Time running out for Nanisivik town site

SARA MINOGUE

Quttiktuq MLA Levi Barnabas said he was alarmed last week when he received a copy of an email addressed to the premier from Breakwater Resources Ltd., saying the company can no longer wait for a GN decision before demolishing buildings at the mothballed Nanisivik town site this spring.

Ed Picco, the education minister, rose in the legislative assembly on Monday to explain that a consultant has been hired to study the feasibility of using the site as a training facility.

Picco said he’s preparing a request for cabinet to look at the situation and consider a cost-benefit analysis of doing something with the site, but when given the costs of using Nanisivik as as training school, he has already concluded that “it doesn’t make any sense.”

The Department of Community and Government Services is doing another review to look at the conditions of the buildings left behind at the site.

Preliminary findings from the studies estimate that it would cost $5 million to upgrade and repair the buildings at the site. Operating a training school would cost an extra $5 million a year.

In the meantime, Picco has written to DIAND Minister Andy Mitchell, to ask about access to some other federal site that could be used for vocational training.

Arctic Bay residents have long hoped that another use can be found for the former Nanisivik town site, located about 34 kilometres from the hamlet.

Breakwater Resources Ltd. closed the site in the fall of 2001, because of low zinc prices.

Breakwater will start its site clean-up this spring and summer.

That will include the demolishing of many buildings, including a large white dome that housed the company cafeteria and a complex known as the “town centre,” which housed a swimming pool, gym, school, daycare centre, fire hall, RCMP detachment, Northern store and offices.

“We have much needed infrastructure in Arctic Bay,” Barnabas told the legislative assembly in Inuktitut, “but I am repeatedly told that we have all of the infrastructure requirements in Nanisivik.

“If we are going to be just destroying the property, would it not be better if we look at better solutions and move things to Arctic Bay and look at using the property instead of just destroying it?”

Picco replied that he would move the issue into cabinet over the next “couple of weeks.”

“We know that DEW Lines have been abandoned all across the north… we did not just run up there and take them over,” Picco said.