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Council briefs
Council gets pep talk on drinking water
Cody Punter
Northern News Services
Published Friday, July 5, 2013
SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
Yellowknife resident Lorraine Hewlett is calling on city council to remain committed to tap water from the Yellowknife River after an environmental assessment of Giant Mine failed to include recommendations on replacing the eight-kilometre underwater pipeline.
The federal government installed the drinking water pipeline in 1969, which starts upstream at Pumphouse No. 2 on the Yellowknife River and crosses Yellowknife Bay to Pumphouse No. 1 at 48 Street, due to concerns about arsenic contamination from Giant Mine.
The city had asked the federal government to pay for replacing the line, expected to cost up to $15 million, but the government refused. The city subsequently requested the Mackenzie Valley Environmental Impact Review Board consider including the pipeline replacement within the parameters of the federal government's cleanup of Giant Mine, but it wasn't included in the board's environmental assessment report, released late last month.
"I think that the fact that there was no agreement to fund the replacement of the pipeline was a big deficiency of the final report," said Hewlett, June 24.
One cheaper solution proposed by the city was to draw water directly from Yellowknife Bay but the idea has proved unpopular due to ongoing arsenic concerns.
Hewlett's pointed to a small spill of mine sludge into Baker Creek in May, which empties into Yellowknife Bay, and a more serious breach two years ago, as reasons why the city shouldn't switch to Yellowknife Bay as a water source.
"Given the history of toxic spills, you could end up spending way more than $10 million over a 50-year period to use a water filtration system," she said to cheers from council and about a dozen people in the public gallery in council chambers.
When asked later what she would like council to do regarding the pipeline, Hewlett said she would like to see it stay the course in its determination to collect city water from the Yellowknife River..
"I'd like to see the current council absolutely commit to replacing the pipeline," she said.
New garden plots approved
Community gardens in the city received yet another boost, as city council approved several bylaws last week, which provides for two separate community garden associations to enter into long-term lease agreements with the city.
The Trail's End Community Association and the Yellowknife Community Garden Collective were both granted 10-year leases from the city at a reduced annual rate of $100.
The Yellowknife Community Garden Collective's plot will be located at the entrance to Moyle Park and will be able to accommodate 40 gardeners by the time it is completed.
The Trail's End Community Association's plot will be located at the end of the cul-de-sac on Trail's End Crescent.
"We're really excited that the lease has gone through and we're looking forward to building a community garden in Niven," said Amanda Johnson, the Yellowknife Community Garden Collective's membership co-ordinator.
Johnson says the association will start building garden plots as soon as possible, but will have to wait for the city to install necessary drainage at the site.
The hope is for the plots to be ready for gardening by the beginning of next season.
City user fees increased
City council voted in favour of raising city user fees last week.
City councillor Dan Wong was the only councillor who voted against the fee hike, arguing the increase in fees at the pool for commercial users was unfair.
Narwal Adventures owner Cathy Allooloo complained to council that the commercial fee hike for the pool - up $230 an hour from $100 - was excessive.
Coun. Niels Konge also expressed concerns about some of the new fees, but voted in favour of them after council agreed it would look at further amendments to some of the charges at the next council committee meeting. Most user fees are going up by three per cent but some increases are much higher.
"I think that some of the fees we had were unreasonable," said Konge.
In particular, he was concerned about the commercial access fee for filling up a water tank, which is triple the residential cost, of $151.50, up from $145.67. He also said the city's fees for dumping commercial waste when the city's scale was broken, which has gone up by between $15 to $150 depending on the type of vehicle, are arbitrary and unjustified.
"If the dump's scale doesn't work, they're going to charge more than if it did work? That doesn't seem to me to be good customer service." said Konge, who suggested that a fee be arranged based on the average weights of user loads, which are recorded at the site.
"As a city, we need to be fair and equitable to everybody," said Konge.
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