Iqaluit’s waste woes won’t go away

MIRIAM HILL

IQALUIT — Iqalungmiut are being asked to separate plastics and metals from their trash in an effort to cleanse the smoke still spewing from the city’s dump.

Heavy burning at the dump continued this week, even though Nunavut’s chief doctor has lifted a burn order.

Nunavut’s chief medical health officer, Dr. Ann Roberts, lifted the burn order on July 20 because the amount of garbage outside the dump had dropped to a manageable level.

Roberts issued the order on June 28 because she felt the hazard posed by rotting piles of garbage outweighed the risks of burning it.

According to Dr. Rick Nuttall, the territory’s acting chief medical health officer, trash “is a big sort of medium for infectious diseases.”

He said garbage piles can harbour staphylococcus bacteria, and may cause skin and respiratory infections.

“We don’t like burning garbage in open pits… but it’s permitted under the Public Health Act,” Nuttall told Iqaluit’s city council Tuesday.

He said the department would like to see waste sorted before it’s burned, so noxious plastics and metals don’t go up in smoke.

Mayor John Matthews said he also wants burning to stop, but said it’s the only way the city can deal with the present volume of garbage.

Because garbage was neither collected nor burned during Iqaluit’s three-month work stoppage refuse accumulated throughout the city.

Though a city-run garbage separation program is still being developed, the city announced this week that it will respond to public demands by providing a place where residents may drop off their plastics and metals.

Matthew Hough, the city’s public-works director, announced Tuesday that eight containers will be set up for residents to dump their unburnable garbage.

The containers will be in the West 40 area between the old and new municipal landfills. They’ll be labeled with instructions. The dump operator will unlock them each morning.

“This is not the beginning of our blue-bag (recycling) program,” Hough said. “That’s still three months away. But this will at least give residents an option so that they are able to separate their garbage.”

Hough said he would have a start date for the full-fledged recycling program next week.

Resident Paul Crowley said the move is a step in the right direction, but it isn’t enough. After sitting through four hours of the council meeting, he left angry and frustrated.

Representing Citizens for a Clean Iqaluit — a group adamant that the city stop burning its unsorted waste — Crowley offered details of the damage done by burning plastics and metals. He also suggested solutions, including tapping other sources for dollars to build an incinerator, and opening another landfill.

“I would have liked to have seen a resolution to stop the burning immediately,” Crowley said after the meeting.

He suggested that: council meet with the city’s three MLAs, request an emergency meeting of the legislative assembly, and, if necessary, consult Nunavut’s MP Nancy Karetak-Lindell.

Though the city’s water license forbids the burning of unsorted garbage, Roberts said her public health order trumped the water licence.

Since then, the city has ignored the licence and asked that it not be enforced until a recycling program is in place.

The Department of Indian and Northern Affairs is responsible for enforcing the water license. A DIAND spokesperson said the department is monitoring the situation at the landfill but doesn’t plan to order a halt to the burning.

The city maintains it will only burn when weather and wind conditions are favourable, but some residents complain sudden environmental shifts make it difficult to monitor the situation.

“The flames today were incredible. It was quite a show. If they think they have that under control, they’re deluded,” Crowley said. “I don’t think council thinks it’s a crisis. I think their heads are in the sand.”

Iqaluit’s director of engineering and public works, Matthew Hough, said that while garbage collection has started again, it’s going to be some time before the city returns to regular once-a-week pick ups.

“We’ve completed Apex and now are moving through town, concentrating on residents’ garbage and attempting to get around to as many of the commercial, institutional pick-up spots as well. The garbage will continue to be burnt as weather permits,” he said.