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Lauren McKeon
Northern News Services
Published Wednesday, September 3, 2008

SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - Last Tuesday, a probable bird strike forced a Canadian North jet to make an emergency landing at the Yellowknife airport.

There were 76 passengers on the jet, including a group of reporters and big-name Northern politicians on their way to see Prime Minister Stephen Harper in Inuvik.

A seagull at the Yellowknife Solid Waste Management Facility dines on a discarded stock of greens. The birds also frequent Fiddler's Lagoon, which takes the birds near the airport flight path to get there. - Lauren McKeon/NNSL Photo A decade of bird strikes in Yellowknife 2007 - 35 2006 - 6 2005 - 13 2004 - 8 2003 - 5 2002 - 4 2001 - 2 2000 - 4 1999 - 8 1998 - 5 1997 - 12 Note: data only includes bird strikes which were actually reported. Source: Transport Canada

Luckily, the incident was, at worst, an inconvenience. When it comes to bird strikes, that's not always the case.

Considering this, there's a good reason why it's universally verboten to build landfills near airports. Landfills attract birds, and birds and aircraft are two flying objects that don't mix.

Think of this: a four-pound bird - say one fat raven full of dump food - hit by an aircraft travelling 300 miles per hour exerts an average force of about 15 tons at the time of impact. That's on an area roughly the size of a saucer.

If this same bird happens to hit the engine instead of the wing - which can still cause major damage - and become ingested, the bird is likely to strike a fan blade. That fan blade may be knocked into another blade and so forth, causing a cascading failure. In such an instance, results can, and have been, catastrophic.

Keeping that in mind, Transport Canada and Canadian airports go to great lengths to keep birds out of their airspace.

"An effective way to mitigate the risk of bird strikes is to reduce the overall exposure of birds in an airport environment," says Andrea Rudniski, the senior communications officer with Transport Canada, Prairie and Northern Region.

"That's why the Yellowknife Airport zoning regulations prevent land at that airport from being used as a landfill," she adds.

This last statement may seem a bit odd considering, as most Yellowknifers know, there is already a landfill sitting close to the airport. This is, in effect, a bit of a loophole. As Rudniski goes on to explain, because Yellowknife's Solid Waste Management Facility actually pre-exists the airport, it's grandfathered into zoning regulations.

However, there's a catch.

"The (airport) zoning regulations prevent any new, similar development. And the expansion of that dump would be considered a new development," she says.

This makes the city's proposed plan to add to the north side of the landfill - a move which Mayor Gord Van Tighem prefers to call a relocation - a bit tricky. Indeed, there's a chance that if the city continues down its path it could face a lawsuit.

"As a department right now, we're continuing to monitor the situation at the Yellowknife Airport," confirms Rudniski. She notes that while land use is currently within zoning regulations, any change to the waste management facility could void that.

"If Transport Canada believes that land is being used in violation of those zoning regulations the department would pursue legal action."

And despite Van Tighem's assurances that the "landfill is within the distance that (Transport Canada) recommend it be outside of," and that "moving next door doesn't change anything there either," the landfill is already too close.

Transport Canada recommends that "extremely hazardous" areas, like garbage dumps and food waste landfill sites, not be built within eight km of an airport reference point.

According to consulting company Beacon Environmental, commissioned by the city to assess the bird situation at the landfill, the current site is about 3.5 km northeast of the airport. In other words, if the city proposed to build the waste management facility at its current location today, the application would be soundly denied.

However, since the site is where it is, there are other measures that need to be taken into consideration when planning for the prevention of bird strikes at the airport - and for gaining approval from Transport Canada to make changes to the landfill site.

One of those is a wildlife management plan, a tailor-made prevention tool that each airport in Canada is obligated to have in place.

"Each airport is unique in terms of its development and wildlife in and around it. And, so each airport's wildlife management plan is going to be unique," explains Rudniski.

Thus, in late June, the city approved its own $25,000 Yellowknife-centric plan to implement scare tactics at the dump. The measures include frightening devices like pyrotechnics, decoy predators, hunter-like scarecrows, lights and sound.

In theory, after a trial period city council will review the effectiveness of the scare tactic measures, set at the time to be implemented by the end of summer, and then decide how to proceed. To even get its application for the proposed expansion approved by Transport Canada, the city has to show it can better the bird situation there.

Incidentally, despite the rapidly closing summer, measures have yet to be put into place.

"What has happened to this stage has been the application and receipt of the appropriate permit," said Van Tighem. "We've been waiting for the person in charge at the airport to come back from vacation so we can co-ordinate the activities so that everybody is working together rather than independently."

He now expects to hopefully monitor the situation before the birds migrate south and to have a report put before council by next June.

On average, the Yellowknife Solid Waste Management Facility receives about 30,000 tonnes of waste per year. This includes industrial, commercial and institutional waste. As a result, the landfill, which has been in operation since the early 1970s, is nearing capacity.

The main culprit, according to the Beacon Environmental report, as far as bird attraction goes, is the nearby famous salvage area. While most residential waste is baled, some is taken to this designated area. About 1,000 vehicles in total visit the salvaging area during the weekends, from May through September. Indeed, most Yellowknifers know what this area looks like.

If anything is a testament to Yellowknife's transient population, this is it. Piled high and at teetering angles, the salvage area is a haphazard mountain of discarded belongings. And strewn among the dirt-smudged couches and tables is enough garbage to satiate even the most gluttonous of birds.

Perched atop once-plush curtains and once-endeared pieces of furniture are dozens of ravens and gulls keeping vigil on their food source. Those not rummaging on the mountain can be found waddling on the sandy ground, quick to bicker over any small scrap. There are dozens upon dozens of birds milling at the site - and they don't all stay put.

"The other trick is that birds are up in the sky all the time," says Van Tighem. "I mean, I have an airplane and I fly all the time. Any time that you're flying you're going to see birds flying."

What matters is where the birds are flying. The most frequently used flight lines by gulls - by far the birds most commonly involved in strikes - are back and forth between the landfill and Jackfish Lake and from the landfill to the east and west shores of Back Bay.

Only one inland flight line from the landfill was observed in the Beacon Environmental study. This was from the dump and Back Bay area to the honey bag site at Fiddler's Lagoon - which also has edible food waste dumped there. Beacon noted that while this path was followed by a comparatively small number of gulls, it was a regular one and one that takes the gulls near runways.

The issue with the proposed expansion and birds, then, points out Van Tighem, is not whether it will bring more birds to the site but more so whether it will change or increase numbers in flight paths. The deterrent measures are likewise "not a matter of increasing or decreasing (birds)," he says. They and the study are rather "just a matter of clearly demonstrating what the situation is (at the landfill)."

And because the two are for the time being linked, it's also important to understand the situation at the airport. Yellowknife airport is among the top 20 airports in the country in terms of annual passenger and cargo air traffic. In 2006, there were 66,000 aircraft movements - landing or taking off - of which 12,000 were local flights. That year, there were six bird strikes. To give this some context, Vancouver's airport, number one that year for bird strikes, had over 300,000 flight movements and just over 180 strikes.

Then again, there's been a significant jump in bird strikes here between 2006 and 2007, with the number climbing up to 35 strikes last year.

When city council passed the motion to implement scare tactic measures at the landfill, there were some councillors, like Paul Falvo, who thought the wrong issue was being tackled. And while bird strikes are undoubtedly a serious issue, there are some, including Falvo, who would argue it's maybe not the biggest.

"The difficulty I've got with the approach is (that) it's the humans that are the problem, it's not the birds," says Falvo. "The birds are just doing what birds do. As humans we're supposed to be smarter than that."

The reason birds even come to the dump in the first place, says Falvo, is because humans put all kinds of food waste there.

A better way to mitigate bird activity, he suggests, is to do things like composting that would reduce the amount of waste going to the dump, period.

Falvo is not the only one who puts the blame on humans rather than their feathered friends. He's received numerous comments from concerned citizens, he says, one of the most vocal being Yellowknifer Sandra Knight.

She takes particular issue with the idea of culling birds at the landfill - a possible solution put forth if other deterrent measures are unsuccessful.

"Humans are responsible for the organic waste which attracts these birds to the dump," says Knight. "We have no right to take the lives of these birds without looking at where we have gone wrong. Humans are the reason for all the degradation of our environment."

And while both culling and shooting on site are common methods used to control birds at airports around the world, Knight raises one poignant point: "Don't let these birds pay the price for human laziness and self-importance."