townspeople when they appeared in sinks and tubs.

“They sure looked gross and I’d be pretty freaked out if I saw one in my water too,” Fleming said.

It’s kind of a mystery how they managed to pass through the truck’s pump, and the reservoir pumping station, without getting chewed up, he said.

“We haven’t had any more complaints of flukes lately,” he added. “We have a screen on the suction hose now so that will prevent these flukes from appearing in the water system. They look disgusting but I think the fish in Fish Lake probably love them.”

Igloolik first ran into water problems June 9. A cool spring meant ice in the reservoir wasn’t melting and the growing population was draining the hamlet’s water supply quicker than it could replenish itself.

So right now, the hamlet is doing two things. A boil water notice is now in effect in Igloolik until further notice.

Water for consumption must be brought to a rolling boil for at least one minute and that includes water for brushing teeth, cooking, washing fruits and vegetables or for making juice, ice cubes or baby formula.

Fleming said some people are using ice and snow to make water for drinking. He recommended those residents boil that water as well, as a precaution.

And, they’re assembling pipe lengths of pipe, which the Government of Nunavut has been scrambling to source and send to Igloolik by air, along a 13-km route from Fish Lake, across both land and sea ice.

A pump set up at the lake, and several along the pipeline, will eventually redistribute water from Fish Lake to the reservoir where it will then go through the usual chlorination process.

When it’s up and running — hopefully by early next week — they estimate the pipe will be able to pump 1,500 to 1,800 tires 400 to 500 gallons of water per minute into the reservoir.

“The goal here is to pump water, as much as we can, until the sea ice melts out and hopefully the reservoir will be half full, two thirds full, and then we disconnect it,” Fleming said.

For now, water trucks are just sucking water directly from Fish Lake, dumping it into the reservoir and then drawing it out from the reservoir’s pumping station.

Fleming, when asked, said he was not concerned about the clean chlorinated water going into the same trucks that carried water directly from the lake.

So far, residents have been patient and understanding with the current situation, he said.

“We haven’t had a lot of people complaining,” Fleming said. “Some people have had to wait for water. We’re on a restricted water policy. We’re telling people don’t go out and do six loads of laundry in one shot and then call and expect water to be there within an hour.”

Initial test results for E .coli bacteria have come back negative. Samples of South Lake water have now been sent to Ottawa for a full chemical analysis. Result are not yet in, Fleming said.

Meanwhile, everyone’s hoping the community doesn’t have to fight fires anytime soon.