Community dealing with heaving roads, runway

KUUJJUAQ – Quebec plans to set up a working group to look at the future of Salluit, which faces damage to its roads, buildings and other infrastructure as the permafrost melts.

The working group, with members from several Quebec departments, the Kativik Regional Government and the Northern Village of Salluit, will evaluate the costs of moving existing buildings or expanding the community into new more stable areas nearby.

That's because there are few stable areas left for Salluit to grow as its population of 1,200 increases, and rising temperatures turn the surrounding permafrost to mud.

The Quebec transport department is already scrambling to fix permafrost damage, and avoid future problems, on Salluit's airport access roads and runway, which are buckling and splitting as permafrost melts under ever-warmer temperatures.

Last summer, engineers were in Salluit to test three different ways of lessening the impact of melting permafrost on the access road to the airport, a steep, winding road, notorious for its snowdrifts, where melting permafrost is already beginning to show cracks, bumps and signs of erosion.

Studies show that in Salluit the average temperature of the permafrost has risen 1 C since 1988, while average air temperatures have undergone rapid heating since 1992.

In the future, Salluit could see landslides or slippages, similar to the one that occurred there in 1998. This destabilized a neighbourhood of 20 new houses. Moving the houses to new locations cost Quebec hundreds of thousands of dollars. Last year, Salluit's fire station had to be taken down and moved after its foundation cracked.

Quebec's department of municipal affairs plans to commission a report on the state of permafrost in Salluit, with a follow-up in 2008 and 2009.

"The Government of Quebec intends to take prompt action to deal with the impacts of climate change, particularly in relation to the melting of permafrost in the northern villages," said Quebec's municipal affairs minister Nathalie Normandeau at last week's Katimajiit meeting on social and economic development in Nunavik.

Normandeau said that Quebec, along with the KRG, will also produce a guide of good practices for the construction of buildings and roads in areas of risk of melting permafrost.