Pay more, truck less? GN ponders Resolute utilidor headache

Many Resolute Bay residents wonder why the Government Nunavut is spending money to upgrade their utilidor water treatment plant and boiler system when a consultant’s report suggests replacing the entire utilidor system with trucked water and sewage within five years. (SUBMITTED PHOTO)

More than 80 of Resolute Bay’s 230 residents have signed a petition asking the Government of Nunavut to keep and maintain their community’s utilidor system.

The petition wants the GN to consider all its options before deciding to replace the system with trucked water and sewage service, says the hamlet SAO Duncan Walker.

The GN has already said it may not be worth the cost to repair the community’s aging utilidor system, which was installed more than 30 years ago, when planners imagined Resolute’s population would some day hit 1,500.

A report recently prepared for the GN by Dillon Consulting Ltd. estimates that to keep the community’s utilidor system going would cost $20 million more than to replace it with a trucked water and sewage system.

A 10-page summary of the report, obtained by Nunatsiaq News, says it would cost the GN $34.7 million to bring the utilidor up to par and build a sewage lagoon.

But bringing in a fully-trucked system would cost only $15.1 million, including a sewage lagoon.

Walker said many Resolute residents question these figures, which may underestimate the cost of renovating or adding new utility rooms onto the 83 buildings now hooked up to the utilidor.

The current management of the utilidor has also come under hamlet scrutiny, Walker said.

“We’re under the impression that it could be managed better. There are some areas that could definitely be worked on,” he said.

Meanwhile, the GN, which owns the utilidor, is overhauling the water treatment plant with new boilers and a water tank.

“We’re trying to figure out why they would be investing all this money if they’re planning on changing it over to trucked system.”

The report prepared for the GN slams Resolute’s current utilidor system as inefficient, wasteful and near breakdown.

The system has deteriorated to the point where it says “the system as a whole will fail.”

“A system failure would leave the community without water supply, sanitation service and fire protection,” the Dillon report says.

In favour of the trucked system, the report argues that the RCMP station and buildings near the airport already depend upon trucked water and sewage.

And it says Resolute is, moreover, the only community under 2,000 people with a piped water and sewage system.

The Dillon report also criticizes the dumping of raw sewage into sea— a practice that must be changed, in any event, by construction of a sewage lagoon.

“This clearly does not meet the regulations, and creates the potential for contaminants of concern, and contaminants of emerging concern to enter into the community food chain.”

The report concludes that the option of upgrading the utilidor system, of which 50 per cent needs an immediate repair, will end up being far more expensive than replacing the Char Lake pump house with a truck-fill station, new sewage and water tanks and a sewage lagoon.

Increased water and sewage trucking could be supplied by private companies, the report suggests.

As it stands now, heating of the water that runs through the utilidor gobbles up $416,000 worth of fuel a year.

Some point to a possible conflict of interest in the system’s costly operation because the fuel supplier is also the plant’s operator.

Wayne Davidson, a hamlet councillor, said a lot of money could be saved by lowering the temperature on the water circulating in the utilidor to keep pipes from freezing and repositioning the intake pipe lower into Char Lake, so that the water entering the system would be warmer.

Davidson said he sees no reason the temperature of water in the utilidor has to be set at 9.5 C in summer.

“Fuel required for heating up lake water by incredible temperatures is wasteful, not necessary , especially in summer, and would favor bacteria more than people,” he said, pointing out that Rankin Inlet’s similar utilidor system keeps its water at 4.5C

Davidson said a proper re-evaluation by an engineering firm or university to set up a manual of operations would also help to dramatically reduce costs.

“Now what is at stake here is potentially a really good system, run amok by mismanagement, which should be the template of any other village in Nunavut. We should seriously tweak this Resolute system to maximum efficiency, and see if the costs are comparable to sewage trucks,” he said.

“We are talking about a measurably better life for sweet, clean smelling homes throughout the territory, a lot is at stake. Not just for the people of Resolute.”

Resolute’s hamlet council recently passed resolutions asking for:

• the urgent presence of certified water treatment personnel;
• sampling done on a regular basis and making all previous lab results, if any, available to the public;
• the presence of a qualified engineer to review operations and compile an operations book; and,
• training for utilidor personnel to become certified.

Quttiktuq MLA Ron Elliott, who represents Resolute in the Nunavut legislature, plans to bring its pro-utilidor petition and the community’s defense of the system to the assembly’s next sitting in November.

“It is a money issue, and it is big, but we’re talking about a standard of living issue,” Elliott said. “Why are we here [in Resolute] in the first place? We are here to guard sovereignty- the government needs to live up to its responsibilities.