Rented pumps and a fishing boat: Quick action prevents Nunavik lake from draining

Updated October 13 at 10:50 a.m.

A lake used to supply Kangiqsualujjuaq with drinking water is expected to return to a safe level by the end of the month, after an emergency plan to replenish it was put into action by Kativik Regional Government.

The cause of the receding water level appears to have been a broken underground pipe, said municipal public works director Hossein Shafeghati.

He said that in winter, the water from the lake, Imirtaviup Tasinga, would freeze in the pipes if it remained still, meaning it must continuously flow. The municipal piping system creates that constant flow of water.

However, at one point during the winter, when it is difficult to see anything under the snow bed, one of the pipes broke.

“It turns out that one of the two pipes had a split, and throughout the winter, we did not know that split had happened since we only get signs when everything melts in spring,” Shafeghati said in an interview.

Consultants were hired to investigate the cause of the split, and they found the pipe had been broken for a long time.

“It had pretty much drained the lake,” Shafeghati said.

The red line represents the 1.3 kilometre-long pipeline installed to pump water from the bigger lake into the water reservoir lake in Kangiqsualujjuaq. (Map courtesy of  Google Earth)

A quick fix was needed to avoid more water loss, he said, so the KRG mobilized pumps to the community to transfer water from Lake Ellasie into the nearly drained lake.

That operation was no easy task. At first, KRG needed to rent pumps and buy the pipes that would then have to be transported to Kuujjuaq before ending up in Kangiqsualujjuaq, which has a population of just under 1,000.

“For a project like this, the main constraint was time,” said Shafeghati.

From Kuujjuaq to Kangiqsualujjuaq, they had to transport the equipment by boat. Meanwhile, the clock was ticking as water continued to drain from the lake.

They found a resident who owned a fishing boat large enough to bring the equipment from community to community.

“My colleagues have done really heroic things, like a Superman-style job to get this going,” said Shafeghati.

A much bigger lake was chosen to supply the smaller lake that was being emptied by the broken pipe, so close to 1.3 kilometres of pipeline was installed along a valley northwest of the drained lake.

“Since last week, water has been pumping and the lake has now gained about 14 inches worth of water,” Shafeghati said.

He hopes the lake will reach its target water level before the final sealift, so that the pumps can be shipped back down south.

In the past when a pipe has broken and there is no time to carry out a fix like there was this time, KRG has issued a boil water advisory and trucked in water from another lake as a short-term measure.

“There is no way you can guarantee that it will not happen again,” Shafeghati said of the problem caused by the broken pipe.

He said communities are responsible for maintaining many kilometres of pipeline that is underground. Due to the drastic seasonal rise and fall in temperatures, the pipes all move and shift without anyone being able to see them under the snow.

There is sensor technology available that would make it known when pipes break but Shafeghati said that’s not feasible in Nunavik yet.

“These sensors have to be enclosed in a heated place. Unfortunately, that is the biggest challenge we have in Nunavik. We need a lot of heating, and heating comes at a cost.”

Because the only available heating in Nunavik is oil-based, to build even more infrastructure that must be heated would increase the risk of an oil spill or maintenance problems due to unreliable delivery.

“Oil heating is very high risk, with a very high cost,” he said. “I am not going to be putting oil reservoirs all over the land, because that is a time bomb.”

Note: This article was updated to include the name of the village’s water supply