Kerry McCluskey
Northern News Services

Grise Fiord (Mar 06/00) - The community of Grise Fiord is drying up.

The main water supply tanks in the hamlet have just enough water left to see the community residents through until the end of next month.

"We're bracing ourselves," said Marty Kulugutuq, a municipal employee.

"We've been doing projections on the water shortage and we might be running out of water by the end of April or the middle of May at the latest," he said.

Located on the southern tip of Ellesmere Island, Grise Fiord is unable to take advantage of a water lake or reservoir as other Nunavut communities do because of the permanent ice cap. Instead, two massive water tanks, which hold a total of 5 million litres, are used to store the supply water to the hamlet's less than 200 people.

In past years, when the tanks were filled with run-off water in July, they were able to supply the community for the year.

But due to growth and construction, the hamlet is in the very real position of running out of water.

"This year we had construction and a few extra visitors. For those reasons we used a lot more water than we did last year," said Kulugutuq.

As well as asking residents to be conservative with their water consumption, Kulugutuq said preliminary plans were being made for an alternate water source.

"At the rate we're going, we'll probably have to get ice from an iceberg. We'll build a road out to it and start filling the tank up with ice so it will melt," he said.

"The good side of it is that it might create local employment."

Mike Ferris, the deputy minister of the Department of Community Government and Transportation, said that plans for a long-term solution were also in the making.

"We do have a project to increase capacity by adding another water tank," said Ferris.

He explained that the hamlet originally started with just one holding vessel, but as the community grew, a second tank was added.

"With the number of new houses and the growth in the community, we're going through that again," he said.

Ferris added that the matter would be addressed in the hamlet's capital planning process this fiscal year.