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Old pipes, cold weather likely caused water woes Casey Lessard Northern News Services Published Monday, January 23, 2012
The problem started when the pipe supplying Inuksuk High School froze Jan. 11, then burst the evening of Jan. 12. Inuksuk students missed a week of classes, returning Jan. 19. Two days will be recovered by compressing the exam schedule. In a statement, the Department of Education said the school calendar had 20 hours of buffer time for such emergencies, and said students will receive the required 1,000 hours of class time. Because the pipe connecting Inuksuk is very close to the city's water source, the rupture caused a "major loss of water," the City of Iqaluit and Government of Nunavut stated in a joint statement dated Jan. 19. The break emptied the city's reservoir to a "critically low" level. "We're trying to figure out what happened," Mayor Madeleine Redfern said in the statement, "if any parts failed, how we responded and what life cycle investments we need to make to our utilidor system to try and ensure this doesn't happen again." City workers, Community and Government Services staff, and contractors worked around the clock to fix the broken pipe, while the city and its contractors dealt with resulting flooding in lower Iqaluit. As water continued to flow, the city was forced to shut valves that cut off the water supply to most residents. The city shut all nonessential services Jan. 13 and the deputy chief medical officer of health issued a boil water advisory. After the break was repaired and water levels restored, bacterial testing confirmed the water supply was safe Jan. 15, at which point trucked services resumed. A temporary water line has replaced the broken line, and a valve has been installed to stop a similar leak or break "immediately after detection," the statement said. The high school's water line will be replaced this summer. Iqaluit gets its water from Lake Geraldine on the city's outskirts.
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