KRG gives Iqaluit the silent treatment

Iqaluit city officials were all but convinced last year that Nunavik’s Kativik Regional Government could help them find a way of cutting Iqaluit’s road paving costs by up to 50 per cent, through a surface treatment technique called “chip-seal.”

But staff at the KRG, whose head office is located in Kuujjuaq, have stopped talking to Iqaluit city officials about a proposed contract between the two organizations for a chip-seal pilot project, and no one at the city of Iqaluit knows why.

“We’ve encountered a non-response situation,” said Mark Hall, the City of Iqaluit’s director of public works.

Last year, Hall and Coun. Annie Gordon visited Kuujjuaq to take a look at Nunavik’s highly successful road paving project. Using a technique called “chip-seal,” the KRG paved about 3.6 km of roads in Kuujjuaq for almost half the cost of using asphalt, and also trained local people how to do it.

The “chip-seal” technique involves laying down a thin layer of asphalt and water, followed by a layer of gravel, which is then rolled flat.

Ian Fremantle, the city’s CAO, said Iqaluit was seeking a contract with the KRG to use the Nunavik organization’s equipment in a chip-seal pilot project that would pave the Apex Road and some residential roads in Apex.

But he also said that the key to maintaining Iqaluit’s inadequate roads is to create a drainage plan, since it’s poor drainage that’s responsible for most of the washboarding and pot-holes. Even paved roads are damaged by poor drainage, Fremantle said.