Nuuk-bound Nunavut delegation to study waste management
Iqaluit mayor, other government and agency representatives leave July 31 for weeklong visit
Iqaluit Mayor Solomon Awa greets Nuuk Mayor Avaaraq Olsen during her visit to Iqaluit on June 26 along with nine other Greenlandic representatives. (Photo by Arty Sarkisian)
Iqaluit’s mayor will join other Nunavut representatives heading to Greenland later this month to learn about how Nuuk handles waste management.
The trip, which runs from July 31 to Aug. 7, is co-ordinated by the Nunavut Association of Municipalities, or NAM, of which Iqaluit Mayor Solomon Awa is president.
“It’s an opportunity to see what Inuit in other countries do within their government’s system, and share knowledge,” Awa said after Wednesday’s city council meeting.
Nunavut’s delegation will also include five board directors from NAM as well as representatives from Nunavut Tunngavik Inc., Nunavut’s Department of Environment and the Climate Change Secretariat.
“I see this as a very successful partnership,” said Marla Limousin, NAM’s executive director, in a phone interview Thursday.
Limousin will also make the trip to Nuuk.
“NAM has been actively working to collaborate with other agencies and government departments to bring the issues of municipalities to the forefront,” she said.
Although the two regions share similarities, Greenland is doing better in waste management, Limousin said.
Nuuk’s new incineration plant came into service in January. Approximately 90 per cent of all waste gets fully incinerated and the process generates heat energy for the city.
Nunavut’s delegation will also look into Nuuk’s alternative energy projects and meet with its city planning committee to learn about the types and styles of housing there and the natural topography of the region, Limousin said.
At Wednesday’s council meeting, members voted unanimously to send two members with Awa on the trip and for the city to allocate close to $10,000 for the councillors’ travel costs. Awa’s travel costs are being covered by NAM.
It is yet to be determined which councillors will accompany Awa in Nuuk.
“I really hope that other councillors can go,” said Coun. Romeyn Stevenson, noting the timing of the trip doesn’t work for him.
“If we can’t find anyone to go, it doesn’t matter. If we can find one, good. If we can find two, even better.”
On June 26, Nuuk’s Mayor Avaaraq Olsen flew to Iqaluit with nine other Greenlandic representatives for the launch of new weekly direct flights between the two capital cities.
The trough runneth over.
Can you say , ”JUNKET ” !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
So NTI is branching out into waste management, alternative energy, and housing. They are so prolific.
who could turn up a free trip to Greenland?
More like NTI is staffed by a bunch of perpetual tourists.
NTI is involved in the UN when that should be ICC.
NTI should also not be involved at this level of waste management.
Stop with the junkets, NTI. NTI spends too much money on travel, per diems, hotels, and lawsuits.
NTI senior management would like to be the government for Nunavut, they have been working this way for a few years now, all the while NTI does not want to work with any government or other organizations.
NTI upper management love to travel south and internationally while ignoring the communities they represent, they rather ignore and not hold any community engagements/consultation’s and travel to southern cities.
NTI has fallen so low it seems to be the norm of operations. New leadership and changes need to be made at NTI, Inuit do not know what our organization is doing as they do not report back anymore while they have so much funding and new funding from the federal government that NTI never talks about. I wish the media would look deeper into this and report back to the people of Nunavut. I think most people would be shocked at the amount of funds NTI sits on all the while it’s people are struggling to get by.
It includes international travel, of course NTI is involved.
Someone has to, everyone knows that CGS and the municipalities don’t have the capacity to handle waste. I wonder how many waste management facilities pass annual inspections? If a dump fails inspection, are there charges laid under appropriate legislation?
NTI!, what a joke! free trip! I wonder who from the city will win this free trip to Nuuk.
Who from the city? Hmm…
Mike Tyson’s Nephew AKA Mayor Bell would have been the one to go if he decided not to mess up his Iceland Trip…. 😀
If you were given a chance to learn about Waste management similar to Nunavut and you worked for NTI you know you would go in a heart beat so get off your high horse and stop being a keyboard warrior
Except I know nothing about waste mgmt, so free trip! yes! When does NTI ever build anything in the city? This is the responsibility of the city/cgs, no? Like the other post say, the people who should go is the City’s director of public works or someone along that line. Not NTI or the deputy mayor or anyone on the city council who has no idea how this works and there for a free trip!
This is why northerner, people like you stay behind a keyboard using an alias. I’d call you a warrior but that be an insult to the actual warriors.
Elected leaders and staff that don’t know nothing about certain things make decisions base on what they learn in similar juridictions and I am pretty sure they have experts with them. These people have decision making authority. They Learn the concept and get as much information and make decision with with people in that field. Stop being so cynical and we can learn from other similar jurisdictions that have the same challenges instead going in blindly.
NTI, the GN and always a few Hamlets, participate in each and every Nunavut Environmental Assessment and monitoring process, especially for large projects within the territory.
It can come at no surprise to any of these organizations, that developers are held to a completely different standard of environmental performance and management than our communities.
It should be plainly obvious to these 3 groups that there are existing, state of the art, and operational waste management facilities at major developments within Nunavut including composters, backhaul sorting facilities, sewage treatment plants, water treatment plants, scrubbed power plant smoke stacks and incinerators, as well as extensive air, water and soil monitoring programs.
The use of these facilities allow our developers to run their operations using the best available technology without open garbage dumps, and sewage lagoons with their associated open burning, leaching, and water quality problems.
The grass is not greener on the Greenland side on this issue. The only thing any of these groups can learn over there is that we can and should operate just as clean as any one else, without our Kalaallit cousins wondering how we manage to be so hypocritical. That lesson is very easy to learn right here in Nunavut with much less embarrassment.
I know people like to get on the keyboards and complain about everything that is reported on here but this truly is a waste. First CGS looks after the design construction of the landfills; the department of Health looks after the oversight, yet neither of them are going on this adventure. Second this is a different country. different rules. Canada will not allow any municipality to build a waste facility within 8km of an airport; but there are some exceptions for Nunavut. At that distance any heat recovery/power generation opportunities will vanish. Nuuk relies on waste to be imported from other communities to be economical, because we do not have deep water ports in the communities the waste from communities will have to be collected sorted and stored in order to bring it to what I can only assume would be Iqaluit, and how do you think that will go, and who will pay for it?
Nice idea, thinking outside the status quo, but I feel this would be a nonstarter.
You’d also think that Iqaluit City Council would vote to send ohhhh, I don’t know… maybe their Director of Public Works? Director of Engineering? Superintendent of Sanitation? Nahhhh, they’re gonna send their Deputy Mayor and another Councillor, freshly returned from their trip to Calgary last month.
I see a consulting contract in the future! Find something that works, consult about it, have study groups, meetings with giveaways and then dont do it.. seems about right.
Marla can teach those Greenlanders how to weld metal waste into crudely made muskox and birds as part of a perpetually public funded project with a vague emphasis on wellness and self reliance.
The city has a new landfill and waste handling facility under construction – it’s a little late to be rethinking alternatives (even if the current plan is poor). As noted by other pundits… there is little or no technical representation on the trip from Nunavut that is actually responsible for waste management. Climate change, NTI, NAM – the quest for relevance continues.
Enjoy the food and wine.
“If we can’t find anyone to go, it doesn’t matter”
… then why send two?
Government of Nunavut is so embarrassing.
Just when one thinks, “WTF? What other nonsense can Nunavut do?!”
Then…this. 🤣😱
Perhaps you can consider our Member of Parliament when she returns from her Asian junket to meet other Indigenous groups to benefit the Indigenous peoples of Canada.
The hamlet council in our little sik-sik hole done heard about the global warming thing affecting the Arctic.
It’s coming.😱
The council &I have to go to Cuba to study how to handle heat.
We need GN and NTI to fund this from the tax payers.
Don’t depend on it, no waste no heat.
Anyone else see the irony “Waste” , “Management”
This is a great opportunity for the GN and the city of Iqaluit to see how it’s done, waste management, incinerator, recycling facilities and programs, road maintenance, side walks, land development that works to utilize the limited land space, land development with views.
All done with a fraction of the cost in Greenland, how do they get it to all work?
Local capacity, take for example the paving that happening right now in Iqaluit, how much does that little stretch of road cost to be paved and who is doing the work, in Nuuk it’s the municipality who does the paving, with the fraction of the cost as it’s done on the city’s time for their road crew plus materials, no expensive contracts for southern companies to do the work.
I do hope the GN and City will be open to learn and take this opportunity to work closely with our neighbours to adopt a system that clearly works very well.