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7 NUNAVUT WATER BOARD HEARING

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9 RE: CITY OF IQALUIT WATER LICENSE

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16 _______________________________________________________

17 HEARING HELD AT THE NAVIGATOR INN HOTEL

18 IQALUIT, NUNAVUT

19 MARCH 8, 2006

20 9:00 A.M. to 3:45 P.M.

21 VOLUME II

22 _______________________________________________________

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1 APPEARANCES:

2 HEARING BOARD:

3 Mr. L. Toomasie Chairman

Mr. G. Porter Member

4 Mr. G. Kakkiarniun Member

Mr. R. Kayarsark Member

5 Mr. T. Kabloona Member (via telephone)

6 WATER BOARD STAFF:

7 Mr. W.A. Tilleman , QC Legal Counsel

Philippe di Pizzo Executive Director, Chief of

8 Administration

Phyllis Bealieau Licensing Administrator

9 Ben Kogvik Interpreter/ Translater

Joe Murdock Technical Advisor

10 David Hohnstein Technical Advisor

Richard Dwyer Licensee

11 Dionne Filiatrault Director of Technical Services

12 APPLICANT:

13 City of Iqaluit

14 INTERVENORS :

15 Department of Indian and Northern Affairs

Environment Canada

16 Department of Environment

Fisheries and Oceans Canada

17 Government of Nunavut

Bill MacKenzie Humanitarian Society

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19 INTERPRETERS:

20 Isa Boaz Inuktitut Language

Jose Arreat Inuktitut Language

21

Jimmy Ekho Sound Technician

22 Tommy Kullualik Sound Technician

23 Diane Hermann, RPR Court Reporter

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1 I N D E X

2 Page

3 General Comments.................................83

4 Presentation by the Government of Nunavut DOE....87

5 Water Board Staff Questions Government of........92

Nunavut DOE

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Presentation by the City of Iqaluit on Solid.....94

7 Waste Collection & Disposal System

8 DIAND Questions the City of Iqaluit.............101

9 Environment Canada Questions the................108

City of Iqaluit

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Water Board Staff Questions the.................114

11 City Of Iqaluit

12 Presentation By Environment Canada on...........134

Solid Waste Disposal Facilities

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Water Board Staff Questions Environment.........142

14 Canada on Solid Waste Disposal Facilities

15 Presentation By DIAND on Solid Waste Disposal...148

Facilities

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Government of Nunavut Questions DIAND on........153

17 Solid Waste Disposal Facilities

18 Water Board Staff Questions DIAND on............158

Solid Wast Dispoal Facilities

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Presentation by DFO on Solid Waste..............165

20 Disposal Facilities

21 Water Board Staff Questions DFO on..............166

Solid Waste Disposal Facilities

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Presentation By City of Iqaluit on Land Aspect..169

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Comments by DIAND on Land Aspect................171

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Questions By Water Board Staff on Land Aspect...173

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Comments by DIAND on Land Aspect................174

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1 I N D E X ( con't )

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Comments By Government of Nunavut on............176

3 Land Aspect

4 Presentation By Government of Nunavut DOE.......178

On Solid Waste Disposal Facilities

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Water Board Staff Questions Government of.......194

6 Nunavut DOE on Solid Waste Disposal Facilities

7 Presentation by Bill Mackenzie..................200

Humanitarian Society

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City of Iqaluit Questions Bill Mackenzie........229

9 Humanitarian Society

10 DIAND Questions Bill Mackenzie..................237

Humanitarian Society

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Certificate of Reporter.........................239

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Exhibits........................................240

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1 (PROCEEDINGS COMMENCED AT 9:00 A.M.)

2 THE CHAIRMAN: (No translation)

3 No translation, translation doesn't work.

4 We will start the meeting with the prayer, and the

5 public will rise, please.

6 (PRAYER)

7 THE CHAIRMAN: (No translation)

8 No translation, again.

9 THE INTERPRETER: Can you hear me? Testing, okay.

10 THE CHAIRMAN: Okay, before we start our agenda, I

11 would like to ask applicants or any parties wish to

12 have questions.

13 DIAND ?

14 GENERAL COMMENTS:

15 MR . WEBBER: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Lee

16 Webber, DOJ for DIAND .

17 First of all, I could I ask for confirmation that

18 we do have the phone hookups established to the other

19 member and to Ms. Peterson.

20 MS. PETERSON: I'm present.

21 MR . WEBBER: Thank you. We'd like to, to ask

22 the Board to include in the record with respect to this

23 application and these proceedings certain of the

24 historical material relating to the Iqaluit water

25 license, specifically the following: material from the

26 1999 application and hearing, material from the 2000

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1 application and hearing, and the materials that

2 followed from those two proceedings.

3 I have spoken to Ms. Peterson, the counsel for the

4 City, about this, and she's in agreement with this

5 proposal. So, if the Board agrees with that idea, we

6 could include all of that material in the record.

7 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Lee.

8 Bill, can you respond to that?

9 MR . TILLEMAN : Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I know

10 Ms. Peterson is on the phone, so if she has any

11 concern, she can let us know. If not, then I would

12 simply just ask if there are others in the audience

13 that would have a concern with that suggestion, and

14 then if there aren't any others, that I would suggest

15 that you agree. So, Mr. Chairman, I would just see if

16 there is anyone that has a concern or objection.

17 MS. PETERSON: Mr. Chairman, it's Katherine

18 Peterson speaking.

19 THE CHAIRMAN: Go ahead.

20 MS. PETERSON: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have

21 spoken with Mr. Webber about the inclusion of this

22 material in the record. I don't have any objection to

23 that. I would simply indicate that some of the

24 material and parts of it may or may not be relevant to

25 the application that you're hearing at present, but it

26 is for the Board to consider what aspects of that prior

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1 material are, in fact, relevant. So, I leave that to

2 your expertise and indicate for the record that we

3 don't have any objection to the material as part of the

4 record.

5 THE CHAIRMAN: Bill, you want to respond?

6 MR . TILLEMAN : Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And so --

7 and thank you, Ms. Peterson. And on the grounds or the

8 conditions that she just stated, I would propose we

9 agree with Mr. Webber's motion and accept it

10 accordingly. For the record, there's no one else in

11 the audience that is nodding "no" or seems to have an

12 objection, no one else is coming to the mike, so that

13 should be -- that will obviously be indicated in the

14 transcript.

15 So accordingly, Mr. Chairman, I would suggest you

16 agree with Mr. Webber's motion.

17 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you.

18 MR . WEBBER: Thank you.

19 THE CHAIRMAN: Okay, back to our agenda for

20 today -- or you want to have a question, Geoff?

21 MR . BAKER: It's Geoff Baker, City of Iqaluit.

22 Thank you, Mr. Chair.

23 I just wanted to make a change to one of our

24 presentations that we submitted as an exhibit, the

25 presentation on the landfill collection and disposal.

26 The City proposed that until the drainage

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1 improvements have been completed at the landfill, we

2 would propose a weekly sampling frequency for pH,

3 electrical conductivity, metals, benzene, toluene,

4 ethylbenzene , xylene, and fractional hydrocarbon

5 analysis. I just wanted to change that for the record

6 that we are proposing a monthly sampling frequency and

7 not a weekly sampling frequency. Thank you.

8 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you. Yesterday we did not

9 complete our agenda with one item. This is regarding

10 GN's -- they were supposed to make a presentation

11 regarding water. I would like to recall Robert Eno ,

12 the opportunity to speak at this time, representing GN.

13 Robert Eno .

14 MR . ENO : I just have to set up my stickler

15 on the City's computer, with the City's indulgence, of

16 course.

17 THE CHAIRMAN: (No translation). Thank you.

18 MR . ENO : Thank you for providing us with an

19 opportunity to intervene on this particular water

20 license application. I have about 600 slides to show

21 you here this morning. I'm just kidding. Oh, pardon

22 me.

23 MR . TILLEMAN : Please state your name for the

24 record and spell your last name.

25 MR . ENO : Robert Eno , E-N-O.

26 ROBERT ENO , SWORN

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1 MR . TILLEMAN : Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

2 PRESENTATION BY THE GOVERNMENT OF NUNAVUT DOE:

3 MR . ENO : Just a little bit of housekeeping

4 to take care of. Yesterday we put a summary of our

5 presentation on the front table, but I got caught with

6 my pants down. I wasn't fully aware of the format of

7 the proceedings, and so I had to go back and rejig my

8 presentation to accommodate the format. So there are

9 copies back there that are probably easier to follow

10 than the ones that I, that I left there yesterday;

11 otherwise, you'll be jumping all over the place. So

12 without further ado, I'll carry on with my presentation

13 and hope this mouse works.

14 Thank you. Next one, please.

15 I'll take care of the usual, the usual stuff first

16 of all. Our legislative authority is derived from the

17 Environmental Protection Act. The Government of

18 Nunavut or, rather, the Department of Environment's

19 role in this, it is generally restricted to things that

20 fall under the Environmental Protection Act, which

21 essentially prohibits the discharge of contaminant into

22 the environment. It does not apply if the discharge is

23 authorised by federal or territorial legislation, as

24 in, for example, a water license.

25 So, if the City is authorised to discharge a

26 contaminant under the water license, the Environmental

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1 Protection Act does not apply. The EPA regulations and

2 guidelines under the EPA are the standard by which we

3 gauge projects in determining if we think they should

4 proceed or not.

5 Next slide, please. Thanks. DOE has avoided

6 providing prescriptive and detailed recommendations for

7 the terms and conditions of the water license. We

8 generally like to look at this from a fairly high

9 altitude. I want to avoid telling the City how to

10 operate their day-to-day facility -- the day-to-day

11 operation of their facilities. I don't want to get

12 prescriptive in this. Our main concern is that --

13 protection of the environment. Now, how they go about

14 doing that, it's their lookout. That's our philosophy

15 on that, unless it's something, like, really out of

16 line, but like I said, we prefer not to be too

17 prescriptive in our terms and conditions.

18 Most of our comments and suggestions are intended

19 to be of assistance to the City and to help guide them

20 through some of the nuts and bolts of the operation of

21 the facilities. And again, whether or not they take

22 these into account, it's their lookout. I should add,

23 though that, as I said in our longer presentation, if

24 they do take our advice, they are demonstrating due

25 diligence. I'm not saying that, you know, you have to

26 follow it right to the letter, but if you observe it or

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1 at least consider it, they are -- they are

2 demonstrating due diligence, in our opinion.

3 Any comments that we have that are intended to be

4 included as a term and condition will be specifically

5 noted as such, and as you'll see, they will be

6 italicised in maroon. I had them in red, but red was

7 kind of obnoxious, so I decided to put it in maroon.

8 Next slide, please. The topics of discussion that

9 we're going to present here are as follows: water

10 source and treatment, waste disposal, solid waste,

11 lower base contamination, emergency response plans,

12 abandonment and restoration, and waste disposal/sewage.

13 Next slide, please. This particular section of

14 the presentation is pretty much restricted to one

15 slide, from our perspective. We haven't got a lot to

16 say about the water source and treatment. We generally

17 accept the City's plan as presented.

18 The only concern that we have, and this is not

19 within our jurisdiction, is the proximity of the new

20 plateau subdivision to the City's potable water source.

21 Now, I've been up there myself and there doesn't appear

22 to be any connection, any physical connection in the

23 watersheds. Where we're coming from is the actual

24 proximity of a human population to the potable water

25 source, so that means kids, dogs, people. It's just

26 closer to the potable water source than it was ten

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1 years ago when people actually had to hike up the hill

2 to get there. Now their neighbourhood is right beside

3 it.

4 But again, this is not, this is not -- DOE, this

5 is not within our regulatory jurisdiction. This is

6 really a health issue, and as such, we've assumed that

7 the Department of Health or health officials have

8 examined this. If they haven't, I'm presenting this to

9 the City for their information only.

10 That concludes the Department of Environment's

11 comments on the water source and treatment, and I'll

12 take any questions that you have about either this

13 slide or our regulatory jurisdiction.

14 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you for your presentation.

15 Okay, let's take a ten-minute break. I'd like to

16 have the applicant and the parties to set themselves

17 before -- for the question. Take a ten-minute break

18 before questioning period is started.

19 (PROCEEDINGS ADJOURNED 9:15 A.M.)

20 (PROCEEDINGS RESUMED AT 9:28 P.M.)

21 THE CHAIRMAN: Let's continue. Before we start

22 with any comments or questions, you have to register as

23 you enter the public hearing. Phyllis Bealieau is in

24 the front, so anybody coming in, you ought to register.

25 And if you have any comments or questions directed to

26 the applicant, please raise your hands. We will

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1 provide that opportunity for them to speak.

2 And I just wanted to convey to the public and to

3 the Elders, we accept -- we recognise the value of the

4 Elders' knowledge as we, as we do the public hearing.

5 I just want to make sure we're proceeding now to

6 the questions and/or comments. For the license

7 applicants, I want to give them the opportunity first.

8 Geoff Baker, ask questions.

9 MR . BAKER: No, we don't have any concerns

10 or questions. We'd just like -- oh, Geoff Baker,

11 sorry, City of Iqaluit. We don't have any questions,

12 we'd just like to say we appreciate the comments and

13 thank you.

14 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you, applicants.

15 Is there any questions from the parties? DIAND ?

16 There's a microphone here, so you can take...

17 MR . ROGERS: Jim Rogers, INAC . Yesterday we

18 had asked if we could refer -- after we received the

19 written portion of the submission -- or the -- of the

20 City's submission, if we could go back and ask

21 questions of the water supply. These questions are not

22 for the Government of Nunavut , Department of

23 Environment, but I would like to refer back to the

24 original water supply proposal -- or water supply

25 submission of the City for clarification of two points.

26 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you. We do have an Elder,

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1 and I just want to recognise the Elder, Celestine

2 Eketyut . We recognise your presence here, and welcome.

3 Any more questions? Water Board staff.

4 MR . TILLEMAN : Thank you, Mr. Chairman. You know,

5 I do remember the DIAND question yesterday, but it

6 seems that it would be appropriate to just go through

7 right now and deal with the GN presentation first, and

8 then we can come back to the issue that INAC may have

9 with respect to the rest of it.

10 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you.

11 Dionne.

12 WATER BOARD STAFF QUESTIONS GOVERNMENT OF NUNAVUT DOE:

13 MS. FILIATRAULT : Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I only

14 have one question.

15 With respect to the second slide where you talked

16 about your legislative authority, I'm just wondering if

17 GN can confirm if any action was taken by EPA when the

18 City operated without a license over the last five

19 years or so?

20 MR . ENO : I can pretty much say no, there was

21 no action taken. I can't account for the last two

22 years because, as many of you know, I was in the employ

23 of Indian and Northern Affairs Canada from 2003 up

24 until December, so I can't account for those two years,

25 but I can tell you the years prior to that, no, there

26 was no action taken. And we would not consider taking

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1 any action in that regard because I would still see the

2 responsibility as still residing with INAC in that

3 case, even though they were not operating with a water

4 license.

5 THE CHAIRMAN: Please state your name for the

6 record before you speak.

7 MR . ENO : Pardon me. Robert Eno from DOE.

8 MS. FILIATRAULT : Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Dionne

9 Filiatrault . No further questions.

10 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you. Any more questions

11 from, from the floor or so?

12 Thank you, Robert, for your presentation.

13 MR . ENO : Thank you.

14 THE CHAIRMAN: Yeah. Today, our agenda for

15 Wednesday -- we will proceed with our Wednesday's

16 agenda. For the -- we want to give this opportunity

17 for the applicants, for them to, to elaborate on solid

18 waste disposal facilities at this time. Thank you.

19 Geoff Baker?

20 MR . BAKER: Geoff Baker, City of Iqaluit. It

21 was our original intention to have our presentation on

22 sludge management follow our presentation on sewage

23 treatment. I think it may be more appropriate that we

24 actually have the presentation on sludge management

25 presented after the solid waste presentation, only

26 because the two issues are intertwined and we feel it

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1 would be more appropriate to have the presentation

2 follow the City's solid waste presentation.

3 So following Mr. Hall's presentation on solid

4 waste collection and disposal, it will be followed by a

5 presentation from Ken Johnson of Earth Tech Canada on

6 the City's proposed sludge handling procedures. Thank

7 you.

8 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you, thank you. If you could

9 separate the solid waste and sewage disposal, we'd be

10 more prepared.

11 MR . BAKER: Geoff Baker, City of Iqaluit.

12 Yes, that's okay.

13 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you. So can you start your

14 presentation now?

15 PRESENTATION BY THE CITY OF IQALUIT ON SOLID WASTE

16 COLLECTION & DISPOSAL SYSTEM:

17 MR . HALL: Mark Hall, City of Iqaluit. Good

18 morning, Mr. Chairman, members of the Board,

19 intervenors , and members of the public.

20 The presentation now relates to the City of

21 Iqaluit, solid waste collection and disposal system.

22 The City of Iqaluit's solid waste collection and

23 disposal system consists of two garbage trucks with a

24 spare, a solid waste disposal area, five collection

25 staff, and three landfill staff. The landfill staff

26 utilise a dozer, compactor, loader, and shredder in the

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1 operations of the landfill.

2 The city produces approximately 0.018 to 0.02

3 cubic metres of solid waste per capita per day. This

4 includes residential, commercial, and industrial

5 wastes. Recycling is currently limited to the

6 collection and diversion of aluminum cans. The

7 practical restraints imposed by location and cost make

8 full product recycling impractical at this time. This

9 results in an annual volume of approximately 10,000

10 cubic metres of compacted waste entering the landfill

11 each year. It is estimated that to meet the solid

12 waste disposal need of the community for the next five

13 years, an active landfill volume of approximately

14 60,000 cubic metres is required.

15 It is the City's opinion that with the expansion

16 of the landfill into the northern adjacent site and

17 with the excess landfill space created from a proper

18 drainage plan, the west 40 landfill site may be able to

19 serve the needs of the community through 2010.

20 The City's solid waste management steering

21 committee has developed a long-term solid waste

22 strategy which has been given council approval under

23 council motion 05-245. They have also developed in

24 draft form a document entitled "City of Iqaluit Solid

25 Waste Management Plan" to properly implement this

26 strategy.

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1 The City recognises the necessity for long-term

2 solid waste management planning and is taking

3 significant steps towards responsible operation and

4 maintenance of its landfill. The sole objective of the

5 committee in its 2006 deliberations is to implement the

6 strategy as approved by council and then perform

7 periodic monitoring and reporting role on the success

8 of its implementation.

9 The City's landfill operation uses the area

10 method. This method entails placing waste above grade

11 against a berm, compacting using a compactor, wheel

12 dozer, and covering using shredded waste. The waste is

13 covered periodically during summer and once per week

14 during the winter months. The City utilises a shred

15 Max to create mulch, cover material from construction

16 waste, mattresses, et cetera. This, in turn, further

17 reduces the required landfill volume over the next five

18 years.

19 The City's landfill also includes a hazardous

20 waste management site. The site consists of five

21 sea-lift containers for storage of hazardous waste. It

22 is important to note that hazardous waste is not

23 accepted from commercial or industrial sectors. The

24 landfill staff and foreman, who are responsible for the

25 handling, packaging, storage, and treatment of

26 hazardous waste, is trained in transportation of

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1 dangerous goods, hazardous waste management, and

2 WHIMIS .

3 Hazardous waste is accepted at the landfill as

4 required on an ongoing basis. It is separated from the

5 main waste stream and stored in a separate location on

6 the site. General records are kept in relation to

7 hazardous waste entering the landfill facility. The

8 City acknowledges the fact that the hazardous waste

9 site is required to be registered, licensed, and

10 approved by the Department of the Environment and will

11 endeavour to initiate this process in a reasonable time

12 frame following these hearings.

13 The City consents that drainage improvements are

14 required at the landfill. In 2006, the City has

15 included in its capital funding agreement with the

16 Government of Nunavut a capital expenditure of $600,000

17 to create adequate ditching in the area and, subject to

18 funding availability, a mechanism to treat leachate

19 prior to discharge from the area.

20 Drainage from part of the west 40 area drains into

21 the landfill site. The runoff enters the new cell area

22 and is currently directed through a series of ditches

23 along the east side of the landfill. With the new

24 drainage works, runoff will be redirected away from the

25 landfill site resulting in extra landfill volume on the

26 east side of the landfill. The City feels this will

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1 relieve some of the water issues currently experienced

2 at the site.

3 The improved drainage works will also include

4 on-site improvements to include adequate ditching and,

5 subject to budget constraints, a treatment system

6 including settling pond, mechanical systems, et cetera,

7 and improved perimeter fencing to prevent blowing

8 garbage from leaving the site.

9 The City is proposing to develop leachate

10 monitoring procedures at the landfill as indicated in

11 its -- in the City's operation and maintenance manual

12 developed in 2005. The collection ditch at the

13 southeast corner of the landfill will be used for both

14 surface water and leachate water collection and

15 sampling. The water samples will be taken in

16 accordance with standard sampling procedures.

17 Until the drainage improvements have been

18 completed at the landfill and -- the City is proposing

19 a monthly sampling frequency for pH, electrical

20 conductivity, metals, benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene ,

21 xylene, and fractional hydrocarbon analysis. To reduce

22 sampling costs, the City is proposing, again, a monthly

23 sampling frequency for phenyls , PAH , and PCBs . This

24 should improve -- should provide, pardon me, an

25 adequate reflection of the quality of leachate leaving

26 the landfill and aid in the development of an adequate

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1 treatment system.

2 Once the drainage improvements are completed and

3 the treatment system is in place, the City is proposing

4 to continue a monthly sampling frequency during the

5 summer months for pH, electrical conductivity, metals,

6 benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene , xylene, and

7 hydrocarbons, and an annual sampling frequency for

8 phenyls , PAH , and PCBs .

9 As indicated earlier, the City's intention is to

10 expand its landfill operations into the northern

11 adjacent site. Given the City's current extenuating

12 circumstances, the City believes that this is a

13 reasonable request. The City originally intended to

14 expand into the adjacent site in 2001. The City at

15 that time graded the site, creating ditching around the

16 site to collect runoff, constructed soil berms and

17 erected fencing around the site. The existing waste on

18 the site, including mostly wood, cans, barrels, and

19 other metal debris, for the most part were placed by

20 parties other than the City.

21 As part of the expansion, the existing waste was

22 capped with .5 metres of fill to raise the permafrost

23 level and create an impervious liner for the expansion

24 site. While the City would agree that it would be

25 advantageous to undertake a detailed characterisation

26 of the site, unfortunately due to budget restraints and

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1 the impending drainage improvements, it simply is not

2 feasible at this time.

3 The City is requesting that the regulating

4 authorities within the community recognise the existing

5 baseline contamination at the expansion area and

6 operations, maintenance, and enforcement of regulations

7 from there on be based on that baseline data. This, of

8 course, would require cooperation from the many

9 agencies such as GN Department of the Environment,

10 Environment Canada, INAC , Department of Fisheries and

11 Oceans, et cetera, and the Water Board.

12 In December of 2005, the City submitted a request

13 to the Nunavut Water Board for use of the expanded

14 facility as a landfill facility. The request outlined

15 the myriad of issues facing the expansion of the site

16 and the City's plan to address them. The issues

17 outlined in the request include ownership of the

18 expanded area, existing contamination, runoff

19 management, and a long-term solid waste management

20 plan.

21 To date, the City has received no correspondence

22 from the Water Board in this regard and anticipates

23 this issue will be dealt with during today's hearing

24 deliberations.

25 In the City's opinion, it has taken significant

26 steps in reasonable waste management and hazardous

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1 waste management over the past ten years; however, we

2 do realise that much work remains to be done. The City

3 is devoted to being responsible environmentally to the

4 community and complying with regulatory requirements

5 set out in the impending water license. It strives to

6 supply the highest level of service possible to a very

7 fast-growing community. It not only responds to the

8 current needs of the community but is committed to

9 solid planning for the future. The municipality is

10 dedicated to continuously improving infrastructure

11 associated with the solid waste management system.

12 Thank you, Mr. Chair.

13 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you. I'd like to ask the

14 parties whether they need a short break before

15 answering question -- sorry, before having questions?

16 Okay, thank you. So we'll continue. We will open the

17 floor for questions.

18 DIAND have questions?

19 DIAND QUESTIONS THE CITY OF IQALUIT:

20 MR . ROGERS: Jim Rogers, INAC , and sitting with

21 me is Rick Hoos with EBA and our legal counsel, Lee

22 Webber.

23 I'm going to begin with questions -- two questions

24 from the water supply, yesterday's proposal, and the

25 questions are: There seems to be an inconsistency in

26 the water supply. At one point you talk about the

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1 expansion will give you enough water to 2023, and in

2 another part of the application you talk about looking

3 at a supplementary inflow shortly after the five-year

4 license expires, so it seems to be an inconsistency.

5 The second -- would you like to answer my question?

6 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you.

7 Applicant, you have answers?

8 MR . BURDEN: Steve Burden, Trow and Associates.

9 The reference to the year 2023 is for the storage

10 capacity, which is the expansion to the reservoir. The

11 other issue with regards to supplementing is the

12 supply. The watershed will not be able to provide --

13 or it is projected the watershed will not be able to

14 provide adequate supply to meet the 20-year demand. So

15 there are two issues: one is supply and one is

16 storage, and that's the difference.

17 MR . ROGERS: Thank you, but I'm still slightly

18 confused. This is Jim Rogers.

19 We may be corresponding with the Water Board on

20 this issue in a little more detail, but if you could

21 provide us some greater detail in what you mean, it

22 would help -- be helpful, and we'll try to reply as

23 quickly as possible. Usually, storage capacity is --

24 results in your -- the amount of supply available.

25 Our second question, because it does rely -- refer

26 back to the storage capacity, maybe it would be an

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1 appropriate point to answer this -- to ask this

2 question.

3 Within the -- talking about the storage capacity,

4 you're going to use 89 percent of the storage capacity

5 in 2023. We would like to have a clearer view on how

6 much of that -- is that total just live storage? Does

7 that include storage lost to ice, or is that total

8 storage minus dead storage and ice losses over the

9 winter? And what thickness of ice are you using in

10 your calculations? I don't remember within the

11 application the ice thickness used.

12 Thank you, Mr. Chair.

13 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you.

14 Please state your name for the record before you

15 speak.

16 MR . BURDEN: Steve Burden, Trow and Associates.

17 The 89 percent that is referenced comes from the

18 water and sewer study report that stated that in 2023,

19 I believe it was, or 2022, the City's demand would

20 require 89 percent of the total precipitation on the

21 watershed. So, it is not 89 percent of the available

22 water. And further, in the follow-up report on the

23 storage and supply issues, the report states that we

24 used a 60 percent runoff coefficient, and that would

25 not be sufficient to meet the demands of the city for

26 the 20-year period, thus requiring supplementary

104

1 recharge.

2 So, the 89 percent is not a reference to an amount

3 of water we're using, it is a ratio of the yearly

4 consumption of the city versus the total precipitation

5 on the watershed, and by no means do we anticipate that

6 we'd be able to receive 89 percent of the total

7 precipitation.

8 With regards to the ice, there is a calculation of

9 ice growth. Of course, the ice does not start off at

10 several feet deep. There is a draw-down calculation in

11 the water study. So, it varies throughout the year,

12 and I could reference the -- I'm not quite sure which

13 study it's in, I believe in the raw water supply and

14 storage.

15 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you, applicant.

16 Any more questions, DIAND ?

17 MR . ROGERS: We will review the application --

18 THE CHAIRMAN: Please state your name for the

19 record.

20 MR . ROGERS: Sorry. My apologies, Jim Rogers,

21 INAC .

22 We will again review the application. Because the

23 application was not a consistent or cohesive group of

24 reports, it is difficult to follow at times, and we may

25 have missed that.

26 The third question -- it's not a question, it's a

105

1 comment. Just a reminder that the City has agreed to

2 provide a bathymetric survey to the Board so they

3 could -- so we could come up with a good estimate of

4 the elevation flooded area storage for the reservoir at

5 different levels, so just give a better idea.

6 THE CHAIRMAN: Applicant, Geoff Baker.

7 MR . BAKER: Geoff Baker, City of Iqaluit.

8 We'll attempt to provide the bathymetric study

9 this afternoon. During our lunch break we'll go and

10 try and locate that drawing so we can enter it this

11 afternoon. Thank you.

12 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you, applicant.

13 So you have -- DIAND , you have more questions

14 regards to solid waste? Thank you.

15 MR . ROGERS: Jim Rogers, INAC .

16 The -- we'd like to say that the City's come a

17 long way on the solid waste, and we appreciate the

18 effort they're making. We're especially pleased that

19 they're going to control the amount of flow of water

20 into the waste dump and out of it. That's a very good

21 move.

22 I would like to caution the City that the -- you

23 administer the landfill and operate the landfill;

24 therefore, you do have some responsibilities. Whether

25 the contamination is due to previous administrations is

26 questionable, and I would suggest that the City still

106

1 has some responsibilities on the previous

2 contamination.

3 I noticed that in the solid waste collection

4 disposal you're looking at about a 40:1 compaction

5 ratio. Is that reasonable or a miscalculation on the

6 volumes? 40:1 may be reasonable, but it would be nice

7 to see some numbers to clarify that.

8 And the expansion is to 2010, which will be within

9 the license period. Are you planning to come back to

10 the Water Board and seek an amendment at that time or

11 find other methods to make it past 2010?

12 Thank you.

13 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you.

14 Applicant, you have a response to that?

15 MR . BAKER: Geoff Baker, City of Iqaluit. We

16 do anticipate that the landfill will reach its capacity

17 by 2010, 2011. We certainly don't, don't have budget

18 this year to investigate alternate sites for another

19 landfill; however, within the next couple of years we

20 will certainly be looking at a new landfill site, and

21 it is high on our priority list. And, yes, I guess we

22 would seek an amendment to the license at that time.

23 Thank you.

24 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you, applicant.

25 Any more questions?

26 MR . ROGERS: That's all the questions we have at

107

1 this time. It's Jim Rogers with INAC . Thank you very

2 much, Mr. Chairman.

3 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you.

4 MR . WEBBER: Excuse me, Mr. Chair, Lee Webber.

5 A couple of times the City has made reference, I

6 believe once this morning and once yesterday evening,

7 to an application for, I believe it's an expansion of

8 the landfill site, an application that was made in

9 December '05. This is something that the DIAND is

10 pretty much in the dark about. Could we perhaps get

11 some clarification at this time as to what we're

12 dealing with here?

13 MR . BAKER: Sure. It's Geoff Baker, City of

14 Iqaluit. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

15 We didn't actually submit an application -- submit

16 an application. It was a letter sent to the Nunavut

17 Water Board requesting approval to utilise the

18 expansion site. Included with that letter was the O &

19 M manual, site plan, a discussion on the ownership of

20 the site, the City's long-term solid waste management

21 plan, as well as the draft solid waste management

22 strategy. Yeah, there certainly was no application

23 made, but there was a letter sent to the Water Board

24 requesting approval to use this expansion site.

25 MR . ROGERS: Jim Rogers, INAC .

26 Mr. Chairman, we assumed that that letter was part

108

1 of the application, so that's what -- we're doing it as

2 part of this water application, okay? So that's -- we

3 didn't know it was a rush issue at the time, okay?

4 Thank you.

5 THE CHAIRMAN: Applicant, Geoff.

6 MR . BAKER: Thank you, Mr. Chair. Geoff Baker,

7 City of Iqaluit.

8 If you haven't seen that letter request, we can

9 certainly provide a copy of that to you.

10 MR . WEBBER: No, apparently we do have it.

11 Thank you. But that was Lee Webber speaking.

12 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you, DIAND .

13 Is there any -- Environment Canada have any

14 question?

15 ENVIRONMENT CANADA QUESTIONS THE CITY OF IQALUIT:

16 MS. WILSON: Good morning, it's Environment

17 Canada, Anne Wilson speaking.

18 I have a couple of questions with respect to the

19 19 -- I'm sorry, the 2005 operations and maintenance

20 manual. Your presentation didn't touch on accepting

21 contaminated soils, and I was just looking at the

22 section in the manual. If you wanted to look it up, it

23 was on page 22.

24 I'm just wondering what the current management of

25 contaminated soils is, what types of volumes are you

26 seeing, and what testing is being done at this time.

109

1 MR . HALL: Mark Hall, City of Iqaluit.

2 Currently we, in response to the question,

3 Mr. Chair, we are experiencing minimum volumes of

4 contaminated soil on the site because we do have the

5 availability within this community of a licensed

6 establishment or licensed private entrepreneur who

7 handles the processing and disposal of contaminated

8 soils.

9 THE CHAIRMAN: Environment Canada.

10 Oh, sorry, Geoff Baker.

11 MR . BAKER: Jeff Baker, City of Iqaluit.

12 I'd just like to add to that that we do confer

13 with the GN Department of Environment. When we are

14 accepting contaminated soils in the landfill,

15 contaminated soils are tested and anything above -- or

16 anything below a certain concentration of contaminants

17 is accepted and placed in a separate part of the

18 landfill. Thank you.

19 MS. WILSON: Anne Wilson, Environment Canada.

20 Thank you for that. And just on that note, I

21 would like to clarify that the DOE referred to within

22 your solid waste operation and maintenance manual is

23 the GN, not the federal DOE, because there is some

24 confusion as we're also referred to as DOE.

25 My next question has to do with the recent study

26 by the University of Manitoba. I'm a little hesitant

110

1 to bring it up because people haven't seen it, but just

2 to summarise , there's some indication that the biota

3 have measurable levels of short-chain chlorinated

4 paraffins -- my memory deserted me for a second there

5 -- and that these are likely associated with a new

6 source which may be sewage lagoon or a solid waste

7 site.

8 I just wanted to put that on the table, and as far

9 as the monitoring that the City is proposing, just to

10 confirm that you would be willing to add that to your

11 list of testing.

12 The SCCPs , to abbreviate that, are a seepic toxic

13 declared in 2003, so I think it would be a significant

14 concern that should be either followed up or put to

15 bed, hopefully.

16 THE CHAIRMAN: Applicant?

17 MR . HALL: Mark Hall, City of Iqaluit.

18 I believe as a matter of record, the latter part

19 of yesterday's deliberations, the City did commit and

20 will recommit to adding that to the test portfolio for

21 monthly testing.

22 MS. WILSON: Thank you. That's all my

23 questions.

24 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you.

25 Is there any more questions? DFO , did DFO have a

26 question to applicants?

111

1 MS. GORDANIER : No questions, thank you.

2 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you. Does the GN have a

3 question?

4 MR . ENO : No questions, Mr. Chairman, thank

5 you. Robert Eno , DOE.

6 THE CHAIRMAN: Okay. So if there are any more,

7 any more parties to raise the questions regarding solid

8 waste?

9 So the Water Board staff, go ahead.

10 MR . TILLEMAN : Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It's Bill

11 Tilleman , and just two things by way of exhibits. The

12 first one is that we would suggest without objection

13 that the GN --

14 THE CHAIRMAN: Before you -- there's -- a hand

15 raised up over there before you.

16 MR . TILLEMAN : Oh, I'm sorry.

17 THE CHAIRMAN: Please state your name for the

18 record before you speak.

19 MR . SITLAND : Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Doug

20 Sitland , Department of Community Government Services,

21 Government of Nunavut .

22 I'm wondering, will other parties have an

23 opportunity to question the intervenors on the points

24 they brought up, and if so, at what time?

25 MR . TILLEMAN : Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Bill

26 Tilleman .

112

1 And when the other parties do their own

2 presentations, then everyone will have a chance to ask

3 them similar questions.

4 MR . SITLAND : So is that -- sorry, Doug Sitland .

5 Is that now?

6 MR . TILLEMAN : No, right now the Water Board staff

7 are asking questions.

8 MR . SITLAND : So -- Doug Sitland .

9 For example, INAC made an intervention, there was

10 no opportunity for other parties to question INAC on

11 their intervention, and same with Environment Canada.

12 MR . TILLEMAN : Mr. Chairman, Bill Tilleman again.

13 And so the answer is yes, when DIAND comes back to

14 the table, then make sure you raise your hand so the

15 Chairman sees you, and you can come up and ask

16 questions then.

17 MR . SITLAND : Thank you.

18 MR . TILLEMAN : Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

19 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Bill.

20 So carry on with the Water Board questions.

21 MR . TILLEMAN : Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Bill

22 again.

23 And so by way of the exhibits, we propose that

24 number eight be marked and identified as the

25 presentation by the Government of Nunavut for Mr. Eno .

26

113

1 EXHIBIT 8:

2 GN POWERPOINT PRESENTATION, HARD COPY

3 MR . TILLEMAN : And what we'd like to suggest is

4 that we would propose number nine be the report

5 referred to by Environment Canada. It's also been

6 discussed last night in the community session, as Mark

7 suggested. And so if the results of that study, which

8 appear to be local in their focus, are going to be

9 discussed further, Mr. Chairman, I suggest we ask

10 Environment Canada to either make copies or get it to

11 the Board staff so we can make copies and file it and

12 mark that as number nine.

13 So unless there's an objection, Mr. Chairman, I

14 propose that number nine be the report filed. I don't

15 know the title, but it's University of Manitoba study,

16 and maybe Environment Canada could come to the mike and

17 give us a title and we'll mark it.

18 MS. WILSON: Anne Wilson, Environment Canada.

19 The title of the paper is "Short- and Medium-Chain

20 Chlorinated Paraffins in Char From the Subsistance

21 Fishery and in Soils and Sediments From the Iqaluit

22 Area." And it's Terry Dick, University of Manitoba,

23 and I'd be happy to get copies to you.

24 THE CHAIRMAN: Okay, thank you.

25 Bill.

26 MR . TILLEMAN : Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It's

114

1 Bill.

2 And so we'll find an abbreviation for that long

3 title and get it marked accordingly. And then if any

4 party -- we propose to have it marked now, and if any

5 party has an objection once they can take a quick look

6 at it, we would suggest they come back and let us know.

7 Thank you, Mr. Chairman, those are my comments.

8 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you.

9 EXHIBIT 9:

10 UNIVERSITY OF MANITOBA REPORT REGARDING SHORT

11 & MEDIUM CHAIN CHLORINATED PARAFFINS

12 THE CHAIRMAN: Dionne, you have questions?

13 WATER BOARD STAFF QUESTIONS THE CITY OF IQALUIT:

14 MS. FILIATRAULT : Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Dionne

15 Filiatrault .

16 I'm going to start first with asking some

17 questions very specifically to the August 2001 land

18 design report, landfill expansion, and my first

19 question is, is this report known as the most recent,

20 up-to-date official report on the landfill expansion?

21 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Dionne.

22 Applicant, you have answers?

23 MR . HALL: Mark Hall, City of Iqaluit.

24 The answer is yes, that is the most up-to-date

25 report.

26 MS. FILIATRAULT : Based on section 1.1 -- this is

115

1 Dionne Filiatrault -- can you confirm that the City of

2 Iqaluit has been operating beyond the design capacity

3 of the existing landfill since 2001?

4 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you.

5 Please state your name for the record before you

6 speak, applicant.

7 MR . HALL: Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mark Hall,

8 City of Iqaluit.

9 Essentially, we've been operating on continuous

10 elevation of the existing cell of the landfill site for

11 which there is no regulation, unlimited height. So

12 we're operating within the confines of the cell in an

13 elevated fashion which is ongoing as of this date.

14 THE CHAIRMAN: Dionne.

15 MS. FILIATRAULT : Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

16 What has been the, what has been I guess the -- I

17 look at in section 1.1, the overall plan was to expand

18 the facility in the summer of 2001, and I guess I would

19 just like to get clarification on what the major

20 stumbling block was to the town as far as implementing

21 this proposed construction plan.

22 MR . HALL: Mark Hall, City of Iqaluit,

23 Mr. Chair.

24 The response is, ownership of the site,

25 jurisdiction and ownership of the site, and also issues

26 related to the baseline contamination of the site,

116

1 i.e., pre-existing contamination, et cetera, and those

2 issues remain outstanding as of today.

3 MS. FILIATRAULT : Okay. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

4 Dionne Filiatrault .

5 Which actually leads to sort of my next question.

6 In the site investigation work that was done as part of

7 that report, it was stated that the landfill was

8 initially constructed in 1995 as a temporary landfill,

9 and it was constructed over the southern half of the

10 existing metal dump.

11 And I guess I'd just like to get a better

12 understanding of the facts and, you know, understanding

13 that this Board only assumed jurisdiction in 1999 and

14 understanding that any prior water licenses were under

15 the NWT Water Board, but was -- what type of

16 authorisation was given in 1995 for construction of the

17 dam over the southern half, and why now are -- is the

18 issue of ownership being tabled if you've already been

19 authorised , assuming you've already been authorised , to

20 put the existing temporary landfill back in 1995 on the

21 southern portion of the metal dump.

22 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you.

23 You can state your name.

24 MR . JOHNSON: Ken Johnson.

25 As the project manager and designer for that

26 landfill, I'll try and give you a brief history on the

117

1 development. Back in the early ' 90s , the City was

2 still using what is referred to as Honey Bag Hill on

3 the edge, very edge of Koojjesse Inlet, which from an

4 environmental and a public health perspective was a

5 totally unaccepted -- unacceptable landfill site. So,

6 the City was in a position to want to find an immediate

7 solution.

8 Through some general, I guess, negotiations or

9 consensus with the regulators, the -- I guess the

10 site -- the overall area site right now that was

11 selected by the City administration to develop,

12 recognising that the site -- actually the south portion

13 of the site had, had limited metal deposits on it, and

14 for all practical purposes, really was not part of the

15 metal dump, but it was recognised that the north half

16 of the site did have -- was used as a metal or as a

17 dump site sometime in the past.

18 So what was done as part of the characterisation

19 was to do some limited testing on both the north and

20 the half -- north and the south half of the site.

21 There was some elevated contaminants identified on the

22 north half of the site and that was at that time,

23 again, with -- the town of Iqaluit wanted to move

24 forward with taking the existing Honey Bag Hill out of

25 commission and developing an engineered site. So the

26 north half of the site was set aside, recognising that

118

1 there would be additional studies and negotiation, as

2 Mark Hall has already mentioned, to do with what the

3 existing contamination, what -- the ownership of that

4 portion of the site.

5 So, I think with -- and again, not recalling

6 exactly the -- all the administrative side of it, but

7 the City did consult with the regulatory -- the

8 appropriate regulatory authorities at the time and

9 receive, I guess, the blessing or agreement that the

10 development of the southern half of the site, an

11 engineered site, could go ahead. And the -- you know,

12 again, with the intent of looking at a -- identifying a

13 potential new landfill site somewhere down the road,

14 recognising that this site had a limited -- I say a

15 limited capacity based on a certain elevation.

16 And the point that Mark Hall makes, that

17 capacities of the landfill sites do increase if you

18 develop -- if you increase the development or the

19 landfill height, and that the initial development

20 horizon for the height was -- that seven years was

21 based on a given landfill development height, and it

22 also was based on the estimated volumes and volume

23 reduction that was part of the landfill practices at

24 the time, which included burning. And as we noted,

25 that practice was stopped several years ago.

26 So, I guess that's, I suppose, my background on

119

1 the existing site, Mr. Chair.

2 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you, applicant.

3 Dionne, Water Board.

4 MS. FILIATRAULT : Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Dionne.

5 Through the site investigation, I am assuming --

6 well, I don't want to assume, sorry. In the site

7 investigation that was done to characterise the north

8 half of the metal dump where you're proposing the

9 expansion to, it included a characterisation of the

10 waste, correct?

11 MR . JOHNSON: Could you repeat the question,

12 please?

13 MS. FILIATRAULT : The site investigation that was

14 done to the north -- for the expansion, did it include

15 a waste characterisation of the existing levels of

16 contamination within the north?

17 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you.

18 Applicant?

19 MR . JOHNSON: Ken Johnson.

20 Yeah, there was, I say, a limited characterisation

21 of those contaminants, and I don't recall what the

22 nature of the contaminants were. I'd have to refer

23 back to that, that report.

24 THE CHAIRMAN: Water Board, Dionne.

25 MS. FILIATRAULT : Thank you, Chairman. Dionne

26 Filiatrault .

120

1 Can you confirm, based on any geotechnical

2 information that you may have with respect to this

3 site, with any degree of certainty that the permafrost

4 will, in fact, aggregate back up in the area at the

5 north landfill if you begin to use it as a landfill

6 facility?

7 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you.

8 Applicant?

9 MR . JOHNSON: Ken Johnson.

10 I guess in principle, by raising the elevation of

11 it, there is -- I guess it's optimising the opportunity

12 for the permafrost to come back, I guess, back -- or

13 higher into the soil profile, and I guess with the

14 decisions or the development plan that was undertaken,

15 I guess, back in 2000 -- is that correct? -- that was

16 thought to be the most, I guess, appropriate way to

17 address those contaminants.

18 I guess the reason it may be that it is an

19 existing contaminated site, thereby trying to stabilise

20 the existing contaminants as much as possible and then

21 utilising it as a landfill, because, of course, as the

22 landfill increases in elevation height, the permafrost

23 continues to move, I guess, up the soil profile. So in

24 fact, with those contaminants, they would become

25 essentially more, I guess, more stable or more frozen,

26 I suppose, that the temperature would decrease within

121

1 those as the landfill profile increases with time in

2 the development of the north portion of the site.

3 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you.

4 Water Board, Dionne.

5 MS. FILIATRAULT : You did discuss the submission of a

6 document to the Board back in 2005 with respect to

7 authorisation to proceed in the area of the north

8 landfill, and I guess I'm wondering if this preliminary

9 design report reflects the most recent information,

10 when can the Board expect to receive a final engineered

11 design for the north landfill expansion?

12 THE CHAIRMAN: Applicant, answers?

13 MR . HALL: Mark Hall, City of Iqaluit,

14 responding to the question, Mr. Chair.

15 It's anticipated that the City can provide the

16 final engineering report, subject to the approval of

17 the Board, or preliminary approval of the Board for

18 expansion onto the site, and before the anticipated

19 preconstruction and construction during 2006

20 operations, i.e., ditching and all of the other capital

21 projects that we want to undertake.

22 And for clarification, perhaps, we will be loathed

23 -- we would be loathed to commission such a study if

24 there was not an anticipation or an indication that we

25 may receive approval, in fact, for the use of this

26 site.

122

1 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you, applicant.

2 Water Board, Dionne.

3 MS. FILIATRAULT : Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

4 There was discussion in the landfill cell for cell

5 one that the culvert can be opened and closed to

6 control the runoff from the site. I'm wondering if you

7 could just tell us under what conditions the culvert is

8 opened and closed, and I guess controls are put in

9 place to ensure that any potential contaminated

10 drainage is not released in the control of the

11 discharge.

12 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you.

13 Applicant?

14 MR . JOHNSON: Ken Johnson.

15 When the design of that was originally completed,

16 the drainage was designed and developed so that the

17 offsite drainage or the clean drainage coming towards

18 the site was directed around the site, and that was

19 constructed and maintained, and provide a provision of

20 grading the internal cells of the site so that any

21 runoff generated within the site would be -- would flow

22 by gravity to a lower point of the, of the one cell and

23 have a controlled -- I say a controlled discharge,

24 meaning an opportunity to retain the water, test it,

25 and then whether -- I guess discharge it as

26 appropriate. Now, I'm not sure how that system has

123

1 operated over the last ten years, and I guess I would

2 defer that to the City for their comment.

3 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you.

4 Any more questions from the Water Board?

5 MS. FILIATRAULT : The preliminary design report in

6 section 4.3 discusses population projections, and I use

7 that as an example to formulate my next question.

8 The document that is before the Board right now is

9 already five years old. Does the City plan to revise a

10 preliminary design to reflect new information, for

11 example, current operating and maintenance practices

12 that are ongoing at the dump to reflect, as you

13 indicated, the cessation of burning, new population

14 estimates, and that sort of information? That's not an

15 exclusive list.

16 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you.

17 Applicant?

18 MR . HALL: Mark Hall, City of Iqaluit.

19 The answer is yes. The City will be required and

20 will commit to revising all of the above, all of the

21 mentioned items, upon approval and upon expansion into

22 the second cell. That will be a necessary exercise and

23 will be undertaken by the City.

24 THE CHAIRMAN: (No translation)

25 MS. FILIATRAULT: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

26 So, is it projected that or the intention of the

124

1 City that the second phase or cell two plan, as

2 indicated in 4.4.2, would be -- would fall within the

3 term of the license that is requested for five years?

4 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you.

5 Applicant?

6 MR . HALL: Mark Hall, City of Iqaluit.

7 The answer is yes, it would fall within that term.

8 THE CHAIRMAN: Any more questions from Water

9 Board? Thank you.

10 MS. FILIATRAULT : Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'd like

11 to discuss just a few more questions, if I could, on

12 the existing operation and maintenance manual.

13 First to note is the plan itself. One of the

14 tables is missing from the document, and I would just

15 like to get confirmation from the town that they plan

16 to provide table 3-4, which is listed as the "Proposed

17 Analytical Programme For Surface Water Leachate," will

18 be provided to the Board as an exhibit.

19 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Dionne.

20 Answers from applicant?

21 MR . BAKER: Geoff Baker, City of Iqaluit.

22 Yes, we will, after lunch, endeavour to provide a

23 copy of that table. The copy provided to the Board, I

24 think, is what is considered the second revision of the

25 document. We do have a final, bound document at our

26 office. We will photocopy the mentioned table and

125

1 provide it to the Board this afternoon. Thank you.

2 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you.

3 Water Board?

4 MS. FILIATRAULT : Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Dionne

5 Filiatrault .

6 Actually, given that there are some other

7 formatting and issues related to the copies that we

8 have, I'm wondering if we couldn't just get a photocopy

9 of the entire bound document.

10 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you.

11 Applicant?

12 MR . BAKER: Geoff Baker, City of Iqaluit.

13 Yes, we will provide the total document this

14 afternoon. Thank you.

15 THE CHAIRMAN: Water Board?

16 MS. FILIATRAULT : Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Dionne

17 Filiatrault .

18 I'm referring to section 3.9 where you refer to

19 the runoff monitoring procedures, and the statement is

20 made that all leachate will be collected in a ditch and

21 collected periodically and, as required, dumped in the

22 sewage lagoon. As we know, the sewage lagoon was --

23 I'm not sure what's happening with that based on the

24 new waste water treatment facility.

25 I'd just like to get clarification from the City

26 on whether or not it is acceptable practice to dump the

126

1 leachate into the lagoon, and what their forecasted

2 plans are going to be with respect to the waste water

3 treatment facility and any eventual disposal of

4 leachate and potential effects of that leachate on the

5 waste water treatment plant facility.

6 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you.

7 Applicant?

8 MR . JOHNSON: Ken Johnson.

9 As a -- I guess dealing from a process

10 perspective, in fact the disposal of leachate is

11 generally to a municipal sewer. So that practice is, I

12 suppose -- that is a generally accepted practice.

13 From, I suppose, Iqaluit's perspective, that for

14 the improvements to the landfill and the retention of

15 on-site runoff is, I guess, characterising that runoff

16 at the time and deciding what is the best means of

17 treatment or disposal, because leachate is highly

18 variable. The runoff within a landfill is highly

19 variable, and really, it's something that needs to be

20 addressed at the time with specific tests rather than,

21 I think, speculating at this point as to where it

22 should, should go within, say, within the treatment --

23 or the sewage treatment system.

24 THE CHAIRMAN: Quyannamik .

25 MS. FILIATRAULT : Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Dionne

26 Filiatrault .

127

1 The next are some questions with respect to the

2 various correspondence that has gone back and forth

3 from the City to CGNS and CGNS back to the chief

4 administrative officer for the City with respect to, I

5 guess if you want to call it, an overriding issue: the

6 ownership issue of the expansion area.

7 Should the dispute over the ownership be a concern

8 to the Nunavut Water Board?

9 THE CHAIRMAN: Applicant?

10 MR . BAKER: Thank you, Mr. Chair. Geoff Baker,

11 City of Iqaluit.

12 Yes, I do think that should be a concern to the

13 Board, definitely. However, in saying that, the City

14 does have correspondence from the Government of Nunavut

15 that states if, in fact, the landfill site was

16 transferred to the GN under the land transfer

17 agreement, that they would ultimately propose --

18 ultimately propose that that land be turned over to the

19 municipality for use as a landfill site.

20 In saying that, we do have correspondence from

21 Indian and Northern Affairs Canada which states, in

22 fact, that yes, this land was transferred to the GN

23 under the block land transfer agreement. Why we can't

24 come up with a clear, concise owner of this property, I

25 don't know if I can really speak to that. It's

26 probably a matter of bringing everybody into a room

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1 and -- thank you.

2 MR . HALL: Mr. Chairman, Mark Hall, City of

3 Iqaluit.

4 We would appreciate within the jurisdiction of

5 this Board if it could assist in the final resolve of

6 this matter, because for the next five years, or until

7 2011, it is a critical component of the interim waste

8 management practical limitations available to the City

9 of Iqaluit. And as a parallel exercise, a major

10 parallel exercise during that period of time will be

11 commencement of the environmental requirements, the

12 public consultations for a full-scale, full-service

13 permanent landfill site.

14 Without the ability formally to occupy this site,

15 subject to regulatory authority, without the imperative

16 of ownership, it remains difficult for the City, in

17 fact, to move forward in this matter. So, the

18 assistance of the Board would be appreciated.

19 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you.

20 Water Board, more questions?

21 MR . TILLEMAN : Mr. Chairman, Bill Tilleman .

22 Well, I -- it seems I agree with Geoff, that he

23 suggested all the parties should get into a room and

24 define and discuss, as well, if it turns out that all

25 the parties are here. And so it seems, Mr. Chairman,

26 that it would be a good recommendation to have you guys

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1 get together. We have another day. Put your heads

2 together and come back with, I guess, the final word

3 on, collectively, what you think the answer is, instead

4 of placing the Board in a position of trying to be

5 either an arbitrator, mediator, or a court-like body

6 that has to determine that issue.

7 So, Mr. Chairman, through you, I'd suggest that

8 the parties do their best efforts before this hearing

9 ends, because you're all here now. Get back together

10 again at the breaks or in the evening, and come back to

11 us and let us know how you intend to have this resolved

12 one final time.

13 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you.

14 Applicant?

15 MR . HALL: Mark Hall, City of Iqaluit.

16 So acknowledged, and the City will be more than

17 willing and would be enthusiastic to resolve this issue

18 before the conclusion of this Board hearing. Thank

19 you.

20 MS. FILIATRAULT : Thank you, Mr. Chairman. No

21 further questions, other than to say, Mr. Chairman,

22 that there was an exhibit that the town had provided me

23 with, with respect to the water supply and one of the

24 Trow documents, a series of four drawings, that were

25 not part of the final submission on the registry that

26 identified some actual sampling borehole locations in

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1 the review. So, if it's still acceptable with the

2 town, I would propose that we enter that in as an

3 exhibit.

4 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you.

5 Applicant, do you have a response?

6 MR . BAKER: Geoff Baker, City of Iqaluit.

7 Those are in respect of the Lake Geraldine dam?

8 Okay, yes. Yes, no problem. Thank you.

9 MS. FILIATRAULT : So, Mr. Chairman, I would mark the

10 Lake Geraldine site plan drawings to accompany the Trow

11 report to be marked as Exhibit 10.

12 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you.

13 EXHIBIT 10:

14 TROW & ASSOCIATES DRAWINGS TO SUPPORT RAW

15 WATER STORAGE EXPANSION REPORT, 2004, FOUR

16 DRAWINGS

17 THE CHAIRMAN: And we have an Elder raise a hand,

18 like to have a question. At this time we had an Elder

19 who want to ask a question. If you could just proceed

20 ahead and go to the microphone, and just go ahead and

21 if you have any questions, you may do so.

22 ELDER EKETYUT : It's not really a question;

23 however, there's no long-term Iqaluit resident here.

24 I'm not originally from Iqaluit. I can say I'm not

25 originally from here because I was born outside, but I

26 believe I live here. Before this became a city, I

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1 started working here when it was a settlement council.

2 I used to work, I used to work here, and I'm just an

3 observer at this time.

4 The landfill is a constant issue, right from

5 settlement council right to today. So, it's an ongoing

6 issue, and now it seems like the third time now. I

7 thought the landfill would never fill up, but in the

8 beginning the community residents objected to the

9 location.

10 However, I know for water supply, I work with the,

11 with the mining company for quite some time, and we

12 could -- within one year or so, you could create a

13 lake. I recall at one time Lake Geraldine went low in

14 supply. So, I've been concerned about the water source

15 with such a more higher demand for water supply, and I

16 am a little concerned. But even though I'm an Elder,

17 sometimes I don't think like an Elder, but I just want

18 to share these issues with you. Thank you.

19 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Celestine.

20 Is there any more questions from any parties? So

21 we'll take a 10-minute break before we continue with

22 our other parties.

23 (PROCEEDINGS ADJOURNED AT 10:36 A.M.)

24 (PROCEEDINGS RESUMED AT 10:46 A.M.)

25 THE CHAIRMAN: So we shall proceed. Before we go

26 on to interested parties, Water Board would like to

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1 have questions to applicant.

2 Bill?

3 MR . TILLEMAN : Yeah, thank you, Mr. Chairman.

4 It's Bill Tilleman .

5 And during the break, Mr. Chairman, some of the

6 questions that came up to the Water Board staff I

7 thought were helpful in terms of explaining the actual,

8 I think the word is the geometrics or the actual

9 landfill site today.

10 You heard, Mr. Chairman, that the current landfill

11 is rising, and so it's going up vertically, and with

12 time constraints, one of the questions the Board didn't

13 ask or the staff didn't ask was, well, how high is it

14 today, and what do the slopes look like today. And if

15 we go back a few years, which this Board was here then,

16 and if roughly the landfill was at grade, in other

17 words, flat, what about today? And if nothing happens

18 in terms of an expansion, what might it be like in five

19 years?

20 And so with the permission of you, Mr. Chairman,

21 if the City could just give a kind of a thumbnail, you

22 know, layman's explanation of what does this look like,

23 how high are the lifts, and, you know, is there some

24 kind of cover put in between a lift, a permeability

25 issue. Do they have an idea of a maximum height, you

26 know? Are there kind of berms around it that would

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1 attenuate the wind, and so on?

2 So, I thought because of the Board's mandate, that

3 it would be important to you, sir, to hear that. So

4 with your permission, Mr. Chairman, I'd like to just

5 turn the time over to the City, and you can ask them to

6 explain it if they wish to. Thank you, sir.

7 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Bill.

8 Applicant, do you have a response?

9 MR . HALL: Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mark Hall

10 for the City of Iqaluit.

11 If I can describe the current situation in the

12 existing cell of the landfill, we have a current

13 compaction rate of between 4 and 5:1. So if we

14 imagine, perhaps, three years ago we had a level

15 playing field within the existing cell. It was

16 compacted to above-grade level at a height of about

17 four feet. That cell is now complete.

18 We have had four subsequent lifts, and what we're

19 doing on a ratio or on a gradual elevation of

20 approximately 3:1, we are building up the existing

21 compacted cell area at a distance of between three and

22 four feet from the top of the pad that we've created.

23 We built an additional berm made up of sand, gravel,

24 wood pulp, and other materials that are crushed or

25 reproduced on the landfill site itself, and then we

26 start filling that cell and compacting again at a ratio

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1 of 4:1 until that cell is complete and level.

2 And if, Mr. Chairman, members of the Board, you

3 can imagine, we're now on our fourth lift, and we're at

4 an elevation of at least between 18 and 20 feet above

5 grade. And each time we create an elevation, we reduce

6 the compaction area within the cell, and we're

7 anticipating now with that expansion or approval to

8 expand and resolve of the second cell issue, we have

9 less than one year of landfill space on the pyramid,

10 for want of a better word, that we are creating, if

11 that helps at all.

12 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you.

13 So we'd like -- I'd like to open the floor for

14 interested parties to have their presentation on the

15 solid waste disposal facilities. So, start with

16 Environment Canada. Anne Wilson, you are ready to take

17 over. Thank you.

18 PRESENTATION BY ENVIRONMENT CANADA ON SOLID WASTE

19 DISPOSAL FACILITIES:

20 MS. WILSON: Good morning, Mr. Chairman, members

21 of the Board, and interested parties. I'd like to

22 thank you for the opportunity to present Environment

23 Canada's concern and recommendations regarding the City

24 of Iqaluit's application with respect to solid waste.

25 Yesterday I did present the relevant legislation,

26 and it is the same for this section, so I'll just skip

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1 over this slide.

2 The concerns that I'll touch on centre around

3 leachate from the landfill, the management of

4 contaminated soils, updating of the O & M manual,

5 hazardous waste management, and monitoring. So the

6 first item is leachate containment.

7 Solid wastes are disposed of at the west 40

8 landfill, which is slated for expansion I believe this

9 summer. Leachate concerns have been raised with

10 various contaminants being mobilised from the landfill

11 through surface drainage.

12 Environment Canada recommends that the license

13 require that the leachate drain into a secure

14 collection drainage sump which should be lined with an

15 impermeable liner to prevent infiltration of a leachate

16 into the groundwater or soil. The City is budgeted for

17 construction of a drainage capture system, and the

18 amount of leachate collected in the sump and the amount

19 of leachate treated or managed should be monitored and

20 reported to the Nunavut Water Board via annual reports.

21 Characterisation of a leachate is critical. Prior

22 to disposal or release into the environment,

23 Environment Canada recommends that the leachate be

24 tested to ensure it poses minimal risk to the receiving

25 environment. The test parameters should include

26 metals, pH, hydrocarbons, and chlorinated compounds,

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1 and those would included the short-chain chlorinated

2 paraffins mentioned earlier, at least on a basis to

3 rule them out, if possible.

4 For leachate, the final discharge location or

5 disposal method has not been identified yet, and this

6 should not be determined until the leachate quality is

7 assessed. And as Ken Johnson mentioned, it's likely to

8 be variable, so we'll have to monitor it long enough to

9 get a sense of the range of variability to expect.

10 Following that, treatment plans should be developed.

11 The Canadian Environmental Protection Act strongly

12 advocates a prevention of pollution rather than

13 managing pollution after it's been generated. The

14 license should also require the City to develop and

15 implement a surface water management plan for the solid

16 waste facility to help prevent the creation of

17 leachate.

18 The next two slides deal with contaminated soils,

19 and I was glad to hear that there are low volumes being

20 handled. The water license should include a

21 requirement that prior to any known or suspected

22 contaminated soils being accepted into the facility,

23 that the soils be tested for heavy metals, PCBs , and

24 hydrocarbons, including BTEX parameters, and only those

25 soils with acceptable concentrations, and I reference

26 the CCME , Canadian Environmental Quality Guidelines,

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1 for industrial sites should be accepted into the

2 landfill.

3 The license should also include a term requiring

4 the City of Iqaluit to submit an updated operations and

5 maintenance manual for review and approval within six

6 months of the issuance of the license. The manual

7 should detail appropriate operational and management

8 practices for contaminated soils.

9 Environment Canada's next recommendations deal

10 with hazardous waste management. The license should

11 include a term requiring the City of Iqaluit to submit

12 an updated O & M manual for review and approval within

13 six months of the issuance of the license. A more

14 detailed section is needed on the management and

15 handling of all types of hazardous wastes which may be

16 collected at the landfill.

17 Just to elaborate a bit on that, we would like to

18 see the types and volumes further clarified and also

19 the ultimate disposal where it will go, south versus

20 all the options; and what are the thresholds for

21 deciding when something goes out, i.e., what might be

22 the maximum amounts on hand for your maximum

23 environmental liabilities and spill contingency

24 planning.

25 The license should also require the City to

26 further develop and implement an emergency response

138

1 contingency plan for the hazardous waste storage area.

2 This plan should be submitted to the Nunavut Water

3 Board for review within six months of the issuance of

4 the license. I should just note review and approval,

5 that should have read.

6 Environment Canada would like to note that the

7 19 -- I'm sorry, the 2005 -- I'm a decade behind

8 myself, here -- O & M manual does provide a very good

9 starting point for this, but there are areas that we

10 would like to see clarified, improved upon, and I think

11 that that might be something the City could do

12 internally without a large expense.

13 And lastly on this slide, the spill mitigation

14 measures which need to be taken, such as secondary

15 containment for hazardous wastes being stored and

16 provision of spill kits have to be outlined in the plan

17 as well.

18 The last aspect I would like to cover is

19 monitoring at the solid waste site. Environment Canada

20 recommends that the license establish surveillance

21 network programme stations at the current landfill, and

22 at the new expanded cell when created, in order to

23 monitor leachate generated at the facility.

24 Environment Canada recommends that a quality

25 assurance/quality control plan also be submitted under

26 the SNP within three months of license issuance, and

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1 there are guidelines available from DIAND for the

2 writing of QA /QC plans which might be helpful.

3 In summary, I'd just like to say that this water

4 license illustrates the substantial progress that the

5 City of Iqaluit has made in improving the quality of

6 municipal waste management in Iqaluit.

7 On a personal note, this is my third water license

8 hearing. I think my first one was '96; I was last here

9 in 2000. So, it's interesting to have the continuity

10 of perspective and see the improvements, and I'd like

11 to encourage the City to continue on that vein.

12 Environment Canada looks forward to working with the

13 City of Iqaluit and the Nunavut Water Board to ensure

14 best practices are implemented.

15 Yesterday, Dionne had asked us to provide a list

16 of our priorities with each section, so with respect to

17 this portion, we would like to see the leachate capture

18 and monitoring, including reporting, implemented off

19 the ground, as soon as the system is constructed.

20 Similarly, surface water management which is

21 substantially in place, as Ken was describing the

22 drainage ditches and berms in place, if we could have

23 that documented and make sure it's being used to the

24 best for the new configuration, as well, without delay.

25 Let's prevent as much leachate as we can.

26 Revisions of the O & M manual, the hazardous waste

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1 sections, soils and cover sections within six months,

2 and the QA /QC plan we ask within three months.

3 That concludes this portion of my presentation,

4 and I'd be happy to try and answer any questions.

5 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Anne Wilson, Environment

6 Canada.

7 Open the floor for questions. Applicant, do you

8 have questions regarding to the presentation of

9 Environment Canada?

10 MR . HALL: Mark Hall, City of Iqaluit,

11 Mr. Chair.

12 The City's response, I think, to this presentation

13 is we've -- we feel that it's very informative. We

14 think it's more than reasonable, and we'd be please to

15 try and cooperate. We would like a little time to

16 analyse the time lines that are being presented by

17 Environment Canada to see whether or not they're

18 practical, but in principle, we think that all of the

19 recommendations are achievable and are appropriate to

20 our circumstance. Thank you.

21 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you.

22 Anne Wilson, do you have more?

23 MS. WILSON: Thank you.

24 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you.

25 Is there any more question from interested parties

26 or public committee members? Please go to the

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1 microphone and state your name for the record.

2 MS. ELSWORTH : Leanna Elsworth . I'm a student at

3 Nunavut Art College, taking the environmental

4 technology programme . I have a question for the City.

5 I'm -- you mentioned that the City predicts that the

6 landfill will reach capacity in 2010 or 2011, and I

7 wanted to know, will the City reconsider revisiting the

8 issue of diverting recyclable material and organic

9 waste into the landfill site. Thank you.

10 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you.

11 Response?

12 MR . HALL: Mark Hall, City of Iqaluit,

13 Mr. Chair.

14 To respond to the question, I think it needs to be

15 clarified that the capacity of the existing landfill

16 assumes use of the second cell to 2010 and 2011. And

17 to respond to the second part of the question, yes, the

18 City will be looking for and will be researching any

19 and all possibilities for reduction, basically, in

20 materials to landfill, in diversion programmes , subject

21 to their practicality within the context of Iqaluit,

22 the cost factoring, whether or not it's economically

23 viable.

24 But yes, it is our responsibility to continue

25 through our solid waste management committee to look

26 for these initiatives, and that is the intent of the

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1 municipality. Thank you.

2 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you.

3 Is there any more questions from interested

4 parties to Environment Canada's presentation? So

5 there's no more.

6 Does the Water Board staff have questions? Okay,

7 Dionne, you can go ahead.

8 WATER BOARD STAFF QUESTIONS ENVIRONMENT CANADA ON SOLID

9 WASTE DISPOSAL FACILITIES:

10 MS. FILIATRAULT : Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Dionne

11 Filiatrault .

12 On page 7 of your submission and your -- I think

13 you spoke to it somewhat in your presentation regarding

14 the characterisation of the leachate. I'm wondering if

15 Environment Canada has provided a detailed list of the

16 specific parameters for consideration that they would

17 like to see for the characterisation of the leachate?

18 THE CHAIRMAN: Environment Canada?

19 MS. WILSON: Anne Wilson, Environment Canada.

20 We provided a list of categories of compounds, and

21 I think the approach would be to do the higher level

22 scans, if you get hits on those, then go to the

23 specific compounds within families. So I think those

24 would be a starting point, and we can -- I would have

25 to go back to our lab folks and check further as to

26 whether there are -- there's a more comprehensive and

143

1 appropriate list to provide you.

2 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you.

3 Water Board? Dionne?

4 MS. FILIATRAULT : Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

5 On -- in your submission, you talked about that

6 prior to disposal or release into the environment,

7 Environment Canada recommends that leachate meet the

8 criteria outlined in the CCME guidelines for protection

9 of marine life. Again, it relates to specific

10 parameters with CCME or all CCME parameters for

11 protection of fresh water -- for marine life, if you

12 could just clarify that.

13 MS. WILSON: Anne Wilson, Environment Canada.

14 I'm going to backtrack here. Our submission

15 should be amended slightly to say that the leachate

16 quality shall not change the immediate receiving

17 environment, so that it exceeds the guidelines provided

18 in the CCME . That was -- got through our submission in

19 error and we picked it up after it had been submitted,

20 because the CCME guidelines are definitely receiving

21 environment, they're not end of pipe. So, I've been

22 caught.

23 And just to elaborate a little bit, if we were

24 seeing hits in something like total PCBs within

25 leachate, then we would go to a finer level of -- and

26 try and find out which groups they are and what we

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1 would have to monitor for in the environment if it

2 appeared to be a serious problem. So, I hope that

3 helps.

4 MS. FILIATRAULT : Yeah.

5 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you.

6 Water Board?

7 MR . TILLEMAN : Mr. Chairman, it's Bill Tilleman .

8 So just to clarify her words, did you say that the

9 leachate quality should not affect the immediate

10 receiving environment beyond CCME guidelines? Is that

11 the gist of your change? We were trying to think and

12 write at the same time, so if you could repeat and let

13 us know your final position on that.

14 MS. WILSON: Anne Wilson.

15 You have that correct, and it would be the

16 immediate aquatic receiving environment in the case of

17 the marine CCME guidelines.

18 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you.

19 Water Board.

20 MS. FILIATRAULT : Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think

21 we just have some clarification of some exhibits that

22 need to be entered into the record. Environment Canada

23 provided a CD-ROM this morning of their presentation,

24 their intervention, and priority report, and I would

25 propose that we enter that as Exhibit 11.

26

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1 EXHIBIT 11:

2 ENVIRONMENT CANADA, PRESENTATION,

3 INTERVENTION, PRIORITY LIST, ELECTRONIC COPY

4 THE CHAIRMAN: Bill.

5 MR . TILLEMAN : Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

6 And so to, I guess, pick up on a point of -- that

7 Environment Canada raised, which was the priorities and

8 time lines, this was something that Ms. Filiatrault

9 raised yesterday, and to ensure the parties understood

10 that the Board would need a brief written summary of

11 your statement of priorities and time lines regarding

12 different work plans before the end of the closings in

13 this hearing.

14 So, really time is kind of short, Mr. Chairman, if

15 we're going to close tomorrow morning, so please work

16 hard to kind of do what Anne did, but also take it to

17 the next step and respond, if you wish, as the City has

18 already stated they wish to respond. So do so, and

19 just make sure it gets to us before closing.

20 Also, Mr. Chairman, the final thing I have is,

21 yesterday there were different reports or guidelines

22 that were -- and today that were suggested to the Board

23 for its, for its help. CCME guidelines, you've heard

24 of those before, Mr. Chairman; QA /QC guidelines; and a

25 variety of other guidelines. So what the staff has

26 done, sir, is put together a list of some of these

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1 guidelines that have either been discussed or

2 referenced in exchanges or other guidelines that, that

3 may be referred to by the Board, and that would be an

4 internal thing.

5 So before -- out of fairness to the audience, sir,

6 we would like to hand out a list of these guidelines

7 and see if there are any objections to them being used

8 by the Board, if necessary, and see if any parties

9 would want them actually filed in hard copy right now.

10 Now, the Board has many of them. I don't know if we

11 have all of them; I don't think we do. We have most of

12 them.

13 And so what we'd like to do, sir, at the break is

14 just hand this out to all the parties and see if there

15 are any objections. If not, then the Board would

16 intend to have the ability to refer to them.

17 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you.

18 Thank you, Environment Canada.

19 Okay, before we move on to another presentation, a

20 housekeeping item that was brought up. The Board would

21 like to visit the current landfill site and the sewage

22 lagoon during the next break, if nobody has any

23 objection. Any interested parties are invited if they

24 wish to come to the site, with City's permission.

25 Thank you.

26 Go ahead, applicant?

147

1 MR . BAKER: Geoff Baker, City of Iqaluit.

2 Certainly we have no problem with that whatsoever.

3 We would ask for a period of time during the break that

4 we could actually organise and facilitate such a tour.

5 I don't know if there are vehicles available that -- or

6 if we have to organise a transit service or -- thank

7 you.

8 THE CHAIRMAN: Maybe 1:00 would be better?

9 MR . BAKER: Yeah, thank you.

10 THE CHAIRMAN: So can I ask that interested

11 parties -- is there any objection to this housekeeping

12 item? So I didn't see any hand rise up, so we'll go

13 ahead. Maybe 1:00 would be better. You communicate

14 with our staff about this. Thank you.

15 So we'll continue on in our agenda. I'd like to

16 call Indian and Northern Affairs to have their

17 presentation. Come to the table here. Thank you.

18 Applicant, you have a comment.

19 MR . HALL: Mark Hall, City of Iqaluit.

20 Mr. Chairman, members of the Board, can I ask for

21 a clarification? The Board would like to visit, A, the

22 sewage treatment plant, which is in precommission , and

23 also the operational landfill site for the City of

24 Iqaluit. With respect to the sewage treatment plant,

25 we have engineers, we have consultants, we have issues

26 such that I'm asking, Mr. Chair, that there be

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1 restricted to the Board and its employees. This is not

2 a fit site from a WCB perspective for a pubic tour

3 presentation at this time. Thank you.

4 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you. So, yeah, we'll just

5 like to have a better, clear understanding. Some of

6 the Board members haven't seen it before. Thank you.

7 So, DIAND , you can take over the floor now for

8 your presentation. Thank you.

9 PRESENTATION BY DIAND ON SOLID WASTE DISPOSAL

10 FACILITIES:

11 MR . ROGERS: Good morning, Mr. Chairman. My

12 name is Jim Rogers. I'm the acting director of

13 operations directorate of Indian and Northern Affairs.

14 On my left is Rick Hoos with EBA Consultants, who is

15 our consulting firm on this project, and on my right is

16 Lee Webber, our legal counsel. In the crowd, I guess

17 you'd say, there's Peter Kusugak , who is the manager of

18 field operations for INAC , and Ian Rumbolt who's acting

19 regional coordinator.

20 Yesterday we gave the background on our

21 legislative authorities under this area, so I will go

22 straight into the solid waste.

23 The question is on solid waste disposal. Under

24 the commercial/industrial/industrial waste heading of

25 this City's application, point 2, hazardous waste

26 disposal area, the City indicates the use of hazardous

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1 waste area located inside the solid waste site.

2 Comments from the -- one of the INAC inspectors'

3 reports expressed concern that the materials are not

4 stored in such a way that they may not spill and,

5 therefore, become part of the leachate or drainage from

6 the area. Additionally, infiltration of water into the

7 area is creating concern over potential discharge of

8 leachate or the liquid produced by the action of

9 leaching when water percolates through the landfill

10 lease down to Frobisher Bay.

11 The City followed up in a letter in April of 2004.

12 It indicates a number of projects were proposed in the

13 summer of 2004. INAC recommends that the City follow

14 up with a status report to the Board to clarify the

15 works in progress and determine which of these issues

16 have already been addressed.

17 Leachate containment and contaminants: The solid

18 waste storage area has experienced surface water

19 drainage issues. The City has alluded to some work on

20 drainage control. The surface drainage issues have led

21 to a creation of leachate from within the landfill.

22 There is some analytical results that shows that

23 there's higher than acceptable, I would say,

24 concentrations, specifically referring to some of the

25 CCME guidelines, once it's gone into the natural

26 environment and mixed. One of the indicators are BTEX ,

150

1 or it's a shortened form for benzene, toluene,

2 ethylbenzene , and xylene. That's in old diesel fuel,

3 mostly.

4 The City of Iqaluit's application has plans to

5 control and collect that water, as we heard earlier,

6 that comes in contact with the solid waste within the

7 cell. The plan outline in the application is for any

8 water collected in the waste cell to be periodically

9 pumped into a truck and disposed of, either at the

10 sewage lagoon or at the sewage treatment plant.

11 Within this section of the operation and

12 maintenance plan, it makes reference to leachate

13 control system. We feel there's fewer details than

14 should be required in the plan. INAC recommends that

15 the City should design, construct, and operate a

16 surface water management plan as outlined for the

17 landfill to control water movement into, across, and

18 out of the solid waste storage site.

19 The solid waste storage site must be kept dry with

20 little oxygen infiltration to keep the wastes from

21 breaking down. This is a solid waste storage site.

22 This is not the -- none of these wastes should be

23 allowed to break down because then they will produce

24 various chemicals or release chemicals, and that

25 becomes part of the leachate. So, the key ingredient

26 is to keep it dry with little oxygenisation occurring.

151

1 The amount of leachate collected and disposed of

2 should be reported in the City's annual reports to the

3 Water Board under the license. In fact, it should be a

4 requirement of the license that this is included in the

5 annual reports.

6 Before the leachate can be treated and disposed

7 of, tests should be conducted to determine the

8 composition or what chemicals and metals are contained

9 in the leachate. INAC questions whether leachate can

10 be properly treated without knowing its chemical

11 content.

12 Other areas that should be monitored for leachate

13 production include not necessarily the solid waste --

14 the present solid waste storage site, but the abandoned

15 Honey Bag pit below the banks of the Sylvia Grinnell ;

16 the old dump is located on Commissioner's land,

17 although you've have to probably monitor within the

18 proposed territorial park; below the north 40; and at

19 the abandoned solid waste site at Apex. These are all

20 within the town boundaries.

21 Contaminated soils and operation of the

22 maintenance plans states that contaminated soils may be

23 accepted, and as referred to by Anne Wilson and in the

24 City's presentation, these volumes be small, but INAC

25 recommends that the water license require that prior to

26 any known contaminated soils being accepted into the

152

1 storage -- waste storage site, soils be tested. We're

2 especially concerned about heavy oils that are not

3 aromatic and you cannot treat in land farm.

4 During the prehearing , the City and the Board

5 agreed that the water license of the existing gravel

6 source and former metal dump, also referred to as the

7 north 40, would not be included in a type A license

8 hearing. Movement of water through and from the north

9 40 gravel source and metal waste dump has been an issue

10 of a number of INAC inspectors' letters over the last

11 few years. INAC 's written submission, then, shows a

12 few concerns with the north 40, so the Board is aware

13 of our long-term concerns about the area. There is a

14 quarry management plan agreement between the GN and the

15 City on that, on that area.

16 Yesterday the Board staff asked for priorities for

17 INAC to the Nunavut Water Board. I would state our

18 priorities are control of water movement into and out

19 of the solid waste storage site, especially drainage

20 control, and I would suggest that the license should

21 ask the City to continue their progress that they've

22 already begun.

23 The second priority would be to report volumes of

24 leachate to the Board in the annual reports from the

25 City to the Board, and the third would be to update the

26 projects for handling, storage, and isolation of

153

1 identified hazardous waste to be provided to the Board

2 within one year, with annual -- with updates included

3 in the annual reports from the City to the Board.

4 That's all, thank you.

5 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Jim Rogers.

6 Okay, open the floor to questions. Applicant, do

7 you have a question on the presentation?

8 MR . HALL: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mark Hall

9 for the City of Iqaluit.

10 There is a number of points, certainly very

11 definitive points raised by INAC and, in particular,

12 with respect to the north 40, which are subject to

13 current discussion and/or dispute, and most

14 respectfully I'd request that the City be permitted to

15 defer these issues, which may be legal in nature, to

16 our lawyer and come back with a response after the

17 break or after lunchtime. Thank you.

18 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you.

19 Any more questions from any interested parties or

20 the public?

21 All right, Doug Sitland , come to the floor and

22 state your name for the record.

23 GOVERNMENT OF NUNAVUT QUESTIONS DIAND ON SOLID WASTE

24 DISPOSAL FACILITIES:

25 MR. SITLAND: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Doug

26 Sitland, Department of Community and Government

154

1 Services, Government of Nunavut .

2 During the questioning of the City, INAC had

3 indicated that the City had some liability with respect

4 to the proposed expansion of the solid waste site. I'm

5 just seeking clarification from INAC whether they are

6 speaking with respect to what is currently above the

7 ground there or what is below the ground there. Thank

8 you, Mr. Chairman.

9 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you.

10 INAC , your response.

11 MR . ROGERS: Jim Rogers, INAC .

12 The City is operating and administering these

13 sites; therefore, they have some responsibility to

14 ensure that what is at these sites and any additional

15 problems occur, therefore they have some liability.

16 It's -- it would be the same as if you knowingly went

17 in and built a house on a contaminated area; you would

18 be partly responsible.

19 It's -- I don't think Doug is indicating the City

20 has no knowledge of what's underneath the ground, it's

21 a question of whether the City should clean it up. I

22 believe that's the difference. But we do state because

23 they are operating it, they do have an agreement on

24 some of these areas, that they have some

25 responsibilities.

26 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you.

155

1 You have a further question, Doug?

2 MR . SITLAND : Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Doug

3 Sitland .

4 With respect to the Board's questioning with

5 relation to ownership of lands, there was a question

6 whether the Board should be concerned about ownership,

7 and the City did mention that they thought "yes". The

8 ownership of these lands is an extremely complicated

9 land administration issue for which the Commissioner

10 and DIAND have been in dispute since likely 1971, and

11 the likelihood of it being resolved is likely not going

12 to happen today.

13 That being said, I think all parties here would

14 recognise that there is contamination at the proposed

15 expansion site below ground, and I would think that all

16 parties here would agree that the City was not

17 responsible for putting that contamination there.

18 There is some contention or some assertion that the

19 land may have been transferred to the commissioner as

20 part after 1971 block land transfer. I think we can

21 leave the issue of ownership aside.

22 I would suggest to the Board and to the City and

23 to INAC that a way forward is for all three parties to

24 agree on what is there and to allow the City to move

25 forward. If the commissioner were the owner of these

26 lands, we would transfer them to the City for municipal

156

1 purposes under the terms and conditions of the Nunavut

2 Land Claim Agreement. However, we recognise that it is

3 contaminated land, and we contend that someone cannot

4 rid themselves of any liability just by transferring

5 these lands carte blanche.

6 I guess that's not really a question, Chairman,

7 but more of a comment. Thank you.

8 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you.

9 INAC .

10 MR . WEBBER: Lee Webber, thank you,

11 Mr. Chairman.

12 Just to respond to some of Mr. Sitland 's comments.

13 First of all, I must confess that while I'm generally

14 aware that there are these issues concerning ownership

15 of the lands and liability for contamination, I

16 certainly have not had an opportunity to delve into the

17 very considerable history of the debate and the dispute

18 that Mr. Sitland has mentioned. As he says, this goes

19 back a long way. My guess is that there has been an

20 awful lot written and mused about, both within DIAND

21 and within the federal Department of Justice advising

22 DIAND on this and, correspondingly, within the GN or,

23 before the GN came into existence, the GNWT .

24 I -- in the hour or so that has passed since this

25 issue came up in the course of the City's presentation,

26 I certainly haven't had a chance to do any further

157

1 digging on this, or an absolute minimum of further

2 digging. On the basis of the little bit I do know

3 about the issue, I would certainly be inclined to

4 second Mr. Sitland 's observation that this is an issue

5 or, if you will, a package of issues that we're not

6 likely to be able to resolve between now and tomorrow.

7 That comment would apply both to the issue of land

8 ownership and to issues concerning liability for, for

9 contamination.

10 I understand that the various parties have views

11 on these matters at this point, one of the parties

12 being the Government of Canada and, in particular,

13 DIAND with support from Justice Canada; another party

14 being the GN; and, of course, the third party being the

15 City of Iqaluit. Various parties have views. I gather

16 they've been butting heads over this for some time, and

17 I think that we're just going to have to continue

18 discussing these issues among the parties until some

19 sort of a resolution can be arrived at.

20 I realise that's not an altogether satisfactory

21 answer, either to the Board or to the City, since there

22 is a desire to move ahead with planning, but frankly,

23 the legal uncertainty attaching to the lands projected

24 for the expansion of the landfill are one of the

25 realities of the situation that everybody just has to

26 deal with.

158

1 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you.

2 Any more questions?

3 Does the Water Board staff have questions?

4 WATER BOARD STAFF QUESTIONS DIAND ON SOLID WASTE

5 DISPOSAL FACILITIES:

6 MS. FILIATRAULT : Yes. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

7 DIAND in their presentation made reference to

8 inspection, and I'd like to take this opportunity to

9 ask a question with respect to inspections, either

10 related specifically to the -- within the scope of this

11 application. Can you confirm that there is -- the only

12 inspection report that has been filed is and there's

13 been no inspections done since September 2001? That is

14 the only inspection report that the Water Board has on

15 file. Can you confirm that there are no other

16 inspection reports that exist?

17 MR . ROGERS: Just one minute.

18 MR . KUSUGAK : Peter Kusugak .

19 There -- I believe there is an inspection back in

20 19 -- oh, 2004. We just have to locate it in our

21 files. Thank you.

22 THE CHAIRMAN: Go ahead, Water Board.

23 MS. FILIATRAULT : Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Dionne

24 Filiatrault .

25 The only inspection that I'm aware of, and maybe I

26 have it wrong, and we can clarify this, is the

159

1 inspection in 2004 that dealt specifically with the

2 north 40, which is outside the scope of the application

3 that is currently being considered by the Board.

4 MR . KUSUGAK : Peter Kusugak .

5 There was an inspection. There was a letter of

6 direction in 2004 regarding leachate, and I believe

7 Environment Canada was aware of this, also.

8 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you.

9 Water Board, Dionne?

10 MS. FILIATRAULT : Mr. Chairman, if I could just have

11 a moment to consult with our legal counsel on whether

12 or not this is within our ability to ask. I don't want

13 to --

14 THE CHAIRMAN: Yeah, go ahead.

15 So is the Water Board ready, Dionne? Go ahead.

16 MS. FILIATRAULT : Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

17 I'm wondering if DIAND is aware of whether or not,

18 under a previous proceedings, the ownership of the area

19 of the metal dump was in question, and I refer

20 specifically to when the construction of the temporary

21 current landfill was constructed, whether or not

22 ownership was an issue at that time.

23 MR . WEBBER: Lee Webber.

24 I don't think we can give you a definite answer on

25 that, Dionne. I don't want to be giving evidence, but

26 I realise that I have somewhat of a corporate memory

160

1 here having been involved in the 2000 and 1999

2 proceedings. I don't have a clear memory of the

3 ownership issues coming up. I'd like to say that I --

4 that that indicates that it didn't come up, but really,

5 I don't want to mislead the Board on that score. I

6 can't say complete -- with complete certainty that it

7 didn't come up. I gather people have wisps of memory,

8 but nobody seems to have a reliable memory as to

9 whether it did or did not come up, nobody within our

10 team here.

11 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you, DIAND .

12 Dionne?

13 MS. FILIATRAULT : Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

14 On another note, we did, based on the -- for the

15 first question that I asked, we do actually have the

16 March 11th, 2004, report verified. Specifically,

17 though, one of the things that we don't have that

18 accompanies that report is any sampling results of any

19 monitoring that was done for that inspection. The only

20 sampling and monitoring results that we have on file

21 since the last valid water license is for 2001. So

22 what I'm looking for specifically is analytical results

23 that DIAND may have taken since 2000.

24 MR . ROGERS: I'll go take a look and see if I

25 can find them. I believe the analytical results were

26 actually taken by Environment Canada during the joint

161

1 visit, so -- but we will endeavour to provide that to

2 the Board as soon as possible.

3 THE CHAIRMAN: Please state your name for the

4 record before you speak.

5 MR . ROGERS: Sorry, it was Jim Rogers.

6 THE CHAIRMAN: Yeah, thank you.

7 Dionne.

8 MS. FILIATRAULT : Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We do

9 have the analytical results for 2001 for the joint

10 inspection that was done by Environment Canada and

11 INAC . I'm looking for any other results that were

12 done, and I would request, Mr. Chairman, that those

13 results be filed with the Board prior to the closing of

14 the hearing.

15 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you.

16 INAC .

17 MR . WEBBER: Lee Webber.

18 Dionne, since this is in the general ballpark of

19 your question, or at least I believe it is, I will just

20 mention that there is some other material on the

21 Board's website relating to inspections. One of the

22 items that I pulled off the website was a June 3rd,

23 2004, inspector's direction addressed to Ian Freemantel

24 as CAO of the City of Iqaluit, and that direction is

25 from Scott Stewart, water resource officer.

26 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you.

162

1 Dionne.

2 MS. FILIATRAULT : Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

3 I can confirm with Mr. Webber that those letters

4 of directions are on the public registry. Again, just

5 leading from my first question, it was not the

6 inspection report itself that I was looking for, it was

7 analytical results.

8 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you.

9 Any more questions? Applicant, you have a

10 question? Geoff Baker?

11 MR . BAKER: Geoff Baker, City of Iqaluit.

12 Not a question, just a clarification on an issue

13 contained in the, in the written intervention provided

14 by INAC to the Water Board dated March 2006. The

15 issue, they say, is the response provided -- page 17,

16 sorry, of their, of their intervention.

17 It says, "The response provided by the applicant

18 under the heading of waste reduction, item 1, indicates

19 that the municipality no longer burns any garbage;

20 however, INAC and its technical reviewer are aware that

21 waste is burned at the current municipal waste disposal

22 site as indicated in UMA figure 1 provided in section

23 5, drawings of the additional information provided by

24 the City." I just wanted to clarify that the City

25 doesn't burn garbage and hasn't since it was mandated

26 in 2001. Thank you.

163

1 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Geoff.

2 DIAND , you have any more?

3 MR . ROGERS: Doesn't like me today. Jim Rogers.

4 We, we have no further questions for the City at

5 this time. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

6 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you.

7 Water Board staff?

8 MS. FILIATRAULT : Thank you, Mr. Chair.

9 Maybe I could just request clarification from

10 DIAND , then, that they have said that there is burning

11 happening. The town has indicated in follow-up that

12 burning is not happening. Who is right?

13 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you.

14 DIAND , want to respond to that?

15 MR . ROGERS: Our question came up because the --

16 some of the information provided with the application

17 covers a long time period, and the UMA report was

18 actually talking about burning. So, if it was part of

19 the application, we just wanted the City to clarify

20 that either they're burning or not burning.

21 Incomplete combustion, of course, causes problems

22 eventually with the leachate production, types of

23 leachate production, so we were just -- we wanted the

24 City to clarify that burning was not part of the thing,

25 or if burning was, how they were going to do it.

26 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you.

164

1 So the presentation will be put in, too, as an

2 exhibit.

3 MS. FILIATRAULT : Mr. Chairman, the presentation was

4 already filed. Sorry, Mr. Chairman, I apologise . The

5 presentation was already filed as an exhibit, and we

6 received that already in hard copy and electronic copy,

7 so there are no additional exhibits for Environment

8 Canada at this time.

9 THE CHAIRMAN: Good.

10 Thank you, INAC , for your presentation. There is

11 no more further clarifications to be made.

12 MR . ROGERS: Thank you, Mr. Chair.

13 THE CHAIRMAN: Lunchtime is approaching. Maybe we

14 should take -- well, I'd like to ask the GN before we

15 go for a break whether their presentation -- will there

16 be enough time before lunch break?

17 MS. GORDANIER : There should be lots of time,

18 Mr. Chairman. I'm only going to be maybe two minutes.

19 THE CHAIRMAN: Okay. Yeah, you would take the

20 floor now.

21 Bill, she needs to be sworn in. She hasn't...

22 MR . TILLEMAN : Please state your name for the

23 record and spell your last name.

24 MS. GORDANIER : Tanya Gordanier , G-O-R-D-A-N-I-E-R.

25 TANYA GORDANIER , SWORN

26 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Bill.

165

1 So DFO , you can start your presentation now.

2 PRESENTATION BY DFO ON SOLID WASTE DISPOSAL FACILITIES:

3 MS. GORDANIER : Thank you, Mr. Chairman, members of

4 the Board.

5 As was stated yesterday, Environment Canada

6 administers those sections of the Fisheries Act related

7 to water quality, and DFO relies and defers to their

8 expertise in relation to those water quality matters.

9 Since many of the potential impacts to fish and fish

10 habitat related to the waste disposal facilities are

11 water-quality related, we don't have any specific

12 recommendations or comments for the Board with respect

13 to this matter, other than to defer to what -- the

14 presentation that Environment Canada has made.

15 Therefore, we haven't prepared a presentation for,

16 for this portion of the proceedings, but I am happy to

17 take any questions that the Board, other intervenors ,

18 or the applicant might have relative to fish and fish

19 habitat and the mandate of Fisheries and Oceans Canada.

20 Thanks very much.

21 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you, DFO .

22 Is there any questions to DFO ? Applicant, do you

23 have any question or comment?

24 MR . BAKER: Geoff Baker, City of Iqaluit. No,

25 no questions or comments. Thank you.

26 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you, applicant.

166

1 Is there any question from interested parties?

2 Okay, no indication.

3 Is there any question from the Water Board staff?

4 WATER BOARD STAFF QUESTIONS DFO ON SOLID WASTE DISPOSAL

5 FACILITIES:

6 MS. FILIATRAULT : Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Dionne

7 Filiatrault .

8 I'm wondering -- and in hindsight, I probably

9 should have asked the same question to Environment

10 Canada -- are you aware with respect to the landfill if

11 there have been any violations with respect to the

12 Fisheries Act in the operation and maintenance of the

13 landfill as it exists now?

14 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you.

15 DFO .

16 MS. GORDANIER : Tanya Gordanier , Fisheries and

17 Oceans.

18 I'm not aware of any at the current time, but I

19 could go back to my office and check with our

20 inspectors or fishery officers and see if they are

21 aware of any, and I could report back to the Board this

22 afternoon, if that pleases the Board.

23 MR . CHAIRMAN: Thank you.

24 Water Board staff.

25 MS. FILIATRAULT : And thank you, Mr. Chairman.

26 And since the submission of the application for

167

1 water license, DFO has had several technical comments

2 that they have provided to the Board, and I'm wondering

3 if DFO can confirm that any of the technical issues

4 related to the documents that have been filed by DFO up

5 until this point are resolved now to the satisfaction

6 of DFO ?

7 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you.

8 DFO ?

9 MS. GORDANIER : Tanya Gordanier , Fisheries and

10 Oceans.

11 To my knowledge, yes, they have. Those issues

12 have been resolved as they relate to the solid waste

13 disposal facilities.

14 I apologise , I'm not the lead person on this file.

15 Mr. Derek Moggy , who presented yesterday, is. And

16 again, I can -- to my knowledge, all these issues have

17 been resolved, but I will confirm that with Derek over

18 the break and can get back to the Board.

19 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you.

20 Dionne?

21 MS. FILIATRAULT : No more questions, Mr. Chair.

22 Thank you.

23 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you, DFO . Go ahead.

24 MS. GORDANIER : Thank you very much.

25 THE CHAIRMAN: Yeah. So we shall take a lunch

26 break. We'll continue with the GN and Bill MacKenzie

168

1 Humanitarian Society, Jim Little, after lunch -- or

2 after the site visit, sorry.

3 Okay, we'll proceed -- recommence at 1:30. Will

4 that be enough time? Yeah. Okay, let's go for lunch

5 break now.

6 (PROCEEDINGS ADJOURNED AT 11:55 A.M.)

7 (PROCEEDINGS RESUMED AT 1:35 P.M.)

8 THE CHAIRMAN: We will continue with our agenda

9 that we dealt with this morning. Before any

10 presentations, if you could -- can you hear me on the

11 translation? Good, okay.

12 For those applicants, I want to give them the

13 extra, more opportunity before we proceed to GN, so I

14 want to open this up to the license applicants.

15 MR . HALL: Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mark Hall

16 for the City of Iqaluit.

17 We would like, with the consent of the chair and

18 Board, just to revisit the issues referred to by Indian

19 and Northern Affairs this morning and, in particular,

20 invite our lawyer, Katherine Peterson, who hopefully is

21 on line, just to respond to some of the issues that

22 were raised this morning. Thank you.

23 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you. So the application

24 lawyer, is she on the line now? Okay.

25 Before we are proceeding, I would like to ask if

26 there is any objection, because one of the Board

169

1 members, Thomas Kabloona , is on the way from Rankin

2 Inlet that was on the line this morning. Is there any

3 objection to that, applicants or interested parties?

4 Lee Webber?

5 MR . WEBBER: Thank you, Mr. Chair. Lee Webber

6 for DIAND . Could we just get an assurance that the

7 Member Kabloona will review any portion of the

8 proceedings that he happens to miss while he's in

9 transit?

10 THE CHAIRMAN: Bill, can you respond to that for

11 me?

12 MR . TILLEMAN : The answer is yes.

13 MR . WEBBER: Thank you.

14 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you for the response.

15 So applicant's lawyer Peterson is ready?

16 MR . HALL: Mark Hall for the City of Iqaluit.

17 Yes, Mr. Chair. I'll invite her to speak, if I

18 may.

19 THE CHAIRMAN: Yeah.

20 MR . HALL: Katherine, are you on line?

21 MS. PETERSON: I am, thank you. Can you hear me?

22 THE CHAIRMAN: Yeah, we can hear you. You can go

23 ahead.

24 PRESENTATION BY CITY OF IQALUIT ON LAND ASPECT:

25 MS. PETERSON: Thank you. This is Katherine

26 Peterson. I'm legal counsel for the City of Iqaluit.

170

1 There is an issue I just wanted to speak to

2 briefly to the Board on the land aspect of the

3 application for license. There has been some

4 discussion in front of the Board about legal issues

5 associated with and proposed to be used for the

6 expansion of this facility, and as I understand it, and

7 I would ask the intervenors to confirm this for me,

8 there is no objection, per se, as I understand it, to

9 the proposed lands being used regarding the expansion

10 of a facility sought.

11 I'll come back to that in a moment and just

12 indicate to the Board that there has been some

13 discussion about issues of liability regarding

14 pre-existing contamination at the landfill site. It

15 should be made clear to the Board that the City is not,

16 for the purposes of this application or otherwise,

17 accepting liability with respect to pre-existing

18 contamination of the site, and further, that that issue

19 is not an issue that needs to be resolved for the

20 purposes of this particular license application, and in

21 fact, it's probably beyond the scope of the Board's

22 consideration of this matter.

23 Pragmatic issues that have to be addressed in this

24 portion of the license application, namely, that the

25 proposed life span of the existing landfill is very

26 short and has to be addressed in terms of expansion in

171

1 this licensing application, and then there are longer

2 term legal issues that have to be sorted out, mainly,

3 land ownership issues and pre-existing contamination

4 issues. And those issues will not be resolved in the

5 context of this license application and will take some

6 time, either between the parties themselves as to

7 discussions or by independent adjudication.

8 So in summary, I just wanted, one, to receive

9 confirmation from the intervenors that the land

10 proposed regarding expansion of the landfill site, use

11 of that land is not, per se, the subject of any

12 opposition; and secondly, indicate for the record that

13 the issue of liability regarding pre-existing

14 contamination is not one that is, firstly, necessary in

15 the context of this application or accepted by the

16 City.

17 Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

18 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you.

19 DIAND , do you have a comment?

20 MR . WEBBER: Could we just have a moment,

21 please, Mr. Chairman.

22 THE CHAIRMAN: Okay. Lee Webber.

23 COMMENTS BY DIAND ON LAND ASPECT:

24 MR . WEBBER: Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Lee

25 Webber.

26 To deal with the two points raised by Ms. Peterson

172

1 which would seem to beg a response, first of all, the

2 question of -- excuse me -- whether there is objection

3 to the use of the land that is proposed as an expansion

4 for the landfill, whether there's objection to, indeed,

5 using that as a landfill expansion, it's difficult to

6 give a categorical response because of the debate, the

7 dispute, that is ongoing between the GN and the federal

8 government concerning the ownership of the land.

9 At this point, subject to the resolution of that

10 issue, subject to the need to resolve that issue, and

11 subject to any considerations which might be -- which

12 might arise in the course of the resolution of that

13 issue, DIAND doesn't object in principle to the idea of

14 using this additional piece of land as landfill.

15 I realise that I'm throwing in a heavy measure of

16 qualification there, and frankly that is my intent.

17 DIAND is not in a position to give an unqualified

18 approval for the use of this land as landfill until

19 such time as the ownership issue, with possibly

20 attendant liability issues, has been resolved, which

21 brings me to the question of liability.

22 I would certainly agree with Ms. Peterson that

23 question of liabilities is not one that need be

24 addressed or resolved by this Board in these

25 proceedings.

26 THE CHAIRMAN: Water Board staff, our legal

173

1 counsel, Bill.

2 QUESTIONS BY BOARD STAFF ON LAND ASPECT:

3 MR . TILLEMAN : Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And

4 that's Bill Tilleman .

5 And so I guess the question that through you,

6 Mr. Chairman, that I believe the Board would need to

7 know for its own jurisdictional comfort is -- from the

8 parties and right now from DIAND , who Mr. Webber is at

9 the mike, do you see that there is a jurisdictional

10 problem with the Water Board proceeding to license, in

11 this case landfills, and with the two issues that

12 Ms. Peterson raised: One, the issue of the question

13 about ownership, which has apparently not been resolved

14 for decades; and number two, the propriety of allowing

15 the landfill to expand into, as we've heard in these

16 proceedings, and on top of a known contaminated site?

17 So, is there any jurisdictional problem in the

18 parties' minds, and I, Mr. Chairman, would like a

19 response from the parties, with the -- given the two

20 key issues that have been raised, land ownership and

21 the lack of clarity over that and the big caveat that

22 Mr. Webber just attached to that, and also the issue of

23 continuing to landfill on top of a contaminated site?

24 Should this Board be issuing a license when those two

25 issues and the answers to those two questions are not

26 known?

174

1 Mr. Chairman, that is a question that, if you

2 would agree, I would appreciate a response from

3 Mr. Webber and other governments who are in the room.

4 THE CHAIRMAN: I thank you.

5 Do you have more comment? Lee Webber.

6 COMMENTS BY JUSTICE CANADA ON LAND ASPECT:

7 MR . WEBBER: Lee Webber, Justice Canada.

8 I'm going to respectfully have to ask for some

9 time to consider Mr. Tilleman 's questions. Frankly, I

10 have not had the opportunity to be even minimally

11 briefed on this issue and its history within, within

12 DIAND or within the Department of Justice.

13 I did make efforts during the lunchtime break to

14 track down at least a limited overview of that issue.

15 I did make attempts to contact colleagues who I thought

16 might be able to advise me on that score.

17 Unfortunately, to this point, I'm no further ahead than

18 I was this morning.

19 On the one hand, I can see that these issues

20 concerning land and concerning liability could, indeed,

21 pose an impediment; and on the other hand, having very

22 little knowledge at this point of what has been said by

23 DIAND or, for that matter, by Justice Canada, what has

24 been said by them to the GN or otherwise, I really

25 don't feel that it would be responsible for me to give

26 any sort of categorical statement right now.

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1 So with the Board's indulgence, I will continue to

2 make efforts between now and tomorrow to track down

3 some of this history and hopefully be in a better

4 position tomorrow to say, to say something helpful.

5 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Lee Webber.

6 Perhaps, perhaps it would be more appropriate and

7 convenient if GN, if a GN lawyer could come in here and

8 just join in the discussion to clarify anything from

9 their end. Would GN's staff, if they could bring their

10 own legal counsel lawyer, then this issue could then be

11 satisfactorily discussed. That is clear, that is the

12 position of the Board.

13 Bill.

14 MR . TILLEMAN : Mr. Chairman, it's Bill Tilleman .

15 So, only if any of the other parties wish to

16 respond to the concerns that I just posed, I think

17 Mr. Webber has gone as far as he can go, and I thank

18 him for that. And so, are any of the other governments

19 -- and I understand you've just requested GN to have

20 legal counsel here. So simply, I'd like to know the

21 answer to that. The Board is facing an interesting and

22 critical dilemma here, and jurisdiction over land

23 ownership and the propriety of approving waste to be

24 dumped into a non-contaminated (sic) site is clearly

25 something that, Mr. Chairman, I think the Board needs

26 to know answers to, and the sooner the better. And so

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1 if anyone wishes to take the mike now, I'll stop

2 talking; if not, I hope they come up and answer these

3 things to the best of their ability by the end of the

4 hearing.

5 So for me, Mr. Chairman, nothing further.

6 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you.

7 Mr. Sitland , do you -- you have raised your hand.

8 Come to the phone (sic) and if you have any expression.

9 COMMENTS BY GOVERNMENT OF NUNAVUT ON LAND ASPECT:

10 MR . SITLAND : Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Doug

11 Sitland , Community and Government Services.

12 With respect to the land ownership, we've already

13 issued a letter to the City of Iqaluit that if the

14 Commissioner is, in fact, the owner of these lands, we

15 have no problem with transferring ownership, or, if it

16 happens to be within the hundred feet of the ordinary

17 high water mark, retaining the ownership on behalf of

18 the municipality for their use and benefit, and their

19 use and benefit is a municipal solid waste site.

20 We think we are confident in the City's technical

21 solution to isolate what's underneath of that site, and

22 we would have no objections, should the Commissioner

23 own that land, for the City using it.

24 If the Commissioner doesn't own the land, again,

25 we have no objections to the City using it because it's

26 INAC land. Frankly, I'm not entirely certain why the

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1 issue of ownership is, is important. I think the

2 important issue is recognising what's underneath and to

3 have an agreement about what is underneath, and to

4 agree that the City is not liable for what is

5 underneath.

6 And as to whether our GN counsel could be

7 available to speak to this, unfortunately, the counsel

8 that is familiar with the issue is not in Iqaluit.

9 He's travelling on another related issue.

10 And just so the Board is, I guess, cognizant of

11 the scope of this issue, not only does it affect the

12 west 40, it affects the Lower Base, it affects the

13 north 40, and several other sites. So it's not just

14 the west 40 we're talking about, it's many, many other

15 sites in the City of Iqaluit, and in fact in other

16 places, too. Thank you.

17 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you.

18 At this time, back to our agenda. We do give this

19 opportunity at this time for presentation by GN. We

20 now give that opportunity for Robert Eno . If you could

21 just proceed on the table and do your presentation.

22 You can do your brief and background information

23 presentation to everybody here, and welcome.

24 And before Robert Eno proceeds, for those who are

25 just coming in, we request if you have not registered,

26 if you could just register to the individual who is in

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1 the front. If you haven't registered, we request if

2 you could sign and register.

3 Robert, you can go ahead now. Welcome.

4 PRESENTATION BY GOVERNMENT OF NUNAVUT DOE ON SOLID

5 WASTE DISPOSAL FACILITIES:

6 MR . ENO : Thank you, Mr. Chair. Again, my

7 name is Robert Eno , and I'm going to be presenting the

8 second part of the Government of Nunavut , Department of

9 Environment's intervention to the Iqaluit water license

10 application.

11 You've seen the first couple of slides, so I'll

12 just roll through them and get to the second part of

13 this.

14 I'm going to address a number of issues presented

15 by the City of Iqaluit on waste disposal, solid waste.

16 As I mentioned earlier in my submission, my original

17 slide presentation was based on -- in order of how we

18 presented our longer intervention, so I've had to rejig

19 this whole thing and subsequently had to include a

20 couple of odd-ball stuff that didn't specifically fall

21 under solid waste disposal, and so I've appended these

22 to solid waste disposal based on discussions with one

23 of your staff that these would be appropriately

24 addressed under this particular subject heading.

25 I'm going to try to be quick. There is seven,

26 seven issues here that I'm going to discuss, and I'll

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1 try to run through them quickly so I don't dominate

2 this whole hearing. I'm going to discuss hazardous

3 waste management, runoff leachate monitoring, expansion

4 of the current site, long-term solid waste management

5 plan, Lower Base contamination, abandonment and

6 restoration, and spill and emergency response plans.

7 Inasmuch as hazardous waste management, I have to

8 say that I was in on some of these water license

9 hearings way, way back when there was the Northwest

10 Territories Water Board and the people that used to

11 come here with the technical advisory committee, so I'm

12 dating myself.

13 So -- but I guess the point in bringing this up is

14 that I've seen this operation for probably the last 16

15 years now, so I have a bit of perspective on what's

16 been happening over the years, and I have to say

17 overall there has been a marked improvement in the way

18 that the City of Iqaluit is running its operation,

19 particularly with regard to hazardous waste. They have

20 made a lot of improvements over hazardous wastes.

21 It's still, I mean by southern standards and by

22 regular standards, a relatively primitive system, but

23 it's lot better than it was before, and there are a lot

24 of improvements and continuing improvements.

25 What is not reflected in my slide presentation

26 here is I'm in almost constant contact with the

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1 landfill operator, so this is why there is a bit of a

2 paucity of information on the hazardous waste section

3 on this, because I am quite familiar with their

4 operation and I am in regular contact with their

5 landfill operator who has almost got a hot line to my

6 office and to my boss's office.

7 So the City is definitely exercising more control

8 over what enters the landfill, what is reasonably

9 possible to do, because when all is said and done, you

10 can hide something in a garbage bag and bring it to the

11 landfill, and unless they inspect every garbage bag,

12 you're just not going to pick it up, and that's the way

13 it is in every jurisdiction.

14 And I would say the same thing for the sewage

15 system. A fellow could change the oil in his vehicle

16 and he could dump the oil down the sewage system, and

17 you would never be the wiser. So it has to be

18 recognised that you can only go so far inasmuch as

19 managing hazardous waste, and certainly I'm not saying

20 that the city has got the best system on the planet,

21 but it's certainly an improvement over what was

22 happening before.

23 The little asterisks that I've got on the second

24 bullet refers to a comment that I've made over and over

25 again at various license hearings in that I believe the

26 City should consider enacting a bylaw whereby before

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1 they issue a business license, they have a

2 questionnaire or several questions to the business to

3 determine what kind of waste that they're generating,

4 particularly as it pertains to hazardous waste.

5 I'm not suggesting that this be a term and

6 condition in the water license because, again, as I

7 said at the beginning, I don't want to get involved in

8 telling the town how to run their day-to-day

9 operations.

10 I believe that such a bylaw would go some ways

11 towards improving the existing system, and it would

12 also give them a good idea of, when a business opens

13 up, what that business is generating and how they

14 intend to manage their hazardous waste. We already

15 have a number of businesses here in town that are

16 actually doing a good job of managing their hazardous

17 waste, but I don't know what the rest of the businesses

18 are doing. So it is a good idea. I have suggested it

19 before. If there is a bylaw on the books that, that

20 fulfils that, and I apologise for repeating myself, I'm

21 just not aware of it right now.

22 The other point is that the City is required to

23 register with the Department of Environment as a

24 hazardous waste storage facility if they intend to

25 store hazardous waste for greater than 180 days, which

26 I believe they do in the case of lead acid batteries.

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1 Registration is free. They will fill out a

2 questionnaire. Essentially, the questionnaire that we

3 issue is we just want to make sure that they know what

4 they're doing and they're going to manage this stuff

5 responsibly.

6 Runoff and leachate control: In, in the

7 presentation given by the town, and this has already

8 been repeated by one of the intervenors before, all

9 leachate shall be collected periodically and dumped on

10 the sewage lagoon. This has already been addressed by

11 other intervenors , but we understand that leachate from

12 the landfill has been tested and it does contain

13 substances such as BTEX and metals which are likely to

14 have a detrimental effect on the sewage lagoon. So,

15 I'm uncomfortable with the statement that you're going

16 to collect the leachate and just dump it on the sewage

17 lagoon. It should be analysed .

18 Mr. Johnson with the town has indicated this is a

19 standard practice in the south. I have no reason to

20 doubt him, but I suspect that they also test the

21 leachate to ensure that whatever is in there is not

22 going to have a detrimental effect on the lagoon or

23 just end up the lagoon being a stopgap until it

24 actually gets to the ocean.

25 These last two bullets are terms and conditions

26 which we are recommending be placed in the, in the

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1 water license, that leachate from landfill must be

2 collected, contained, and treated in an appropriate

3 manner, and that leachate and runoff management plan

4 should be submitted to the Nunavut Water Board for

5 review and approval. I don't believe this is

6 unreasonable, because the City has already indicated

7 they're going to do this. I'm just reiterating what

8 the City has already indicated.

9 Expansion of the existing west 40 site: I almost

10 wish I hadn't put this slide down given what's going on

11 here right now, but I'll wade into it anyways . As I

12 said in the beginning, I have a bit of a history here

13 and I'm familiar with the whys and the wherefores for

14 this site that was established in 1995, and it leads

15 into another topic but which I'll get to presently, but

16 the existing site was -- it was almost an emergency

17 measure, that the City was running out of space at

18 Honey Bag Hill.

19 I do recall that most of the regulatory agencies

20 were vehemently opposed to this and that they wanted

21 something better, but it became a public health issue,

22 it became a rather critical issue, they needed the

23 space. Everybody got together, they said, okay, fine,

24 use this site, and I believe that the term of the

25 license was that it was to be operated for five years

26 and that the City was supposed to come up with a

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1 long-term, 20-year solid waste management plan.

2 I have to say that I've been out of the loop on

3 this for a bit, so I don't know whether that ever came

4 through. To the best of my knowledge, I don't think

5 there ever was a long-term plan submitted in fulfilment

6 of that particular term and condition of that license,

7 but again, that's ancient history.

8 I'm not throwing that up to try and cause problems

9 here. I mean, it's come, it's gone, but this is just a

10 bit of a background on the existing site and the whys

11 and the wherefores.

12 What we do now is the current -- we know now that

13 the current site is approaching capacity. The City

14 proposes to expand to a preprepared site adjacent to

15 the current site, and the proposed site is underlain by

16 an old military dump. We know that there's been

17 limited characterisation of this site, which the -- in

18 the 1995 environmental sciences group report was

19 referred to as site 3, and we know that this was

20 undertaken in 1995, and obviously we all know that land

21 ownership is undetermined, and this appears to be a

22 sticking point.

23 The City would like to use the 1995 study results

24 as their baseline. The DOE is already on record as

25 saying we don't find this unreasonable. We're not

26 uncomfortable with the idea that they're going to move

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1 onto this site, but again, this is going to become a

2 public health issue. This has gone beyond an academic

3 discussion on the legalities of whether or not we're

4 going to expand to this site.

5 From what I understand from what the City says,

6 they're running out of landfill this summer. They're

7 not going to have any more room to put any more garbage

8 in there. So it becomes a practical question of where

9 are we going to put it, and they're proposing to put it

10 into this expanded landfill site.

11 Now, as I said, we're uncomfortable with that.

12 It's a bit of an unusual practice, but there's a lot of

13 unusual things happen in this city, and in the north in

14 general, and sometimes you have to be a little bit

15 pragmatic about it.

16 The only point I want to make about this is the

17 1995 study didn't include all possible parameters

18 concerned, and from what I understand in talking to the

19 people that actually undertook that study, the sampling

20 that they did was superficial. There wasn't a lot of

21 sampling that was done to depth, and there wasn't a lot

22 of sampling, period. One of the missing parameters

23 that I've noted, and I haven't studied the report in

24 detail, was mercury.

25 So, while we're uncomfortable with the idea of

26 them expanding to the site, I'm not -- I can't offer a

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1 solution. I can't say, no, we don't want them to

2 expand to this site, this is a bad thing, and at the

3 same time knowing that sometime down the road it's

4 probably going to become a public health issue because

5 they've got no place to go.

6 So, in principle, we agree with their idea of

7 going onto the site, but with the caveat that we are

8 uncomfortable with this because there is limited

9 information on this site. We don't know anything about

10 the underlying geology of the site.

11 There's been the contention that there is --

12 permafrost will encapsulate all of this waste, and that

13 may be true in a homogenous zone, but we don't know

14 what's underneath there. I don't know if anybody ever

15 done any geological or geotechnical surveys under

16 there.

17 So in theory, yes, the permafrost is probably

18 going to encapsulate this stuff, but without knowing

19 anything about the geotechnical properties or

20 characteristics of the underlying ground, we don't know

21 for sure. You don't know if the permafrost is going to

22 encapsulate it.

23 So what I'm saying is, and it's almost pointless

24 for me to say this I guess because the City has already

25 said that they haven't got the money, and what can you

26 say, if they haven't got the money to do the kind of

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1 characterisation they need, but I'm strongly

2 recommending that for their own protection, they

3 attempt to characterise the site in greater detail and

4 find out what's there and attempt to, to learn more

5 about the site upon which they're going to build the

6 landfill and for which they could ultimately be

7 responsible, depending on, you know, the legalities and

8 whether or not the legal counsel can agree.

9 I've talked so much this is not working any more.

10 There we go.

11 So, as far as the expansion of the west 40 site,

12 what we're looking for is that the terms and conditions

13 of the water license should include a requirement for

14 leachate and runoff control and treatment for the

15 proposed expanded west 40 landfill. And again, this is

16 not unreasonable. The City has already indicated that

17 they're going to do that, we're just codifying it or

18 asking that this be codified in the license.

19 Long term soil waste management plan: You've

20 already heard my shpiel on this. In 1995 when this

21 site was commissioned, the agreement with the

22 regulators, and this was the caveat that they gave to

23 agreeing to this particular site, was that a long-term

24 solid waste management plan be developed.

25 And unfortunately, I mean, I'm not -- I'm in a

26 position generally with these water licenses that the

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1 gentlemen I'm looking at here -- ladies and gentlemen

2 I'm looking at here are not the same ones that were

3 dealing with this issue in 1995. We've had a complete

4 turnover of staff. So I can't dress these individuals

5 down and say "you didn't do this" because they had

6 nothing do with it; they just inherited it from

7 somebody else.

8 But there needs to be some mechanism to hold the

9 City, in general, accountable for this, and so when

10 they say they're supposed to come up with a long-term

11 solid waste management plan, then we expect delivery.

12 Regardless of whether there's a staff turnover, a

13 turnover in the town council and the mayor, there needs

14 to be some accountability. There needs to be a

15 long-term solid waste management plan so that we can

16 avoid this kind of a situation where it's a crisis and

17 we need to move fast and maybe need to make some

18 unpalatable decisions with regard to what we're going

19 do in the short term.

20 So, I definitely recommend that the City be

21 required to provide a long-term detailed solid waste

22 management plan for review within four years of the

23 issuance of the renewal of their water license. I'm

24 just giving you that number just off the top of my

25 head. It should be negotiable. You talk to the town

26 and find out what they're capable of doing, if they're

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1 capable of doing that.

2 Lower Base contamination: I had a discussion with

3 some of the Water Board staff on this, and it was

4 agreed that I would bring this up, but I would restrict

5 it just to where it pertains to the water license. And

6 it pertains to the water license inasmuch as when they

7 dig trenches to lay water and sewer lines, so I'm going

8 to restrict it to that. I'm not going to talk about

9 Lower Base contamination as a whole. It's a huge

10 problem. It's not the fault of the City. It's one of

11 these things they inherited, just like the rest of the

12 dump sites around the city. I'm only going to restrict

13 my comments to trenching for purposes of laying water

14 and sewer lines.

15 We know from anecdotal and physical evidence that

16 Lower Base is underlain by hydrocarbon-contaminated

17 soil, the full extent of which is unknown. I could

18 probably spend a half a day here talking about the

19 history of Lower Base; I'm not going to. There were

20 some grab samples taken in 1990 from excavation in

21 front of the north mart, excavations for the water and

22 sewer lines. One of the soil samples came in at 4200

23 parts per million total petroleum hydrocarbons, which

24 is roughly twice as much as what's allowed for

25 commercial/industrial under the old CCME guidelines.

26 More recently, this became a public issue, then,

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1 in July 2005 with the excavation of trenches for water

2 and sewer lines, and this is why we believe that it is

3 tied in to the water license. However, again, I want

4 to emphasise , we want to restrict this discussion to

5 operations pertaining to the water and sewer lines and

6 pertaining to installing water and sewer lines.

7 There's an old saying by a fellow named Texas

8 Bicks Bender, I don't know if anybody's ever heard of

9 him, but he's kind of a cowboy poet. He came up with a

10 saying, "If you find yourself in a hole, the first

11 thing to do is to stop digging." I'm going to expand

12 on that. It's a bit of an environmental engineering

13 tenet: If you're digging a trench and you find

14 evidence of contamination, the first thing you do is

15 you stop digging, and then you come up with a

16 management plan, decide what you're going to do about

17 it.

18 Our conclusion on this particular topic is that

19 the City cannot and should not be held responsible for

20 historic contamination in this area. It's

21 unreasonable. Nevertheless, if the City is going to

22 excavate in areas which are suspected to be

23 contaminated, then they have to come up with a

24 management plan for the contaminated soil and the

25 water. And I don't think this is an unreasonable

26 request. I do believe it is part of the water license

191

1 -- or part of the operation. People may disagree with

2 me, but I'm throwing it out here, and I'll be happy to

3 talk about it with anybody.

4 Abandonment and restoration plans: Under the

5 abandonment and restoration plans section on the FPP

6 site for Nunavut Water Board, there was a copy of the

7 aforementioned 1995 environmental study of a military

8 installation, six waste disposal sites. This was

9 listed as the abandonment and restoration plan for the

10 City.

11 I'm suggesting that perhaps the City needs to put

12 a bit more effort into abandonment and restoration

13 plans. With that in mind, we believe that the City

14 should be required to submit up-to-date abandonment and

15 restoration plans for those facilities over which they

16 have control and which are part of their day-to-day

17 operations and which have or are intended to be

18 decommissioned. And again, I'm throwing out just a

19 number.

20 I think that it should be negotiable with the

21 town, depending on what they're capable of doing.

22 Let's keep in mind these sites have been here for

23 probably close to 50 years, so I think, you know, if

24 the Water Board perhaps might want to be flexible with

25 the City in terms of when they should be expected to

26 submit those plans, but I'm suggesting four years

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1 within the issuance of the water license, or within a

2 time frame acceptable to the Nunavut Water Board.

3 I haven't specifically mentioned any sites. I

4 know some of them are contentious issues. There are a

5 couple of sites, though, I think that people

6 acknowledge that are part of the operation. I believe

7 Honey Bag Hill would fall under that category, and the

8 sewage lagoon.

9 Emergency response and spill plan: We generally

10 find the spill plan to be, for the most part, complete

11 and acceptable. We've made some minor suggestions in

12 our submission for improvement. My door is open. If

13 the City wants to ask me questions about it or

14 fine-tune it, I'm always happy to provide advice. I

15 won't write your spill plan for you, but I'll certainly

16 provide you with advice.

17 Generally, when I review a spill plan I always

18 have a caveat on it. I guess I've been a bureaucrat

19 for a long time, so I generally like to have a caveat

20 attached to my summation, and essentially, yes, we've

21 reviewed the spill plan, but ultimately, the City

22 should be fully prepared to manage the hazardous

23 materials under their control, including during

24 emergency. That is a basic expectation of anybody who

25 is managing hazardous materials.

26 And that concludes the solid waste management

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1 portion of DOE's presentation, and I'm open to comments

2 and slings and arrows. Thank you.

3 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you very much.

4 We'll have a short five-minute break before we

5 proceed with the questions and responses to the, to the

6 presentation.

7 (PROCEEDINGS ADJOURNED AT 2:19 P.M.)

8 (PROCEEDINGS RECONVENED AT 2:30 P.M.)

9 THE CHAIRMAN: Let us proceed with the GN

10 presentation, Robert Eno . At this time the floor is

11 open for questions, so I would like the applicant to

12 open the floor for question first.

13 MR . BAKER: Geoff Baker, City of Iqaluit.

14 The only comment I would have is what Dionne has

15 been reiterating since this hearing started, is that we

16 prioritise these issues and concerns, and we'll address

17 the issues of high priority initially and work from

18 there. Thank you.

19 Geoff Baker again from the City of Iqaluit. If

20 possible, we would certainly appreciate these issues

21 put in priority prior to the closing of this hearing.

22 Thank you.

23 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you.

24 Robert?

25 MR . ENO : Robert Eno from DOE. I have

26 actually compiled a rough list of the priorities, and

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1 we'll present them on our next and last phase of the

2 presentation.

3 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you.

4 Is there any question from interested parties? Is

5 there any, is there any question from the public?

6 Okay. How about the Water Board, do you have any

7 questions? Thank you.

8 WATER BOARD STAFF QUESTIONS GOVERNMENT OF NUNAVUT DOE

9 ON SOLID WASTE DISPOSAL FACILITIES:

10 MS. FILIATRAULT : Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Dionne

11 Filiatrault .

12 Robert, in your presentation you alluded to

13 reclamation. In the application that was filed by the

14 City, there is reference to historical landfill sites,

15 abandoned sites. You alluded to them in your

16 presentation and also indicated that additional

17 reclamation plans are needed. It's possibly a

18 clarification from you, and maybe not yourself, but

19 another GN department.

20 There were two previous A & R plans that I'm aware

21 of that were submitted under a previous water license

22 for several of the sites, one being out at Apex, and I

23 think the other one is what everybody has been

24 referring to as Honey Bag Hill. These documents were

25 done in roughly 1996-1997, and those were, from my

26 recollection, not approved, but is there -- do you from

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1 your perspective have any indication on whether or not

2 those plans were implemented or not?

3 MR . ENO : I'm not aware of any of those plans

4 that were implemented. I believe there was some

5 initial work done on Honey Bag Hill, but I don't

6 believe that it was completed, and I don't know if

7 there was anything done with the Apex dump. I don't

8 think there was anything done. I think one of the --

9 I'm sorry, Robert Eno from DOE.

10 I think one of the things that probably has to be

11 sorted out before the abandonment and restoration plans

12 is who is responsible for what, and that may be a

13 difficult one, and this is one of the reasons why I

14 suggested a four-year span so that this can be sorted

15 out so that people, the City and the regulators, can

16 agree, "okay, this is definitely ours, and this is up

17 in the air."

18 Because it would be difficult for me to advocate

19 the City having to clean up the site for which they are

20 not responsible or for what -- for contamination that

21 wasn't caused by them. But there are clearcut cases

22 where the City has facilities -- they've operated

23 facilities that have to be reclaimed, and Honey Bag

24 Hill would be one of them, the sewage lagoon would be

25 another obvious one, but I don't want to expand it any

26 more because we're getting into a bit of a sticky

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1 situation with respect to legal ownership.

2 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you very much.

3 Water Board staff?

4 MS. FILIATRAULT : Thank you, Mr. Chairman. With your

5 indulgence, based on one of the recommendations that

6 was made by GN, I guess I would request if we could get

7 some clarification from the City.

8 Previous licenses required submissions of

9 abandonment and restoration plans. They talked about

10 sites in your supplemental questionnaire that I think

11 you felt were -- that are your responsibility, and I

12 refer to the supplemental questionnaire, page 12 of 27,

13 there's a listing of various sites and confirm whether

14 or not those are -- do you feel -- how do you feel

15 about implementing the recommendation by GN with

16 respect to the submission of A & R facilities for all

17 of the sites that you have listed in your application?

18 MR . CHAIRMAN: Thank you.

19 Who's going to respond?

20 MR . BAKER: Geoff Baker, City of Iqaluit.

21 Could you just clarify what page that was on

22 again? Thank you.

23 MS. FILIATRAULT: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

24 I believe it was on 12 of 27 of the supplemental

25 questionnaire. It's at the bottom.

26 THE CHAIRMAN: Bill, you want to say something?

197

1 MR . TILLEMAN : Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It's Bill

2 Tilleman . Yeah, if we could just -- we'll just pass it

3 over and give the City a minute to read it so they can

4 think about their response, sir.

5 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you.

6 Applicant, Geoff Baker.

7 MR . BAKER: Geoff Baker, City of Iqaluit.

8 I think the intention of filling out this

9 municipal questionnaire was to identify abandoned or

10 restored solid waste facilities, certainly not to

11 intend that the City was responsible for any of these,

12 any of these facilities. Thank you.

13 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you.

14 Water Board staff?

15 MS. FILIATRAULT : Again, apologies, Mr. Chair. Thank

16 you. Dionne Filiatrault .

17 If I could get one more clarification from the

18 City. There were, as I had mentioned to Mr. Eno , there

19 were two sites and two plans that were submitted. One

20 was Apex, and the other one I believe was Honey Bag

21 Hill. Plans were drafted by Oliver Mangione McCalla .

22 Those plans were not approved, but were the plans ever

23 implemented regardless of a lack of approval? Are

24 those -- is Honey Bag Hill and the Apex site

25 remediated ?

26 THE CHAIRMAN: Applicants?

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1 MR . BURDEN: Steve Burden, Trow and Associates.

2 I believe those plans, as you mentioned, were not

3 approved; however, they were mainly for the placement

4 of cover material over the sites. The City had started

5 placing cover material, and, as I recall -- and we're

6 going back a number of years -- as I recall, they were

7 stopped by regulatory authorities because the plans had

8 not been approved, but there has been some material

9 placed as cover at both of those locations, but that's

10 my recollections from about ten years ago.

11 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you.

12 Water Board staff. Dionne? Bill?

13 MR . TILLEMAN : Just one last question before we do

14 a couple of exhibits and that is, so we just heard from

15 the City that the work kind of began and then it

16 stopped because of some regulatory uncertainty over the

17 plan. So could you clarify for us what regulator was

18 involved, and why did they stop the work, and what

19 happened next?

20 MR . BURDEN: Steve Burden, Trow and Associates,

21 for the City.

22 Unfortunately, I wasn't party to any of those --

23 what happened at the time. The plans were developed on

24 behalf of the City to place fill and grade the site as

25 a cover material, and as mentioned, my understanding is

26 they weren't approved. The City at some point in time

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1 after, my understanding, had an earth-moving project

2 that they had undertaken, and they used these sites as

3 a disposal, as part of the cover. However, I wasn't

4 party to what happened. I'm not quite sure who shut it

5 down, but my understanding was it was shut down by

6 regulatory authorities.

7 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you.

8 Dionne, do you have more questions?

9 MS. FILIATRAULT : No, Mr. Chairman, but there's a

10 couple housekeeping -- we have received a couple of

11 copies of the study that was referenced by Environment

12 Canada this morning that we had marked as Exhibit 9,

13 and we would make that available to the applicant and

14 the parties for their review. The other one is a new

15 exhibit we received from Indian and Northern Affairs,

16 their list of priorities, and we would request that

17 that be marked as Exhibit 13.

18 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you.

19 EXHIBIT 13:

20 INAC SUGGESTIONS TO NWB FOR PRIORITIES UNDER

21 THE IQALUIT WATER LICENSE

22 THE CHAIRMAN: Robert, thank you.

23 We will move on. The agenda is, another one under

24 the presentation is to come up with presented by Bill

25 MacKenzie Humanitarian Society. Jim Little, take the

26 floor. You can sit here, yeah.

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1 MR. LITTLE: Who would get the disk?

2 Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman. I must say that I'm

3 quite impressed with all the presenters here.

4 THE CHAIRMAN: Jim, before you have presentations,

5 be sworn in by our legal counsel.

6 MR. TILLEMAN: Please state your name and spell

7 your last name for the record.

8 MR. LITTLE: Jim Little, L-I-T-T-L-E.

9 JIM LITTLE, SWORN

10 MR. TILLEMAN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

11 THE CHAIRMAN: Okay, Jim.

12 PRESENTATION BY BILL MACKENZIE HUMANITARIAN SOCIETY:

13 MR. LITTLE: Well, I must say, I'm quite

14 impressed by all the technical information that's

15 provided by all the folks involved here. My

16 presentation, on the other hand, will be more practical

17 in nature. I'm not an academic, I'm more of a

18 practical person. If there's a problem, I try to solve

19 it, and I've had fairly decent success with that in the

20 past. In any regulation or license that I needed, I

21 haven't had a problem with it because I try to make a

22 practice of doing it right in the first place.

23 Anyway, I'm here as a spokesperson for the Bill

24 MacKenzie Humanitarian Society, and there's the old

25 fellow there, and what I'm going to be talking about

26 here is the economics of composting here, in particular

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1 in the north, and I think I'll make a good case, I

2 hope.

3 Bill MacKenzie was -- he was a long-term resident

4 of Iqaluit that passed away in 2001. He was a proud

5 Scotsman and well-known and loved throughout Nunavut .

6 He was also a strong proponent of responsible waste

7 management practices. Our society now, on his behalf,

8 we're a non-profit society. We're committed to

9 improving the quality of life here in Nunavut . Our

10 goal is the promotion and implementation of responsible

11 waste management practices for Iqaluit. We develop and

12 promote initiatives that foster civic pride and

13 community involvement in an environmentally and

14 economically responsible way to beautify our city and

15 enhance our way of life.

16 What we're going to present here is the problem,

17 the volume of it, and what it's made up of. Of course,

18 that's our waste stream. The consequences, we have

19 greenhouse gases, we have noxious leachate, and we have

20 squandered resources. The solutions we present will be

21 ethical, they will be efficient, and they will be

22 economic. The benefits will be for the city, for our

23 community, and for the future.

24 Okay, I'm scooting ahead here now. I've got to

25 back up somehow. Can I do that? I'm not a technical

26 person, I'm sorry. Sorry about that.

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1 I put this stuff together rather hurriedly, and I

2 was up to 2:00 last night, and then I couldn't sleep so

3 I was up again at 7:00 in the morning, so I really

4 haven't had a chance to even review what I've done.

5 This is probably the better of the two presentations.

6 But this is where our garbage goes here today.

7 That's our methane generator in the middle. This is

8 where we put our garbage in the past. Now, I don't

9 know if this is going to show up very good or not. The

10 little red circles are all existing landfills, past

11 dumps. There's -- this isn't showing up all that well,

12 but as you can see, there's quite a few red circles on

13 there, and we want to put a few more.

14 One area that's missing is probably all the

15 contamination on this beach area. I know there's -- in

16 Lower Base, there's a lot in the streets, the

17 hydrocarbons, but there's certainly a lot on the beach

18 as well. And then we have all the effluent from the

19 sewage lagoon from years, since 1978 that's happened.

20 And now there's another circle to be drawn in here, I

21 guess that's the new cell, and then now Earth Tech is

22 proposing that we use an area A here for a further area

23 to dispose of waste and to deal with it. So I don't

24 know what the future lies. We're getting -- we're kind

25 of getting circled with garbage dumps.

26 And how much garbage does Iqaluit produce? Well,

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1 that's the problem. There's quite a pile of it, and

2 it's getting bigger all the time. In Canada, the rule

3 of thumb is each person produces a tonne of garbage per

4 year. That's just over five pounds a day. And if you

5 use that with our population, say, approximately 6500

6 people, we're going to have 6500 tonnes. I like to

7 work in weight because it's easy, you know. Volumes

8 are misleading, but weights are fairly accurate.

9 Now, the 6500 tonnes does not include the

10 industrial, commercial, and institutional waste streams

11 which is made up of, for a large part, of garbage, wood

12 waste from construction debris, and organic matter from

13 the different stores and that, a very significant

14 amount. And of course it does -- that 6500 tonnes does

15 not include sewage sludge.

16 Now, there's our landfill again. I like that

17 little expression there, but that level there, I'm

18 just -- I'm putting this on here just as a sort of an

19 illustration as to where we're going with our waste

20 stream. That line there is where we are at about 2002

21 when we stopped burning, and it could be considerably

22 below grade because they excavated a lot out of here

23 before they actually started filling in, but for the

24 sake of this exercise, we'll leave it there. Now,

25 there we are today.

26 Now, it's not quite -- you can see a little bit of

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1 daylight underneath here, but there's -- over in this

2 section here in the new landfill, there's huge

3 stockpiles of shredded material that would quite easily

4 level this all off. So between 2002 and 2005, that's

5 how much we have, and in ten years, that's where the

6 pile is going to be. It's going to be that high. If

7 you -- you know, I got my own little ruler out and I

8 measured this, and then I figured that was three years,

9 and I figured up, and that's where it will be in ten

10 years, and that does not include any sludge that we're

11 going to put in there.

12 Now, our sludge production -- I think I've screwed

13 up again, here. Maybe not. Okay, 3.3 tonnes per day

14 is what I think that we are going to be producing.

15 Now, I'm quite confused with some of the documents that

16 I've been able to sift through, but what that amounts

17 to is 112 tonnes per year. Now, that's based on our

18 current population, and that's based on the -- that's

19 assuming that the sewage treatment plant is complete.

20 And we would have 371 trailer loads a day -- that's

21 level, completely flush with the top -- of sewage

22 sludge.

23 Now, before we go any further, I just want to ask

24 you -- this is a kind of a quiz, and maybe I shouldn't

25 have put this in here, but I'm going to point out how

26 we can spend our money a little bit better. We're

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1 already spending significant sums of money on waste

2 management, but I believe that a lot of it, we're

3 throwing it away, and I believe that throughout the

4 course of this presentation you'll see that where there

5 is a much better way of doing it.

6 Also, something else people might be surprised of,

7 that there are good, definitely good viruses and

8 bacteria. It's not all HIV and all that stuff.

9 Another thing is people -- I found a lot of

10 southern technocrats believe that the Arctic cold is

11 something that we have to fight against and overcome

12 when, you know, in actual fact, it will kill people

13 with hyperthermia and that, but as most Inuit know, if

14 it wasn't for the cold, you know, we wouldn't be able

15 to get out and hunt seal in the winter. It provides a

16 highway. So, there's good and bad to Arctic cold, and

17 I'll certainly show you how the cold is going to work

18 for our benefit here with waste management.

19 And this is another thing that -- I could have

20 continued this list on with more technical stuff, but

21 nitrogen, I've run across that word often. I don't

22 know what it is. It's an element, but, you know, on

23 one hand you'll hear about it being an essential

24 fertiliser . My grandfather used to buy it by the

25 truckload to put on his fields. Took a lot of energy

26 to make it and it was an important ingredient to make

206

1 things grow; but on the other hand, if it's misused,

2 it's a pollution. So there's, there's two ways of

3 looking at it, as in a lot of things.

4 So anyway, everything we have is going here.

5 That's, that's the only place in Iqaluit that we can

6 dispose of our garbage. But one of the consequences of

7 doing that -- at this point in time we have no choice.

8 Most people in the city have no choice but to

9 contribute to producing greenhouse gases. We have no

10 option.

11 According to the federal government, it produced

12 this one-tonne challenge thing, maybe you've seen this

13 around. If you compost -- each person, if they

14 compost, they get 12.5 percent of a tonne per year if

15 they -- simply by composting. So, with 6500 people --

16 now, I worked this out for over ten years, that's 8,000

17 tonnes of greenhouse gas. I don't know if that's

18 significant or not. To me it's, you know, we have to,

19 we have to look at these things, and that is as honest

20 a number as I can come up. This does not, again,

21 include sewage sludge which would be a very -- would

22 produce, again, a lot of greenhouse gases.

23 Here is a picture of our greenhouse generator,

24 right here. We're building this meticulously, and in

25 ten years it's going to be up here. Well, we're not

26 going to do that. We're going to spread it out over

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1 here and over here and who knows where, but it's going

2 to continue to produce generations and generations of

3 greenhouse gases. And methane, which is what we're

4 producing here, I've heard it to be eight times more

5 potent than ordinary greenhouse gases, so it's a very

6 potent greenhouse gas.

7 So, anyway, a clever person solves a problem; a

8 wise person avoids it. And I think we have to avoid

9 contributing further to the problem; it's kind of up to

10 us.

11 Another consequence is leachate generation. I

12 know that's going to get under the skin of some people

13 here, but I see that as a significant problem. There

14 is a picture that was taken in '91. This area now is

15 completely full of metal, but I'll bet you anything the

16 water in there is still there, and it isn't -- you

17 know, there's a wash through of this area, and it's

18 coming out here, and I know there's a lot of stuff in

19 there that shouldn't be in there.

20 Again, one of the contributing factors is the

21 moisture content of the organic material. I'll get to

22 that, but I'm estimating it roughly -- I mean, it's

23 hard to estimate the moisture content exactly, but I'm

24 working on the reduction ratio of raw organics to

25 composted material, and it works out to be about that

26 number, 1900 tonnes of water that we're adding to the

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1 landfill every day -- or every year.

2 The question is, do we know what we're doing? I

3 guess that's the thing. I mean, the consequences are

4 going to be happening here. Here's an expression.

5 This was written in 1992 by -- there was 1600

6 scientists got together, a lot of them were Nobel prize

7 winners, and they figured one or fewer decades before,

8 you know, all humanity is threatened, and, you know, I

9 don't think things have gotten any better in the world

10 since 1992.

11 So I guess, you know, there seems to be two bodies

12 of thought out there. We can either believe one side

13 or the other side, and I believe most folks here see

14 the significant changes to our environment, and it's

15 manmade.

16 So in ten years, here we go. There we are in ten

17 years. And if, if our sewage treatment plant was

18 operational, phase two was completed and we were

19 diverting all of the sludge into the landfill,

20 composted or otherwise, it is going to be up here

21 somewhere. I don't know. I never worked it out, but

22 it's out there. In ten years, there's 12,000 tonnes of

23 it that's going to be added up here, full of

24 pathogens -- well, hopefully the stuff is going to be

25 treated within, you know, within the next decade or so.

26 So, you can understand the problem here. Inuit

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1 lived on this land for thousands of years in harmony

2 with the environment. You won't find any significant

3 landfill sites or arguments over who owns the property

4 because it's contaminated because of what Inuit did on

5 this land. It's all white men that done it, or we

6 created this problem. Inuit never wasted much of

7 anything.

8 These dumps are, for the most part, imported from

9 the south. Everything that's in these dumps are

10 imported from the south, so we have to recognise the

11 fact that southern solutions may provide some of the

12 answers. And again, we're not alone here, but the

13 question is, but at what cost? Everything here that I

14 hear talk about, you know, all these good things we're

15 going to do, there's always that qualifying statement:

16 If we've got the money, if we've got the money. So

17 that's the point of this presentation, to point out

18 some of the obvious things.

19 So there's -- you know, we've heard the expression

20 the cycle of life. This is -- hopefully you'll

21 understand the problem here a little bit better.

22 Understanding the solution. Here's what we're doing

23 now. We're making chemicals to grow our food, we're

24 eating the food, we're taking -- discarding the waste

25 food and we're crapping the stuff out and we're

26 throwing it back out into the environment. We've

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1 broken a chain here. What has to happen?

2 And this is -- you know, a farmer in the south

3 understands this full well. You, you add fertiliser to

4 the field. My grandfather had dairy cattle, and every

5 year, every spring of the year he'd take his manure

6 from his dairy cows and he'd spread it onto fields. A

7 lot of times it wasn't composted, it was just pure, raw

8 manure, and it made things grow. If you didn't put it

9 on the fields, things didn't grow. They wouldn't grow

10 without the manure.

11 So, it's a very -- it's a balance, it's a delicate

12 balance. It's the way life was intended. We've broken

13 that, and we're paying the price for it. But now this

14 is the cycle. This is how it should work.

15 Okay. There's something that will never happen in

16 Iqaluit if we keep on doing what we're doing. The only

17 way we can do anything like that in Iqaluit is to

18 import the soil from the south. But our climate is

19 changing here. We're growing stuff like crazy in the

20 compost that we have produced, but it's a limited

21 supply because there's only about a hundred families

22 that are doing it so far.

23 So what's in our garbage? Here's a study that was

24 -- Trow Engineering, I believe it was Trow , did in

25 1992. This is -- this represents our entire

26 residential waste stream. You can see that 25 percent,

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1 a whole quarter of what we throw out, is food waste.

2 Now, just -- this is just residences. Now, of course,

3 what I'm going to be talking about here is composting.

4 This here is compostable , completely. It's full of

5 nutrients and high -- it's a high-value product.

6 But you also notice here in the bottom of the

7 screen here we've got cardboard and paper products,

8 another significant portion. That all can be composted

9 as well because it grew; it was alive at one time.

10 Getting it out of the waste stream, now, that may be

11 the trick. That is not going to be so easy.

12 Anyway, here is our waste, our total waste here,

13 residential. Again, I'm just trying to ballpark this

14 stuff, and honestly, I'm trying to be as accurate as I

15 can, but there's 6500 tonnes in our waste stream.

16 Sludge, at our current population, assuming phase two

17 is done -- now, it's hard to figure out where to draw

18 the line on this because the sewage treatment plant is,

19 you know, up and running, I think.

20 And anyway, I think it's 1200 tonnes per year that

21 we'll be putting out, out of that place, assuming that

22 phase two is going to be done. So, that's 7700 tonnes

23 a year of, of weight -- of waste, but this does not

24 include any construction and demolition debris, it

25 doesn't include anything from the industrial/commercial

26 sectors.

212

1 So we have organic waste which is compostable ,

2 which is a portion of this. It turns out the

3 residential waste stream is 25 percent, according to

4 Trow . My, my -- we won a national contest here on

5 diversion. We weighed everybody's garbage for 10

6 weeks, a hundred families for 10 weeks, and we had it

7 over 30 percent. But anyway, we'll leave the number

8 there at 25 percent, of which -- and then there's

9 another 1200 tonnes 'cause every bit of that is

10 compostable , so we brought that over there, and we add

11 that up because if you're going to -- if you're going

12 to compost sewage sludge, you can actually include with

13 that carbon, an equal amount of carbon.

14 So what we're going to be taking out of our waste

15 stream is over 4,000 tonnes a year, and the percentage

16 of our waste stream that is compostable is 52.4

17 percent.

18 Now, again, you could play with these numbers,

19 because this here does not include this stuff, but this

20 carbon, which is in this amount, is actually coming

21 from here because we can get the cardboard easily.

22 I've probably got everybody confused here now, but

23 honestly you have to trust me that only -- that over 50

24 percent is quite easily composted, and we can reduce

25 our waste stream by 50 percent by weight.

26 So what is composting? Now, this is a fancy

213

1 definition here. I'm not even going to read it. The

2 important thing to note here is that it's a miraculous

3 phenomena. It's a gift from nature. It's God's plan

4 for waste disposal, is what it is. It's a natural

5 process where you have tiny microbes and bacteria that

6 are actually eating the waste, and they devour it. And

7 in their process of that they produce heat, the heat

8 kills the pathogens, so you end up with something

9 that's potentially raw, full of diseases and viruses

10 and bad stuff, you end up with something that is, that

11 is healthy and beneficial to the environment. That

12 quote was from an author.

13 So, composting is actually turning waste into a

14 resource. Now, there's a process. This is from a

15 hundred people. This is the waste here, and this is

16 the resource. This is the finished compost. So this

17 to this, and compost will turn gravel into grass. So

18 we planted -- we applied a little bit of compost.

19 That's about two inches of compost on that sand we

20 worked into it, and threw a few seeds on it, and

21 there's what we've got.

22 Now, there's no reason that whole hillside

23 couldn't be green. There's no reason this whole town

24 couldn't be green. You can take compost, you can --

25 you know, in Prince Edward Island, the compost -- the

26 soil there is like two feet thick, the top soil. We

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1 don't have any top soil here. How can you get grass to

2 grow on gravel?

3 You have to have some nutrients in there, and

4 we're taking thousands of tonnes of our rich nutrients

5 that cost an arm and a leg to buy at the store, and

6 just because we didn't want to buy it, it gets thrown

7 out -- just because we didn't want to eat it, we're

8 saying it's no good, so we take it and we make

9 pollution out of it. That's what we're doing with it.

10 But if we do something proper with it, we can create a

11 garden in this community, I mean -- and, you know, it's

12 going to prevent erosion -- anyway, I'm getting ahead

13 of myself here now.

14 So, the thing is we've got an army of microbes

15 that are going to work here for nothing. They'll work

16 for food. They will dispose of our garbage for us, and

17 they don't cost anything. Right? Their food is the

18 nitrogen. Here's nitrogen, here's carbon, here's

19 water. Those are the basic ingredients you need for

20 the composting, plus you need the microbes, the right

21 kind of microbes. And we're going to engineer the

22 microbes, and we're going to create a microbe farm.

23 And by providing the right kind of oxygen, keeping

24 oxygen in the pile, we're going to have microbes that

25 will destroy the diseases that are in the sewage sludge

26 -- or in the sewage sludge or waste food. Ecoli ,

215

1 salmonella, all these different viruses that are --

2 that kill people, the microbes will devour them and

3 destroy them.

4 So there's two different composting methods that I

5 want to talk about. One is called anaerobic

6 composting. That's composting that takes place in our

7 landfill, deprived of oxygen. It's still requires

8 nitrogen, it requires carbon, it requires water, it

9 requires microbes. We're going to grow the wrong kind

10 of microbes in this, the ones that create stink.

11 They're going to -- without oxygen, they're going to

12 result in methane gas, which is our greenhouse gas, a

13 very inferior compost, and odour .

14 Now, if we do it right -- here we go, here.

15 Methane is eight times more destructive than carbon

16 dioxide as far as greenhouse gas is concerned. The

17 right kind we're going to control here. We're going to

18 process this and make it the way we want to make it.

19 It's going to have nitrogen, it's going to be carbon,

20 and it's going to have water. That's our waste stream,

21 that's our organic waste stream.

22 We're also going to grow our microbes in that with

23 oxygen, with oxygen. We're going to keep the pile full

24 of air. We're not going to get it mucky and muddy.

25 And lo and behold, it's going to create heat and a very

26 superior compost.

216

1 But again, what is the cost? You know, nothing

2 happens for nothing around here, eh? So, the reality.

3 A city in the south couldn't afford the machinery to

4 compost. A similar-sized community in the south, it's

5 not practical for them to think about composting for

6 waste management because the infrastructure

7 requirements are too high. So why am I sitting here

8 saying that it's not -- that it's something that we can

9 do inexpensively? Why is that?

10 There's the answer right there. It's our

11 beautiful Arctic climate. That's one of God's gifts to

12 the Arctic. We don't recognise it, we don't take

13 advantage of it, but it creates a reality for us for

14 waste management, and a lot of other things, that needs

15 to be looked at.

16 Now, the rationale here. For most of the year

17 everything is frozen. I mean, everybody knows that.

18 So organics -- I could summarise this a lot quicker, I

19 suppose. Our food waste -- you know, in the south,

20 they got to pick up their organic waste just the same

21 as we do up here, I mean with garbage trucks, except

22 the thing is up here, everything is frozen. Down

23 south, you have -- you know, if you've got, say, a

24 rotten chicken, what's going to happen with that on the

25 side of the road, it's going to collect flies, rats,

26 vermin, it's going to create diseases, it's going to be

217

1 foul smelling, and you've got to get rid of it. Nobody

2 wants to handle it.

3 A little community like this, who are you going to

4 hire to look after this stuff because it's foul? You

5 have a little bit -- you know, I've found that a little

6 pile of garbage smells just as bad as a big one; it's

7 all the same thing. So here everything is frozen, so

8 as a result of everything being frozen, you can only

9 compost in the summer. So instead of costing more up

10 here, which is usually what always happens, everything

11 costs more in the Arctic, but not composting.

12 Composting is one -- well, I couldn't put

13 one-third down there, but it could be between one-third

14 and one-quarter of the cost here to what it is in the

15 south. So, that's an extremely significant savings.

16 And because we don't need all this machinery to process

17 this stuff year around, we can do it very simply. Our

18 machinery new purchases are almost non-existent. And

19 certainly our soils need the nutrients.

20 And our short summers, and I've proven this with

21 thanks to people in the GN Department of Environment,

22 that we can produce a class A compost here in our

23 brief, in our brief summer, and a class A compost is

24 something that's safe for growing food in. Something

25 that's safe for our children to play in.

26 Here is a picture of our temperature probe.

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1 That's a big old meat thermometer that is about yea

2 long. We stuck that into the middle of our compost

3 pile, and you can see our temperatures are over 55

4 degrees. And, you know, anything in there, any

5 diseases in there, this is quite self- pasteurising . I

6 didn't add heat to this. This is happening all by

7 itself. Mind you, we made sure there was lots of air

8 in there, you see. That's the key.

9 So there's an example. This was compliments of

10 the Department of Environment. The blue line is the

11 temperature, and here we can't read it very well, but

12 those are the dates, and this is the temperatures along

13 here. So anything above this line here we're getting

14 into pathogen reduction. And in here, right there,

15 right across there, that's where we can declare the

16 compost to be class A, which is safe for growing food.

17 So you can put your children into this pile of

18 this stuff and let them play around. They don't have

19 to worry about it. I mean, as soon as the dog goes in

20 there and craps, well, that's a different story, which

21 is -- you know, I don't know how many playgrounds

22 you've been into and didn't trip over the stuff, but

23 that doesn't seem to be a concern, but it should be.

24 Anyway, but what is the cost? I mean, this is an

25 important factor. Again, everybody wants to know what

26 this is all about. So we've got -- we've got -- how do

219

1 we -- we've got to remove the organics at home. We've

2 got to collect the waste material. We've got to store

3 it here because it's frozen. We can't do anything with

4 it while it's frozen, so that's a problem, and then we

5 have to do the actual composting. And then once it's

6 composted, we have to process it so that we can

7 actually take it out and use it.

8 So here is -- here's what we need. Everybody --

9 we have a hundred and some families that are doing

10 this. They've got one of these things in their

11 kitchen. You can keep it anywhere you like. Food

12 scraps go in there. You can scrape your plate in

13 there, you can peel your potatoes in there, whatever

14 you want can go into that: kitty litter, dog hair, egg

15 shells. If it was alive, it can go in there. If it

16 won't fit in there, it will fit in this one. We'll

17 take chicken bones and deep fryer fat.

18 Anyway, when this is full you put it in this, and

19 then every two weeks we go by and pick that up. The

20 cost: 7.50 each for a bin like that, times 2400 --

21 there's 2400 families here, so if we were to give

22 everybody in town one, it would cost $18,000. These

23 roadside bins are about $22 each. We've got some with

24 wheels and some without, so the price changes a little

25 bit. They're designed to hold the average family's

26 waste for two weeks. $22 times 2400 families, that's

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1 52,000. So that's a total cost of $70,000 with a

2 hundred percent compliance, but there's no way we're

3 going to snap our fingers and say we've got to spend

4 $70,000 'cause the whole city wants to do this and they

5 know how, and everything like that. So it's not a

6 realistic thing to think that that 's going to happen

7 overnight.

8 As far as collection is concerned, the back of my

9 pickup's been doing the job. That's, that's -- this

10 here full and this one. There's usually two of these

11 that are full from 100 families every two weeks, but if

12 the whole city was doing it, we could -- this -- a

13 truck like this could go pick it up, too, eh? I mean.

14 They're already getting paid. Our tax dollars is

15 already being paid to -- paying these guys to do it,

16 it's just a matter of the people at home separating

17 this stuff.

18 Here's a collection cost. Now, this is straight

19 from our city budget. Now, I want to make sure

20 everybody understands this. This is what it has cost

21 the City here to pick up our garbage and take it to the

22 landfill. Now, you can correct me if I'm wrong, but

23 these were quotes that were given to me, and I expect

24 them to be accurate. But this is with absolutely no

25 benefit. The only benefit that we have here is the

26 stuff is being taken to the dump out of our sight.

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1 Now, I worked it out, how much it would take for

2 the City crew to go around and pick up our garbage if

3 it was organic and in those bins. Now, I may be off on

4 this. It may be less, it may be more, I don't know,

5 but it's in the ballpark.

6 So I figured two men, 20 hours a week, at $50 an

7 hour. We've got to pay these guys pretty good, but

8 anyway, they're going to be paid, and that would cost

9 $104,000 for them to pick up our garbage. Now, you got

10 to remember that we're already paying them. They're

11 already being paid to pick up our garbage.

12 All I'm suggesting here is the stuff be

13 segregated, and instead of picking everything up at

14 once in one great big bag, we're going to pick it up in

15 two bags, sort of thing. That's the only thing.

16 There's no additional costs here. And this was

17 creating a great deal of confusion at another

18 presentation that I did.

19 Now, up here you'll notice here, for sludge

20 delivery to the landfill I'm estimating at $75,000

21 'cause there's going to be 500 and some loads of sludge

22 going to the landfill a year. And I think that is an

23 extremely low price, considering the problems that

24 they're going to encounter. They're going to have to

25 have snowplowing crews to keep the roads open to get to

26 the sewage treatment plant. They're going to have to

222

1 get the roads plowed open to get the wagon to the dump,

2 going to be all kinds of problems, so I think that

3 $75,000 is, is pretty low. So this is what we're going

4 to be spending a year to dispose of our garbage with no

5 benefit.

6 Now, if we're going to do the composting thing

7 here, I've reduced this cost from 75 to $25,000, and I

8 will get to that in another presentation a little later

9 on regarding the sewage treatment plant, but I think we

10 can reduce that cost significantly.

11 So, this is what we're -- what I think. It could

12 be more than that, but I think this is what it's

13 costing us to take our garbage to the landfill and

14 dispose of it with no benefit. So this is money that's

15 being poorly spent, in my mind. Yeah. So $129,000 a

16 year to destroy a resource and to create pollution.

17 That is exactly what we're doing. We're destroying a

18 resource and we're creating more pollution. That's

19 what we're spending at it. It's almost deliberate, in

20 my mind.

21 Okay. So, here we go. There's -- from there to

22 there, not including the sludge, our sludge is going to

23 be up here somewhere. This is what -- yeah. This

24 figure here would be including the sludge, but that's

25 what we're going to spend over the next ten years to

26 take our garbage to the dump with no -- that's just the

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1 organic material, the resource.

2 Whoops, whoops. Anyway, sorry about that.

3 So, the other problem is storage. Now, here the

4 storage -- I don't know if you folks -- you were at the

5 landfill today, you walked right around my compost

6 pile. The size of it is probably twice as big as this

7 now, and I've got probably 10 or 12 sheets of plywood

8 and an overall tarp trying to keep the birds off it.

9 That's my biggest problem, is keeping the birds -- the

10 ravens away from it. It's kind of a banquet for them,

11 but anyway, we're fairly successful at it. But

12 ultimately, with 2400 families, ideally we'd need a

13 building like that, and that is mostly to keep the

14 birds away.

15 There's federal laws -- or not federal laws,

16 there's federal guidelines from the Department of

17 Transport, I thought somebody would bring them up

18 today, regarding the placement of landfills in the

19 vicinity of runways. We are, like all Nunavut

20 communities, in breach of those guidelines, and the

21 danger of bird strikes is increased by the, you know,

22 the amount of organic waste that's in our waste stream.

23 So anyway, this building here, this is just

24 something I was able to scan in. I worked it out. I

25 got some quotes on what a building like this would cost

26 to do all our composting, the sewage sludge and the

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1 waste organics . But for the most part, we can do the

2 composting outside. After the process is underway,

3 birds aren't interested. They seem to lose a lot of

4 interest. I don't know if it's because of the

5 summertime or not, but they lose interest. But again,

6 we can do it in the open if we had some kind of a

7 method to -- you know, a fish net or something over the

8 top, some kind of a method.

9 We don't need a building, I guess that's what I'm

10 saying. We don't need a cement floor. We need

11 something to protect the organics from birds, and

12 that's it. Ideally, ideally inside a building out of

13 the weather is going to make it easier all the way

14 around, but I've priced the building for co-composting,

15 which is composting of food waste and sewage sludge

16 together. It makes an excellent organic soil

17 supplement.

18 So here's one of the processing -- one of the

19 processes. You have to control the process. You have

20 to make sure you have lots of oxygen in the compost

21 pile. If you want to have lots of heat, if you want to

22 have the pathogen reductions, simply all you have to do

23 is turn it over. Here is me and my partner there,

24 using the shovels and we're turning the stuff over and

25 making it fluffy, and the temperature spikes within

26 days -- within a day or two of doing that. But really,

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1 all we -- for a bigger pile -- I mean, that's a hundred

2 families; that's a lot of work.

3 But if we, the City, do it, something like that is

4 all we need with a bucket. That's got a plow on it,

5 but we need a bucket. That thing there, by the way,

6 sits in the landfill garage for weeks on end. I mean,

7 they use it maybe two or three hours every two or three

8 weeks, and that's about it. That's not the one you see

9 over there, it's the one inside the building. So,

10 really, it's not going to take us a lot of money.

11 Now, once we finish our compost -- there's some

12 finished compost. It's got chunks of bones in it yet,

13 there might be the odd rock or two, pieces of wood,

14 some plastic bags or whatever. Well, you don't want to

15 have that in your garden, in your flower pots, or in

16 your backyard, or wherever you're going to put it, so

17 you got to get the big chunky stuff out. And there is

18 a screen over this tank, and I was shaking the living

19 daylights out of it, and this small stuff would fall

20 through, and that's what -- the same as what this is.

21 This is a -- there you see there's a loader

22 bucket. They're loading this. It's a ramp, like a

23 conveyor belt, feeds the stuff up into this drum, and

24 that drum rotates and it jostles the stuff around, and

25 the small stuff falls through and then the big stuff

26 comes out this way. Well, you just take the big stuff

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1 and put it back into the compost pile. It will compost

2 the next year. If you don't get it the first year, it

3 will do it the next year. It costs about $8,000 for

4 that machine right there. Now, I actually brought up

5 some of this mesh. I'm thinking I can build my own

6 quite easily.

7 So, how much compost is there? So, here we go.

8 We've got -- here's our sewage sludge, here's our

9 totals, and mature compost. You're going to notice

10 quite a difference here. There's, I mean -- this is,

11 this is the water that's being driven off. Now, it's

12 all -- it's not all going to create leachate with

13 organic -- with aerobic composting, it doesn't produce

14 any leachate. It all goes into the air as evaporation.

15 But if it's in the landfill, there's 1900 tonnes of

16 water that's going to percolate down through and create

17 leachate.

18 So, when all is said and done, we're going to end

19 up with 2,000 tonnes a year, and where can we put it?

20 Well, there's -- that ditch has been like that for ten

21 years, and you can see the little bit of grass that's

22 growing there. So there's -- you don't have to look

23 very far. This is erosion here. This is washing away,

24 and it's going into culverts. I don't know how much of

25 the city budget is going into keeping roads open --

26 culverts open, but it's got to be significant. So

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1 there's lots of places.

2 So here is a kind of a total cost. If the whole

3 city was to start composting now and we were going to

4 manage that stuff at the landfill site, if we were

5 going to compost it, this is what we need for

6 infrastructure. That's going to buy us a trammel, it's

7 going to put one of those building up that's sized for

8 all our organic waste, and a bin for everybody. So

9 it's 303,000 and change.

10 But when do we need it? If we had $10,000 now to

11 put into bins, we could sign up another couple of

12 hundred families. And we need this, really, when phase

13 two is finished of the sewage treatment plant because

14 that's when all the -- we're going to have a

15 significant amount of sludge. And the trammel, well,

16 it would be nice to have it by 2008, but we don't need

17 an awful lot of money right now.

18 Yearly recurring costs for labour : One man can do

19 all the composting at the landfill in four months for

20 $25,000. For the next few years, we probably wouldn't

21 have to put a cent of the City's money in it because

22 programmes like Equal Action pay my salary, and they'd

23 probably be most happy to support a composting

24 operation of the city. But the big factor here, the

25 public needs to be educated, and I'm just guessing at

26 this, I don't know if $15,000 is realistic or not.

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1 Maybe it's 50, I don't know.

2 But again, there's extremely -- an awful lot of

3 government agencies -- we've got phone calls, people

4 offering us money. I mean, that's honestly, two people

5 -- two different federal agencies have contacted us,

6 plus we've got other grants from different,

7 different -- other agencies as well.

8 So public education is the first step for

9 incremental approach. We need to do this on a

10 voluntary basis, gradually as we educate the public.

11 And right now we almost have a waiting list. I'm

12 hesitant to sign up more people. And there's lots of,

13 there's lots of money out there too to provide that

14 education.

15 So anyway, composting, what's it going to do for

16 us? It's going to prevent pollution, and we'll just

17 leave it there. It's going to help restore our land.

18 This city is full of new homes sitting on gravel.

19 We've destroyed the tundra, but we can help bring it

20 back with adding these nutrients to the soil. And it's

21 going to save us landfill space. And a greener, less

22 dusty community has to attract to us. I mean, it's got

23 to be good for our economy. And landscaping, it's

24 going to enhance property values, so won't that

25 increase our tax base? Wouldn't the City make money on

26 that? I don't know.

229

1 Maybe that's a stretch, but it seems to me it's an

2 argument. So -- and we're going to establish the

3 roadsides, and that will reduce erosion, which is going

4 to save the city money as well. And probably most

5 importantly it's going to bolster our civic pride and

6 our community spirit.

7 So, you know, this is, this is a little start of

8 what could be, so it's up to us, I guess.

9 That's it. I guess if anybody has got any

10 questions, I'd be happy to answer them.

11 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you. Thank you.

12 We'll open the floor for questions. Start with

13 applicants. Do you have any questions?

14 CITY OF IQALUIT QUESTIONS BILL MACKENZIE HUMANITARIAN

15 SOCIETY:

16 MR . BAKER: Geoff Baker, City of Iqaluit. I

17 just have a couple of quick comments before I turn the

18 microphone over to Ken Johnson.

19 I'm wondering if, one, we could have a copy of

20 that presentation, a hard copy of that presentation,

21 please. Number two, I'm just wondering if you could

22 clarify who the other members of the humanitarian

23 society are, just as curiosity, really. Thank you.

24 MR . LITTLE: That's me again.

25 THE CHAIRMAN: Go ahead, Jim.

26 MR . LITTLE: I got -- we have about -- there's

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1 103 families signed up, and I think, Geoff, you got the

2 application to sign up, so as soon as you sign up we

3 would e-mail you everybody else. So you would see

4 immediately who are all in the city is signed up on

5 this. We also have a Board of directors. There's

6 about eight or nine folks on the Board of Directors.

7 But, you know, there's no secret as to who it is, and

8 I'll be happy to share that with you.

9 THE CHAIRMAN: Any more questions from applicants?

10 MR . JOHNSON: Ken Johnson.

11 Since I'm going to get into some discussions that

12 are, I can't say very technical, but certainly of a

13 strong technical base, I think it's relevant for me to

14 provide my technical background. I have a master's

15 degree in environmental engineering and 20 years of

16 cold regions engineering experience. We'll leave it at

17 that.

18 I have to take exception to several of the

19 comments that Mr. Little had for being very misleading.

20 Methane from landfills is a phenomena in southern,

21 warmer climates. There is very little, if any,

22 evidence that methane is produced in cold regions, and

23 for the simple fact that methane is produced by

24 bacteria in an environment without oxygen, but they

25 need -- if the temperature is cold or, in fact, frozen,

26 these bacteria do not function. So the statement that

231

1 greenhouse gases and the quantities that he mentioned

2 are not accurate.

3 A second point with regard to leachate generation

4 from the garbage that goes into the landfill, leachate

5 is not a phenomena of the garbage in the landfill. The

6 garbage in the land -- leachate is formed by moisture

7 coming from the outside of the landfill and going

8 through the leachate -- or sorry, through the garbage

9 and coming out. So, the statement about moisture from

10 the waste itself generating leachate is not accurate.

11 The sludge from the compost and putting it in -- I

12 guess the comment of using it in the public realm for

13 public access is, is not a good statement to make from

14 a public health perspective. That sludge must first be

15 measured and evaluated before it, in fact, can be used

16 for growing in gardens and growing things around the

17 community, because there is still the opportunity for

18 disease-causing organisms, and that is part of the

19 Iqaluit sludge management plan, is to test that. But

20 to actually make that statement at this time is not

21 accurate.

22 From an engineering perspective, erosion

23 protection in ditches, you do not use soil for erosion

24 protection in ditches. If you'll notice around

25 culverts you use rocks, because water is very strong

26 and it will wash away soil. So for -- that is not an

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1 accurate statement.

2 Those are my only comments right now.

3 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you.

4 Jim, you respond.

5 MR . LITTLE: Thank you, Ken, I appreciate the

6 fact that you're well educated in the field, but isn't

7 it civil engineering, your specialty? Anyway, it's

8 irrelevant, I don't want to get into that.

9 Who is to say that there's no methane generation?

10 You know, I've heard countless times people talk about,

11 you know, carbon sinks; our garbage is -- you know,

12 it's locked in, everything is frozen. Well, I don't

13 think that holds true. I know at the landfill they've

14 excavated what they thought would be frozen ground and

15 the steam was rising off of it.

16 You know, they talk about containment, but the

17 porosity of a lot of the soils around that landfill,

18 especially in that new cell, I know I've seen the

19 runoff come through and go -- disappear right into the

20 ground because I know what's underneath it. It's full

21 of old machinery and that. So, I don't know if there's

22 methane being produced or not, but the potential is

23 there. The ingredients are there. The mix is there.

24 So, I mean, if the planet keeps on warming up, we

25 cannot rely on the permafrost and the fact that things

26 are frozen to keep this generator from not kicking into

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1 gear. And I would really love to see some kind of a

2 core sample done, like in the middle of the summer, go

3 into that middle of that methane pile out there, that

4 big pile of garbage, just to see where the froze --

5 where it is, where the frost line is.

6 I mean, the idea is that the frost is supposed to

7 come up, the permafrost is supposed to come up and

8 freeze things from the bottom. I don't think that's

9 happening. Frankly, I don't think it's happening. But

10 anyway, from my own practical experience, I've seen

11 them excavate, and the stuff that they thought was

12 frozen wasn't, so that's what I'm basing my statement

13 on there.

14 The idea of the leachate, I know -- I heard the

15 people here make submissions on moisture content. If

16 you can keep -- the moisture -- if you got a bunch of

17 old batteries there, like C cell batteries and that, if

18 you can keep them dry, it's not going to be a problem.

19 But if you put them in water, you're going to have

20 electrolysis going on and oxidisation , and all the

21 chemicals that's in those batteries is going to end up

22 in those liquids that are coming out of that landfill.

23 So, it's -- you know, he knows a lot more about it

24 than I do, but from a practical nature, I wouldn't want

25 to trust any water coming out of a landfill that's full

26 of organic waste. I just wouldn't. I wouldn't trust

234

1 it. I mean, I can't see it being good for the

2 environment. I wouldn't want my kids playing in it. I

3 wouldn't want my -- if it was draining into a lake, I

4 wouldn't want my kids swimming in that lake.

5 So, you know, you can do these studies and make

6 all these accusations and assumptions, but would you

7 like your kids in it, you know, playing downstream from

8 this stuff? If we keep -- if we can keep the stuff

9 dry, it's going to preserve it, whether it's frozen or

10 not.

11 As far as making compost out of sludge, I'll be

12 getting into that much more in my presentation this

13 afternoon. I'm not acting alone here. Right now I

14 have two consultants, both PhDs , both environmental

15 engineers, both with reams of experience and study

16 papers to their credit, and they've been advising me on

17 this. There's also criteria through the Department of

18 the Environment on creating soil supplements with

19 sewage sludge, and as long as you stay within those

20 certain parameters, you can declare the stuff to be

21 class A and you can do whatever you want with it.

22 Now, mind you, you can't take anything. You know,

23 you can declare it to be class A, and the first time a

24 dog goes across there and craps on it, well, you've

25 lost that. You know, it's the same thing playing in

26 the garden in the south, you know, you've got good

235

1 healthy soil, but you don't know who had a thing in it,

2 you know.

3 So it's -- I wish I was more articulate in my way

4 of explaining things, but we can argue this stuff until

5 we're blue in the face. The fact is that it's a proven

6 technology, and as long as you stay within that

7 technology, you can grow whatever you want in it. And

8 again, I will be into that more into this afternoon.

9 The other thing, erosion control. You know, up

10 here, if we want to prevent erosion, the only way we

11 can do it is stack up, stack up rocks. Ken, I'm

12 surprised to hear you talk that way because you can't

13 use soil. You can use soil. We're going to do some

14 research on how to get this -- the compost to stabilise

15 and adhere to, you know, sloped surfaces, because I

16 know if we can get the stuff there long enough, the

17 sods, the grasses that will take over that, will grab a

18 hold of it and it will stabilise that bank. Now that's

19 a fact, and Ken, you know that's got to be a fact. It

20 is a fact. There's no ifs, ands, or buts.

21 When they build a road in the south, if they cut

22 through a hillside to make that road flat and expose a

23 lot of banks, they don't put rocks on it. They put a

24 mixture of compost and seeds that will vegetate that.

25 That's what stabilises it, is the vegetation. And here

26 we don't have a choice. We have to use rocks because

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1 there's no vegetation, but this is an opportunity for

2 us to create vegetation. Instead of having rocks,

3 we're going to have grasses.

4 Anyway, I'm -- I hate crossing swords with people,

5 but I do have to defend myself on this, so...

6 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you.

7 Any more questions or comments with regards to the

8 presentation?

9 MR . JOHNSON: Ken Johnson again, and since we are

10 throwing out academic credentials, I do have a master's

11 degree in environmental engineering, a post-graduate

12 degree at the University of British Columbia.

13 Just, again, very briefly refuting -- we're not

14 refuting composting of sludge, we are refuting the

15 statements saying that you can automatically use it for

16 use around the community. That's not -- that's an

17 inaccurate statement to make at this point with sewage

18 sludge, and it needs to be appropriately tested before

19 that statement can be made. That's why I'm saying it's

20 inaccurate.

21 The erosion protection, I'm talking around

22 culverts, not in swales . And again, that's a common

23 engineering practice. That's the end of my statement.

24 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you.

25 So, is there any more questions or comments from

26 interested parties? DIAND , Lee Webber.

237

1 DIAND QUESTIONS BILL MACKENZIE HUMANITARIAN SOCIETY:

2 MR . WEBBER: Thank you. Lee Webber for DIAND .

3 One question, Mr. Little. I'm not altogether

4 clear on what you're looking for at these proceedings.

5 Is your objective informational and generally to

6 promote the use of composting, or are you asking the

7 Board to insert something in the license?

8 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you.

9 Mr. Little again, Jim.

10 MR . LITTLE: Well, that's a good question. I

11 believe that if we can reduce our waste stream by 50

12 percent, we're going to reduce a lot of pollution, and

13 a lot of the pollution is leachate production. And so

14 if we can reduce the volume, it's going to be

15 beneficial to the city. So whether or not the Board

16 has a sense to make a ruling on that remains to be

17 seen. I don't know. I would, I would like to think

18 that -- well, I'd like to see things done properly, and

19 I know that there -- that the City has a sense that

20 this stuff far too expensive, but in actual fact, it's

21 not, and that's, I guess, the important point that

22 needs to be made.

23 THE CHAIRMAN: Please state your name before --

24 for the record before you speak.

25 Lee? Okay, thank you.

26 Any more question or comments from interested

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1 parties or the public?

2 Thank you, Jim, for your presentation.

3 Oh, sorry, I forgot about the Water Board. Do you

4 -- okay, Water Board, do you have any questions? Go

5 ahead, Dionne.

6 MS. FILIATRAULT : Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have no

7 questions.

8 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Jim, for your

9 presentation, once again.

10 Okay. Before we move on to sewage and effluent

11 treatment facility, maybe we should take a 15-minute

12 break, a good break if we're going to start another

13 topic. Okay, we'll be back about 4:00. Thank you.

14 (PROCEEDINGS ADJOURNED AT 3:45 P.M.)

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2 REPORTER'S CERTIFICATION.

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4 I, the undersigned, hereby state that the

5 foregoing pages 78 through 238 were taken down by me in

6 shorthand and transcribed to the best of my skill and

7 ability.

8 DATED at the City of Calgary, Province of Alberta,

9 this 13th day of March, A.D. 2006.

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13 Diane Hermann, RPR

14 Court Reporter

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25 EXHIBITS

26 EXHIBIT 8:

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1 GN POWERPOINT PRESENTATION, HARD COPY.....113

2 EXHIBIT 9:

3 UNIVERSITY OF MANITOBA REPORT REGARDING SHORT- &

4 MEDIUM-CHAIN CHLORINATED PARAFFINS........114

5 EXHIBIT 10:

6 TROW & ASSOCIATES DRAWINGS TO SUPPORT RAW

7 WATER STORAGE EXPANSION REPORT, 2004, FOUR

8 DRAWINGS..................................130

9 EXHIBIT 11:

10 ENVIRONMENT CANADA, PRESENTATION, INTERVENTION,

11 PRIORITY LIST, ELECTRONIC COPY............145

12 EXHIBIT 13:

13 INAC SUGGESTIONS TO NWB FOR PRIORITIES UNDER

14 THE IQALUIT WATER LICENSE.................199

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