Landfills In Nunavut

I was recently honoured with the opportunity to travel to Iqaluit in the Nunavut Territory to take part in a training program for Nunavut landfill operators. Iqaluit is located on the southern part of Baffin Island near the arctic circle. This was a pilot program to train community managers and public works staff about properly managing their landfills and on ways to handle hazardous waste that is in their communities. It is hoped that these communities will become champions for improving their environment and leading the way for other Nunavut communities.



The communities in Nunavut have numerous challenges that we in the south cannot fully appreciate. Bringing in goods and services needs to be planned many months, if not a year ahead. If orders for equipment and building supplies are not made in time, the deadline to make the delivery be sea lift in summer may be missed. You see, there are no roads in Nunavut. the only way to transport in anything is by sea lift or air. That includes all the years fuel supplies, drygoods, building supplies, and equipment.



The communities do not get their water delivered by pipelines as we do. They rely on daily water deliver by the town water truck. If the water truck breaks down, there is no water. That can be disasterous to the community. It explains why, in one case, the public works staff risked their lives to save the water truck from a burning shop. Loss of the water truck would have meant water delivery would be impossible until a new truck could be sent from the south by emergency air lift.



My perception of the community landfills in Nunavut have many challenges to managing them properly. The communities are underfunded to make the improvements, fencing is limited if it even exists, waste are dumped with out controls, and waste is typically burned to reduce volume and control litter. Some have to contend with polar bears feeding at the landfills, and cover materials do not exist at many sites because the landfill is built on rock. Communities have received little training on the issues with landfills and the proper operation to limit the risks to their communities and their environment.



After spending a 5 days with 12 individuals from different communities, it because clear to us that these 12 people have great pride in their communities and care about their environment. A few have already taken steps to try to improve their situations, but most do not have the appropriate level of knowledge and experience. At the end of a week of training, we could see a definite tranformation in their views about what they could do and what they want to do. Our impression was that they all had a new sense of purpose to controling their landfills and improving the health of their communities and their environment.



In two weeks, most of the individuals will travel to edmonton for a second week of training, which will include some hands on practice, a few more days of in class room training, and visits to waste management facilities in the Edmonton area.



After the week in Iqaluit, we felt that it may be valuable to include some classroom training on how to control litter at their landfills. Over the next couple of weeks, I will be working on assembling training materials for litter control at Nunavut landfills.