Stephanie McDonald
Northern News Services
Monday, July 23, 2007
IQALUIT - The DEW Line site cleanup, originally slated to be complete in 2008, has been extended to 2013.
For Nunavut communities surrounding the sites, this means that desperately needed jobs and economic benefits will continue for five additional years.
DEW Line by the numbers:
1950s - DEW Line established on Arctic coast of Canada, Alaska, and Greenland
15 - DEW Line sites in Nunavut
63 - radar sites originally built; twenty-one were decommissioned in the early 1960s
1993 - DEW Line sites stopped operating
60 - percent of contracting work must be by Inuit companies
65 - percent of employees must be Inuit
$440 million - the cost of cleanup on Nunavut's DEW Line radar sites
2013 - remediation to be complete
2037 - monitoring of landfill sites will be complete
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The schedule for cleanup was extended for budgetary reasons and to increase economic benefits for Inuit in Nunavut, according to Lisa Brooks, communications adviser with the Department of National Defence.
With a shorter timeline, there would have been a high demand for labour that Nunavut's labour pool might not have been able to accommodate, Brooks said.
"It was also beneficial to the companies in the North, in that it allowed for longer capacity building potential," she said.
Canada is home to 21 of the Distant Early Warning (DEW) Line sites, built along the Arctic coastline in the late 1950s to provide early warning of an airborne attack.
Of the 15 sites in Nunavut, six locations have been cleaned up since operations ended in 1993. Sites outside of the communities of Cambridge Bay, Gjoa Haven, Kugaaruk, and Qikiqtarjuaq have been dealt with, as well as one on Victoria Island and another between Qikiqtarjuaq and Clyde River.
Work is ongoing this summer at the sites in Taloyoak, Hall Beach and the eastern arm of Baffin Island.
"It's the only job that is open right now," said Dora Anguilianuk, secretary for Kudlik Construction in Hall Beach, one of the contractors doing the remediation work. "It's really important for people here."
This summer's work began on June 25 and Anguilianuk anticipates that this will be the last season for the cleanup.
This particular project has been ongoing since 2003.
Fifty-two local residents have been hired as truck drivers, heavy equipment operators, and as housekeepers and cooks for the work camp.
Cleanup of the sites involves dismantling old buildings and removing debris and contaminated soil.
Soil or waste with high concentrations of metals or PCBs are sent south and disposed of at licensed facilities.
When work ended last year on the DEW site in Qikiqtarjauq, it meant a loss of jobs for the community.
"It closed the book on the Cold War and it also closed the book on jobs," said senior administrative officer Mike Richards. Qikiqtarjuaq was created because of the development of the radar site. It sits 3.2 kilometers outside of the community.
Economic opportunities are limited in the town, so employment for 30 to 40 people, as had existed through the DEW Line cleanup for the past three years, will be sorely missed.
Richards hasn't heard of the land or water around the community being contaminated by hazardous materials left at the DEW Line sites, and he said that the standards for burial of the waste are among the highest in the country.
Construction equipment and supplies are currently being shipped to three more communities in Nunavut for remediation work that will begin next summer.
