Waste water plant adds to city woes
Council needs to find nearly $10 million by 2018 to meet regulations
Casey Lessard
Northern News Services
Monday, July 6, 2015
IQALUIT
The City of Iqaluit has yet another $9.7 million to find after accepting a consultant's recommendations to improve its waste water treatment plant two years after an inspector warned the city must comply with the law.
The city has three years to implement a secondary treatment process. The recommended option will cost $26.5 million, $16.8 million of which is already in the capital plan.
Engineering and sustainability project officer Paul Clow came to council June 23 to ask whether the city wanted to go ahead with Nunami Stantec's recommendation of a moving-bed biofilm reactor.
"This option is advantageous because it produces a high-quality effluent within the smallest footprint, has a reliable operation, is robust, and avoids the use of chemicals in secondary treatment," Clow told council in the wake of the consultant's visit to council June 2. "It has the lowest capital costs and lowest operating costs of all the options considered."
City councillor Kenny Bell said the investment should have been a priority a long time ago.
"We should have done this well before the pool," Bell said. "We, this council, this city, knew that that treatment plant did nothing before they picked the pool and still we picked the pool, and I just wanted everyone to know that."
Iqaluit's existing waste water treatment plant provides primary treatment only, Clow told council, which is not enough to meet regulatory requirements. An Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada inspector gave the city a failing grade on its waste management plan in 2013, telling the city it had until 2018 to comply with the law. By November 2014, AANDC revoked the inspector's direction and gave the city a letter of non-compliance. The city still has to show that it is working toward meeting the December 2018 deadline.
Coun. Terry Dobbin questioned the city's ability to find the money.
"You've got federal gas tax and the block funding but we're still $9 million short," Dobbin said. "What if we don't meet that 2018 deadline? What are the regulatory bodies going to do because we're talking a massive amount of money here."
"I think we could definitely discuss with AANDC about extending this deadline," Clow said. "I can't say for certain they would give us that extension. Basically give them our feasibility study and acknowledge that we're about $10 million short on this project, and to see if there was any little bit of wiggle room to try to push the end date of this project. I don't know exactly what would happen if they didn't extend this deadline and we weren't able to meet this deadline."
AANDC originally threatened council with $100,000 per day fines and jail time for officials if the deadline is missed.
"The consultants had suggested there are other, less remote communities than Iqaluit that are in similar situations in terms of meeting regulations that have much more flexible or extended deadlines," deputy mayor Romeyn Stevenson said, "and they suggested they talk to AANDC about perhaps showing them comparisons."
"We're in discussions, and they're open to extending the timeline," chief administrative officer Muhamud Hassan said.
Stevenson suggested that if deadline were pushed back, city could assign a portion of the next block funding agreement from the Government of Nunavut.
Stevenson moved the motion to accept the recommendation, Bell seconded it, and the decision was unanimous.
