Iqaluit’s bootleg water operation

GREG YOUNGER-LEWIS

After years of bureaucratic and legal fights, the City of Iqaluit is facing renewed resistance to getting a licence to deliver the community’s drinking water, handle its sewage, and manage its landfill.

Iqaluit has been working outside the system meant to protect Nunavut’s fish and water resources for three years, after a former federal minister of Indian and Northern Affairs vetoed the city’s water licence, granted by the Nunavut Water Board.

Since then, the federal government has turned a mostly blind eye to Iqaluit’s unlicenced status, while the water board insists that no municipality should be handling water or treating sewage or dumping garbage without one.

Last week, the water board resurrected the long-outstanding issue, during two days of poorly attended public meetings in Iqaluit. Every government agency, plus one concerned citizen, asked the water board to delay giving Iqaluit a water licence until its administration answered outstanding concerns about the safety of Iqaluit’s water and sewage systems.

Iqaluit administrators faced a barrage of questions during the Sept. 2 and Sept. 3 meetings about their lack of plans for dealing with everything from hazardous waste spills, to the future pressures on Lake Geraldine, which supplies the community’s drinking water.

Iqaluit also failed in their application to prove that the city’s drinking water is safe, and omitted any mention of boil-water advisories that occured over the years when utilidors burst, according to federal documents.

Brad Sokach, Iqaluit head engineer, said the lack of a licence doesn’t mean the city’s services are substandard or risk breaking environmental laws.

Although Indian Affairs isn’t enforcing Nunavut’s water laws in this case, Sokach said Iqaluit is applying for the licence to avoid angering regulatory agencies.

“It’s not that it’s an advantage or disadvantage [not having a licence],” he said. “It’s a necessity.”

An Indian and Northern Affairs official said they allowed Iqaluit to continue operating without a water licence because the municipality was making progress on several of the department’s concerns.

Maria O’Hearn, an INAC spokesperson, said the department also took into account the obstacles that Iqaluit faced in trying to apply for their licence again, after it was vetoed in August, 2001.

One of the delays was caused by a court case between INAC and Nunavut Tunngavik Inc., which argued the federal government didn’t have the authority to override the Nunavut Water Board. NTI eventually lost their appeal.

“We haven’t taken any action because we see the City’s taking steps towards submitting an improved application,” O’Hearn said.

However, at the recent meetings, INAC had more questions than any other regulatory agency, about whether Iqaluit deserved a water licence.

INAC officials listed several concerns, including:

* the ability of Lake Geraldine to serve the increasing water needs of Iqaluit;
* whether Iqaluit had back-up plans for when the city outgrows the limits of the Lake Geraldine reservoir; and
* where Iqaluit’s going to put the left-over sludge from its sewage treatment plant, when it’s up and running as early as next year.

O’Hearn said Iqaluit administrators have promised answers to all of their questions.

Environment Canada and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans added to the chorus of questions. Federal officials with those departments lobbied the water board to temporarily withhold a water licence from Iqaluit until:

* city administrators explain what they will be doing with the sewage lagoon, once the treatment plant is working;
* and the city can assure that no fish or fish habitat will be damaged by the new sewage treatment plant.

The nine-member water board was scheduled on Wednesday to decide whether to proceed with public consultations on Iqaluit’s application for a licence. Results were not available before Nunatsiaq News press-time this week.