Waste site apartments languish in legal limbo

ARTHUR JOHNSON

Several apartments built on and around an old waste disposal site at the end of Federal Road exist in a legal limbo, with habitation prohibited because of Nunavut health department regulations, an Iqaluit council committee learned this week.

The issue arose because the city was informed that there is a tenant in a small apartment constructed as part of an automotive commercial garage erected by NCC Development Ltd. and leased by J and G Garage.

When the city invited development proposals for the industrial subdivision, it specified that apartments for caretakers could be included in structures, but that approval for occupancy of these apartments must first be obtained from the GN health department.

Approval is needed because under general sanitation regulations, no building used for human habitation can be located within 450 metres of an existing or former waste disposal site.

When Michele Bertol, the city’s director of planning and lands, told the engineering and planning committee that J and G Garage had not obtained the necessary approval, Coun. Stu Kennedy said several other apartments already built or planned in the industrial park and on nearby industrial lands are in a similar situation.

Coun. Glenn Williams said that puts the city in the impossible position of trying to make public health assessments to enforce its own bylaws. Rather than trying to do so, he said, the committee should urge the GN health department to assess the situation and make a decision about whether the former waste site poses any hazard serious enough to prevent people from living in the caretaker apartments.

“The health department is trying to avoid acting in this matter,” declared Mayor Elisapee Sheutiapik. If the city actually enforced its bylaw and demanded that a tenant move out, she said, it would be “penalizing the developer for something that’s under the health department.”

No one seems to know exactly what, if any, hazardous material is buried in the former waste site.

Coun. Kennedy said outside the meeting that he believes some old barrels have been removed, and that much of what remains is old machinery and vehicles. “I think there’s an old airplane fuselage buried down there somewhere.”