Hamlets struggling for infrastructure cash

IQALUIT — Cambridge Bay’s water-intake pipe needs replacing. Iqaluit wants to build an incinerator at its dump. And Grise Fiord burns its garbage in the open because it has no other way to deal with it.

It’s the lament of many communities in Nunavut. They’ve got water, sewer and garbage problems piling up and no cash to solve them.

In Cambridge Bay, for example, the water line that supplies fresh water to the community is more than 20 years old.

“It has to be replaced,” mayor Keith Peterson said. “It’s deteriorating and it supplies all our water.”

A new water line is on Cambridge Bay’s wish-list. A sewage treatment plant is another priority.

But Cambridge Bay and other communities depend on the Nunavut government for most of the cash needed to pay for essential municipal infrastructure.

The GN plans to spend about $335 million on infrastructure and other municipal projects over the next five years, but many hamlets says that’s not enough money to go around.

Instead of lobbying the premier for more money, though, the territory’s mayors are asking Paul Okalik to do some lobbying of his own.

The mayors want Okalik to ask the federal government to increase the amount of money it gives to Nunavut for municipal projects.

Under the Canada infrastructure program, the federal government divvies up money to provinces and territories using a per capita formula based on populations
With so few people, Nunavut doesn’t get much federal infrastructure money under the per capita system— only about $2 million.

That doesn’t sit well with the Nunavut Association of Municipalities, a group representing mayors, deputy mayors and senior administrative officers.

They want money for sewage treatment plants, water reservoirs, incinerators and other infrastructure, says Peterson, who serves as vice-president of the association.
“We’ve got to make a case to the territorial government and the federal government that, ‘Listen guys. Let’s get serious here. Do you want us to live in third-world conditions?’’’ Peterson said.

He says without new infrastructure, communities will continue to use old water lines and burn garbage-heaps of plastics and metals at landfills — practices that some residents worry are harmful to the environment and to themselves.

“I think all of our communities and our councils want to offer the residents the best quality of life,” Peterson said. “But it’s pretty hard to do that sometimes when they just don’t have the wherewithal to do it.”

Last week, Canada’s provincial and territorial premiers agreed that the per capita funding system isn’t fair to rural and remote regions of the country. But the federal government has provided no indication that they intend to change it.

Environmental concerns

Peterson says he worries about dumping sewage into Cambridge Bay’s lagoon and then letting nature take its course. He’d rather see the waste go to a treatment plant — a project that would cost $1.5 million.

“What’s more important: a water supply line or a sewage treatment plant? There’s not enough money to pay for everything we need up here,” he said.

Richard Kurtz worries the lack of infrastructure is harmful to the environment.
The Cambridge Bay resident said the town needs a storage place for hazardous chemicals, such as the freon found in old refrigerators.

Kurtz’s fridge stopped working in March and he’s been storing it outside since then. There’s no one qualified in town to remove the freon and Kurtz doesn’t want to simply dump the appliance.

“I don’t think it’s great for the environment to have freon kicking around here,” he said.

Water, waste a priority

The Nunavut Association of Municipalities says communities can’t always meet environmental standards, largely because they don’t have the money for infrastructure.

But government officials say water, sewage and solid waste projects are a top priority.

“They take precedence over anything else,” said Doug Sitland, who works in the Department of Community Government.

Sitland is tasked with deciding which municipal projects will get government money.
“The basic problem my department has is that the needs in every community far, far, far exceed the available resources,” he said.

Living with garbage

In Grise Fiord, the hamlet is a little more practical when it comes to waste management.

Robert Sheaves, the community’s senior administrative officer, said they deal with garbage the only way they can.

“Right now we take it to the dump, we separate it: wood, plastics, metals, garbage, batteries. We burn what we can and the rest keeps accumulating,” he said.

“We don’t have the resources or the financial wherewithal or the manpower to actually get into a complex recycling plan.”

Sheaves said without money from the GN, the only way to pay for new infrastructure would be to raise residents’ rates on other municipal services. The hamlet has no intentions of doing that, so Grise Fiord will continue to burn its waste.