Quebec offers solution to Salluit’s fuel woes

SALLUIT — A marathon meeting held last week in Salluit has produced a plan that will help ease the community’s growing pains.

This action plan buys some urgently needed time so that Salluit won’t run out of fuel.

Its measures will protect the community’s tank farm, which lies at the foot of an avalanche-prone slope, while a committee seeks a solution to Salluit’s future needs for more space.

The plan calls for:

• A new fence above the community’s endangered tank farm to protect it from possible avalanches;

• A monitor to keep an eye on snow levels and wind direction, so that avalanche warnings can be issued when necessary;

• Fuel delivery by sealift twice a year, in July and October, to meet the community’s fuel requirements through the winter;

• A study on where to permanently move the tank farm and expand the community, with construction beginning in 2003.

This plan involves a major concession from the Quebec government — that is, to pick up the tab for a steel fence strong enough to deflect an avalanche. Such a fence will cost between $500,000 and $725,000.

At the same time, Quebec is also agreeing to foot the bill for Salluit’s future development — at a cost that could reach millions of dollars.

This plan depends as well on the willingness of the community’s fuel supplier, the Fédération des coopératives du Nouveau-Québec, to continue monitoring fuel supplies and bring in reserves to the best of its ability.

And it will require the ongoing patience of the residents of Salluit. They won’t be able to let up on their energy-conservation efforts, because the enlarged tank farm won’t be in place until 2003 at the earliest.

The plan won’t help solve the immediate challenges faced by Air Inuit, either. The local airline will continue to bear the costs of refueling in nearby communities because there’s not enough fuel storage in Salluit.

But the action plan does help resolve the two urgent problems that have been plaguing this growing Hudson Strait community — the need to expand and replace its aging fuel-tank farm, and the difficulty of finding a site for the reservoirs, due to the risk of avalanches and lack of a suitable site.

The FCNQ’s plans to upgrade the tank farm in 2001 were scuttled by a Quebec government study of avalanche risks in Nunavik.

This evaluation, prepared by the Norwegian Geotechnical Institute, found that several communities in Nunavik, including Salluit, are at risk of snow-slides.

There, the experts found the slope to be less steep in two locations above the oil tanks, and concluded snow could accumulate and be released in an avalanche.

Their report suggested remedial measures such as moving the tanks and erecting a fence or a 60-metre long wall.

According to Quebec’s public security department, the provincial government would pay for fences, relocation or other measures recommended by this report when public property or the safety of citizens is directly affected.

But where commercially owned property is at risk, Quebec said owners would have to pay for mitigation.

The FCNQ was willing move the tanks further from the slope, but the community didn’t want the tanks even closer to the community.

“It’s not that we don’t want the tanks,” explained Putilik Papigatuk from Salluit’s Qaqqalik Landholding Corporation. “We need fuel to keep warm, but the community is growing and we need this space to expand.”

This January, the landholding corporation, responsible for administering Inuit-owned land in Salluit, the community, and the FCNQ had asked the Kativik Regional Government for assistance to see what could be done and who should pay for it.

The KRG supported their view that the FCNQ shouldn’t have to foot the entire cost of moving the tanks further away or putting up a barrier against avalanches.

Finally, on March 13, a group of high-ranking Quebec government officials, staff from the KRG and local leaders met in Salluit to hammer out a solution.

They saw first-hand the precarious situation of the tank farm, visited various sites around the community where the tanks could be moved and saw the explosive growth of the Salluit and its scenic but cramped location.

They discussed how the community needs to expand, but doesn’t want huge reservoirs sitting in the middle of the sole remaining free parcel of land within the community — land that could be used for commercial development.

Salluit’s population, which now stands at around 1,100, has more than doubled since the 1970s.

“We have to develop an economic base in our community. We can’t survive in our houses with no way to make money,” said Salluit’s mayor, Kalingo Angutigirk.

Community leaders still want to move the tank farm a couple of kilometres down the fiord where a road could be put in from the airport.

Such a road could cost $10 million or more to build.

But an avalanche also has a high price tag, which Quebec officials evidently want to avoid. At the meeting they noted the avalanche in Kangiqsualujjuaq cost the provincial government $31 million.