Nakasuk students back in class after water main break forced closure
Boil water advisory remains at Iqaluit elementary school after break repaired
An excavator sits in front of Nakasuk Elementary School on Thursday morning. A work crew fixed a water main break on Wednesday night. (Photo by Daron Letts)
A water main break on Queen Elizabeth Way in Iqaluit shut down Nakasuk School on Wednesday afternoon and Thursday morning, but the school reopened in the afternoon.
The Iqaluit District Education Authority reported the break on social media on Wednesday at about 1:30 p.m.
On Thursday morning, it announced the school would reopen for the afternoon. Buses were to pick up students, the education authority said on Facebook. It recommended that children bring a water bottle with them to school, and that water was being delivered to the school.
Wednesday’s water main break resulted in a road closure on Queen Elizabeth Way around the school, as well as the Northmart Store and the Northwestel office.
The city gave an update later Wednesday in a news release, announcing a water shutdown for the elementary school.
“This unplanned shutdown is necessary to address an urgent issue with the city’s water infrastructure,” city spokesperson Geoff Byrne said in the release.
A work crew was on site Wednesday afternoon and Thursday morning.
Water service was restored on Wednesday at 11 p.m., and the road was reopened, Byrne said in a followup news release on Thursday morning.
“Nakasuk School remains under a precautionary boil water advisory,” he said. “No other buildings in the area are affected.”
After water pressure drops, it automatically triggers a precautionary boil water advisory, Byrne said.
During a boil water advisory, the city advises residents to bring water to a rolling boil for one minute in order for water to be used for drinking, preparing infant formulas, washing food, cooking, and brushing teeth.
I suspect that when the work was completed last January, the compaction may not have been adequate. Why was construction even allowed to proceed during winter conditions?
This issue was reportedly discussed at council, so how did it still happen? Who is ultimately responsible for this oversight?
Compaction is a secondary consideration in permafrost terrain, the governing mechanism is thermo-hydro-mechanical degradation of ice-rich soils, not insufficient densification.
In these materials, shear strength and stiffness are largely a function of the frozen ice matrix acting as a cementing agent. Once excavation exposes the subgrade during warmeror summer periods, you initiate thaw consolidation and phase transition of pore ice to water, which results in:
– a sharp reduction in effective stress
– elevated pore water pressures
– loss of soil structure and bearing capacity
At that point, conventional compaction energy is largely dissipated into a metastable, partially thawed matrix and any apparent density gain is transient and will degrade as thaw penetration continues and excess pore pressures dissipate.
Winter construction, by contrast, maintains the subgrade in a frozen, high-modulus state, minimizing disturbance to the thermal regime and limiting post-installation settlement.