Maria Canton
Northern News Services

Cambridge Bay (Feb 07/00) - Ensuring Inuit labour and Inuit businesses handle the bulk of the cleanup at contaminated DEW Line sites was the focus of talks held in Iqaluit last week.

Negotiations that will establish economic provisions and ground rules for the contracting of Distant Early Warning Line site cleanups were held between members of the Department of National Defence and representatives from Nunavut Tunngavik Inc.

"Our goal is to ensure we have maximum Inuit participation in the cleanup, it's a way of sending benefits to the people through jobs," said NTI first vice-president James Eetoolook.

"We will also have someone at the site after the cleanup is complete to conduct on-going monitoring."

Environmental provisions were previously established after a year-and-a- half of negotiations, and last summer an agreement was signed between NTI and DND.

However, Eetoolook does have environmental concerns about the levels of contamination and the consequent risks the workers may face while cleaning up the sites.

"Included in the provisions discussed with DND, workers will have to be trained to handle hazardous materials," he said.

"All DEW Line sites are contaminated and it is very important to have qualified people handling the cleanup."

According to the General Director of Environment for DND and the overall project manager, Tony Downs, the most common contaminants at the sites are hydrocarbons and PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls).

"Evidence of PCBs seems to occur where transformers were dumped and around buildings that housed electrical equipment," he said.

"We're actually cleaning up to better than national standards. Because of the sensitivity of the food chain we want to minimize the impact."

Nunavut has 38 former DEW Line sites, but only 15 of them are the responsibility of DND.

Two of those 15 sites, at Cambridge Bay and Cape Hooper, are essentially complete, said Downs.

The cleanup of the other 23 sites is being overseen by the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development.

"The cleanup of the two sites is essentially complete and was done according to the established protocol of environmental provisions. The economic provisions obviously were not agreed to when those jobs were done, but the contracts were awarded to the Qikiqtaaluk Corporation and the Kitikmeot Inuit Association," said Downs.

QC and KIA are now in a position to bid competitively for subsequent contracts.

Downs says the total project cost for clean up of DND's 15 Nunavut sites and their six sites in the Inuvialuit Settlement Region in the Western Arctic is $330 million.

Cleanup is almost complete in the west and between $80-$100 million was spent, leaving between $230-$250 million for Nunavut.

Work is scheduled to start in the summer of 2001 at sites near Kugaaruk (Pelly Bay) and Qikiqtarjuaq.

Cleanup of each site takes approximately two years and can cost between $2 million and $30 million per site, depending on site size and the extent of contamination.