Under new deal, QC would run Iqaluit’s waste disposal: deputy mayor

Iqaluit Deputy Mayor Romeyn Stevenson says Iqaluit could have a contract with QC signed by month’s end to go forward with a newlong-overdue solid waste management plan. (FILE PHOTO)

Dumpcano’s little brother, “scrapcano,” flared up at the Iqaluit dump in June 2016. (FILE PHOTO)

The City of Iqaluit will soon have a plan in place outlining how they plan to sort, crush, bundle, recycle, compost, burn and landfill everything they throw in the trash—maybe as early as the end of this month.

And Deputy Mayor Romeyn Stevenson admits, it’s way long overdue.

“I’ve been on the council for nearly nine years and I’ve been a citizen of Iqaluit for 17 years and we’ve never done waste management properly, never,” Stevenson said.

“The citizens of Iqaluit deserve to have better service than they get now and they will have better service with this. And we need to be, like, a leader in waste management in the Arctic and we’re not. And that’s written right into the plan, that we want to be a leader.”

The city announced April 3 that it has signed a memorandum of understanding with Qikiqtaaluk Corp. on a waste management plan.

The Qikiqtaaluk Corp. is the economic development arm of the Qikiqtani Inuit Association. Qikiqtaaluk Environmental Inc., the QC subsidiary that would perform the waste management service, is a partnership between QC and Sanexen Environmental Services Inc. of Brossard, Que.

If all goes well and a contract gets signed, QC will not only build a new solid waste management facility northwest of the city but manage the city’s waste disposal.

What does that mean for Iqaluit residents? A lot.

It means the city hopes to divert about 40 per cent of municipal waste from landfilling and either crush or bundle it for recycling down south, compost it, or burn it—with waste heat used to heat buildings.

It might also mean higher garbage fees, though it’s early days and there’s no way to say for sure.

“We are looking at services that are far better than they are right now. Some of those services we don’t offer right now, in terms of recycling and composting,” Stevenson said.

“Will there be a cost to those services? Of course there will. Will that be more than what we’re paying now? I don’t know because there’s a lot of waste right now, so I just can’t say yet. But I do know things are going to get better.”

Stevenson said the city has been working with QC for about a year now on the big trash plan. Such a plan has been in the works for a long time and should have been rolled out a couple of years ago but “dumpcano” got in the way.

“Dumpcano” refers to a disastrous six-month dump fire in Iqaluit in 2014 which polluted the air with acrid smoke for months and forced the city to pay about $3 million to extinguish the fire and renovate the dump site.

Part of that renovation involved expanding the dump to make room for more and sorted waste so it ended up buying the city more time and delaying the need for an immediate replacement, Stevenson said.

But the dump, which ignited in flames again last summer, is now at capacity again and it’s time Iqaluit residents fixed the problem once and for all since the current dump is contravening federal environmental regulations.

“But it’s also something that’s always been near and dear to my heart. It’s probably the most important service that a city provides to its citizens and it’s never been done well.”

Stevenson said the city did not put out a request for proposals for the municipal waste facility, because at the time, there didn’t appear to be any other designated Inuit organizations capable of such a comprehensive project other than QC.

He said a partnership with QC made sense after the federal government made Inuit associations and birthright organizations eligible to tap into Ottawa’s big infrastructure funds, such as those available through P3 Canada.

The plan is still to build the facility northwest of the city, past where the road to Upper Base comes to a T.

Stevenson said details are still being worked out with QC so it’s not clear yet how much the facility and roadwork will cost or when the sorting facility and landfill would be completed and up and running.

“Timelines aren’t in place but they are imminent, one way or another,” Stevenson said.

“There’s no delaying or putting this off. There are changes coming and the new landfill is coming.”