City fires up the dump

MIRIAM HILL

IQALUIT — Barbecues weren’t the only things burning in Iqaluit this past holiday Monday.

On July 2, the city began torching the heaps of unsorted trash at the dump, much to the displeasure of some residents.

City officials set the garbage fire after Nunavut’s chief medical health officer issued a June 29 order for Iqaluit to resume open burning.

Dr. Ann Roberts said that though the city’s water licence permits it to burn only paper, wood and organic waste, separating out plastics from the trash pile would be too dangerous and take too long.

“Because it’s building up and it’s rotting and it would be dangerous for anybody to sort.”

— Ann Roberts, chief medical health officer

According to the Nunavut Water Board, as of June 1 Iqaluit can burn only paper, organic wastes and untreated lumber. But the nearly three-month-old municipal labour dispute prevented the city from developing a method for separating trash.

The city has asked the water board to delay the new burning rules. Word is expected back from the board today.

Roberts said she knows her order angers Iqaluit residents who oppose the open burning of plastics at the dump.

But, she said, “In the short-term, to get rid of the unsorted garbage that has been sitting around and rotting in the sun, this has to happen for a little while.”

Acrid smoke billowed from the landfill Monday and continued to belch into the sky Tuesday. No picketers were outside at the dump, preferring to take refuge in a hut at the dump gate.

A security guard was on site, sitting in his truck with the windows open about 50 metres from the burn pile. He said that in addition to the heaps of garbage being brought from city hall by contractors, residents were hauling their refuse to the landfill.

Trash has been accumulating since city workers stopped collecting garbage in April. Since then, residents have piled tons of trash at a makeshift dump outside city hall.

As a result of conflicts between the city and union over the removal of that trash, Judge Beverley Browne last week set out rules for both sides in the labour dispute.

According to Browne’s ruling, contractors moving garbage from city hall can enter the landfill after a five-minute wait at the gates. Picketers must stand at least three metres from vehicles wishing to enter. Residents may pass with no wait.

As the trash at the dump smouldered Tuesday, a loud popping noise came from the incineration pit. The guard shrugged his shoulders and said people have been throwing out all kinds of stuff.

That’s what worries Lynn Peplinski, an Iqaluit resident with two small children who play happily in the background while she speaks.

“We complain about other countries burning and their toxic emissions ending up here,” she said. “Well, what are we doing right across the bay? It’s just outrageous.”

Peplinski disagrees with Roberts that it’s more dangerous to sort garbage than to burn it, plastics and all.

But Roberts said that while it’s “repugnant” to return to burning unsorted garbage, she doesn’t see any other way to keep control of all the garbage Iqaluit creates.

Roberts estimated that each week the city generates between three and five sea-cans worth of trash.

And sorting through that refuse is simply too hazardous, she said.

“What you have is a green garbage-bag full of God knows what,” she said. “It’s building up and it’s rotting and it would be dangerous for anybody to sort. If you have your rotten meat and stuff I don’t think that’s a very healthy thing for people to be delving into individual bags of garbage, even if they could.”

Peplinski said the garbage could be stored until an incinerator is built or the trash is shipped elsewhere.

“I think (the city) has pulled a fast one in a way,” she said. “I know they feel they have to burn…I think on the part of the town it’s a very aggressive and antagonistic thing to do, to light this up while (the picketers) are out there. They’re going to get smoked out. It’s dangerous to their health.”

Mayor John Matthews said the city wants to comply with the water board’s rules and is trying to separate some of garbage at the dump into burnabales and non-burnables. But because of the amount of waste, most of it can’t be sorted, he said.

“We’re asking people that when they do bring in garbage they do some sorting,” he said.