Sewage spill reeks of future problems

CHARLOTTE PETRIE

What likely began as a slow leak in the Baffin Regional Hospital’s main sewage line quickly turned into a major spill when the aging pipe broke in half, releasing more than 10,000 litres of raw sewage last week.

City officials received a call Feb. 9 from a sharp-eyed resident who reported water coming up from the ground near the hospital. But although the severed pipe was patched up the following day, the clean-up effort took an entire week.

Three heavy-equipment operators began removing the contaminated ice from the site and dumping it at the local sewage lagoon last Monday.

But when the utilidor crew first arrived on the scene, they didn’t know how extensive the spillage was, foreman Chris Freda said.

“We thought we only had a small spill, but I guess it had been seeping for a while,” Freda said.

“We never saw no steam or indicators until Sunday. Nobody saw a leak. Nobody identified the leak. And there was no sludge, no steam, no nothing until that Sunday,” he added.

Hospital staff didn’t notice any problems with the pipes, either, as sewage continued to flow from the building.

In an interview this week, Rick Butler, the city’s chief administrative officer, said the leak was not a public-health concern.

“If there was a problem we would have been told about it,” he said. “[The sewage] is all frozen so the ground is not in any way contaminated — or the creek below it.”

City staff contacted the Northwest Territories spill hotline as soon as the spill was discovered. As well, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development each sent an inspector to the site.

Butler called the incident the biggest spill in Iqaluit’s recent history — but maybe not the last. He anticipates more of the same crap if the current state of the city’s deteriorating water and sewage system isn’t drastically improved over the next five to 10 years.

“We’ve been complaining about this to the [Nunavut] government for years and years, and we finally have some money now to do all this work with,” he said.

But getting that money from the GN is contingent on persuading local ratepayers to go $4 million in debt. The loan is required to top up the municipality’s current reserve funds, taxes and fees of $15 million.

If the city does not kick in $19 million, the GN will not relinquish the $31 million it promised Iqaluit last December for infrastructure projects between 2003 and 2008.

The city’s infrastructure is almost 50 years old and badly in need of upgrading, Butler said. The municipality’s five-year plan is designed to improve the city’s landfill, roads, water and sewage systems. However, the hospital’s broken sewage pipe isn’t on that list. Its system will have to wait for the city’s next five-year plan.

“Part of the fix in the next five years will include some pipes, but not these ones in particular. The worst pipes are the ones we’ll do first, and those aren’t the worst. That offers a sense of how bad other pipes are,” he explained.

However, municipal law stipulates that council needs the support of the city’s 1,300 ratepayers before it can take on debt. A public meeting held in January revealed some ratepayers were hesitant about going ahead with the deal, however, Butler’s impression of public opinion regarding the proposal is very different.

“[Council] finds it all positive because we’ve thought that after five or 10 years of people saying all these things that they need, this council and administration has finally got a plan that stops the burning, gives them water, gives them pavement, gives them roads, gives them a new landfill — all the things they said they needed,” Butler explained.

“Most people are saying, ‘This is the best we’re going to get for $4 million of debt and $40 per year in tax increases. We haven’t heard other solutions other than what we have, and that is, ‘Let’s get on with it.’”