New water licence contains stern warnings for Iqaluit

IQALUIT — The Nunavut Water Board’s new three-year water licence issued to the Town of Iqaluit contains several stern warnings aimed at protecting Iqaluit’s water supply.

The licence took effect Jan. 1, 2001, but its full text wasn’t released until Jan. 26.

In the aftermath of the water crisis in Walkerton, Ont., where contaminated water supplies killed several residents, the Nunavut Water Board is clearly worried about the future state of Iqaluit’s water.

“We feel strongly about protecting the quality of the fresh waters of Nunavut, especially for humans, and we believe Nunavut’s waters should be protected regardless of cost. Though this statement seems extreme, we are not prepared to accept the alternative possibility, which is that humans become sick or in extreme cases die if pathogens or other toxic matters enter the public’s water supply,” the NWB says.

The water board also tries to put an end to any dispute over its authority to tell the Town how to manage its land and water use.

The board also clarified its jurisdiction over open burning, land and water, citing various federal and territorial precedents, as well as traditional Inuit knowledge.

“As the Board is concerned with any factors that may affect the quantity or quality of the water, it must consider activities that can indirectly affect the water as well as those that directly affect water,” the board said.

The license, issued on Jan. 1, touches on every aspect of Iqaluit’s use of fresh water, its disposal of refuse and management of sewage.

Iqaluit’s new water licence falls short of the five-year licence the Town had been hoping for, and also has a long list of conditions attached to it.

These mean the Town will have only a very few months to get its new dump and sewage treatment facilities up and running, to come up with a sorting and recycling plan for solid waste, and to start taking better preventative care of its facilities.

At nearly every point of discussion around the license, the NWB underscores — in bold print — the Town’s lack of compliance with what the board previously asked for, noting “the licensee failed to meet this requirement.”

It particularly raps the Town’s knuckles for not having done the studies that the NWB asked for to determine if there is any link between emissions from burning waste at the landfill and deposits in fresh water.

The details of the license issued to the Town of Iqaluit show the NWB asks:

• by June 1, open-burning to be restricted to food waste, paper, paperboard packaging, and untreated wood. Open-burning is permitted only under certain, limited conditions.

“We know from the evidence that there are significant quantities of waste going to the landfill without being subjected to a proper recycling or environmental sorting program….even today, there is evidence that dry-cleaning and photo processing, chemical wastes are ending up in the landfill and sewage lagoon,” said the NWB.

• by Aug. 1, sewage to be diverted to the new sewage treatment plant;

• by Aug. 31, all sewage dykes to be checked;

• two months before this new sewage treatment plant is in operation, an interim plan for sludge disposal;

• by Dec. 31, a long-term plan for the disposal of sludge produced by the plant;

• within six months of the facility’s operation a plan for its abandonment;

• by Aug. 31, a contingency plan if no new dump is operating by this date, acknowledging that “the current dump is expected to be full by Oct., 2001, but that the new incinerator facility may not be ready in time.”

• by Dec. 2001, an abandonment and restoration plan for the current dump, the Apex dump, the two waste sites east of the current dump, and the North 40 dump;

• at least six months from the expiry of this license, an assessment of Iqaluit’s fresh water needs. A new long-term source of water will be needed in about five years, it says;

• at least once during the next three years, the Lake Geraldine Dam to be inspected.