GN’s third-party review of Iqaluit water emergency hasn’t started yet

More than six months after the Government of Nunavut announced a third-party assessment of its response to Iqaluit’s water emergency last fall, work on that assessment has not yet started, according to the Health Department.

In an email to Nunatsiaq News, Health Department spokesperson Chris Puglia blamed the delay on a number of factors.

“Unfortunately, due to multiple priorities and staffing shortages, completion of the review has taken longer than anticipated,” he said.

On Oct. 2, people in Iqaluit began reporting that the city’s water smelled like fuel. Ten days later, the city and territorial government told people to stop drinking the water due to suspected contamination.

Officials later confirmed fuel contamination in multiple water tanks at the water treatment plant.

It wasn’t until two months later that the emergency order to stop drinking the water in Iqaluit was lifted.

The assessment is intended to give the GN a set of best practices on how to handle a similar situation in the future, according to Nunavut’s chief public health officer, Dr. Michael Patterson, when he announced it in December.

Puglia did not provide a timeline for when the review could begin, but said once the review is eventually complete the results will be made available to the public.

In January, Health spokesperson Danarae Sommerville told Nunatsiaq News the review will involve the Department of Health, the Department of Community and Government Services and the City of Iqaluit, but that the government had not yet identified who will lead the review.

She was also not able to say how long the review is expected to take, or offer any cost estimates.