Centre for Alternative Wastewater Treatment

4.2 MAP OF NUNAVUT SHOWING LOCATION OF COMMUNITIES¹

4.3 NATURAL ENVIRONMENT OF REGION

Nunavut spans a vast Arctic territory; the most northerly community is Grise Fiord at 76°25'N, and the most southerly community is Sanikiluaq, at 56°31’N. In Resolute, one of the more northerly communities, the daily average temperature is -16.4°C, with 275.9 days per year below 0°C, and 150 mm of annual precipitation. In most communities, freeze up usually occurs in November but may happen as early as September or October. Spring thaw is generally between late May and June. All communities are located on continuous permafrost, and every community is coastal apart from Baker Lake.

4.4 SOCIO-ECONOMICS OF REGION

The median income for an Inuit individual in Nunavut was $13,090 in 2001, while the median income for a non-Inuit individual was $50,128 (Statistics Canada, 2001 in NTI, 2006). Tables 5 and 6 describe additional employment statistics.

In 2003, 54% of Inuit in Nunavut lived in overcrowded circumstances, a rate 7 times higher than the national average, and in 2004, 38.7% of households in Nunavut were in core need because housing was substandard, inadequate or unaffordable (Statistics Canada, 2003 and Nunavut Housing Corporation, 2004 in NTI, 2006). In 2006, the federal government allocated $200 million over three years for 800 housing units in Nunavut.

TABLE 5. Unemployment rates for Inuit and non-Inuit adults, 2001 (adapted from ITK 2007)
	Inuit		Non-Inuit
	Male (%)	Female (%)	Male (%)	Female (%)
Nunavut	25.1	20.7	2.9	3.4
Canada	24.7	19.4	7.6	7.2

TABLE 6. Average and median individual incomes ($) for adults in selected provinces and territories, 2007 (adapted from ITK 2007)
	Inuit adults		All Canadian adults
	Average ($)	Median ($)	Average ($)	Median ($)
Nunavut	19,686	13,090	26,924	17,270
Canada	19,878	13,699	29,769	22,120

The life expectancy of Inuit in Canada has declined since the early 1990s; in 2001, the life expectancy of Inuit in Nunavut was 68.7, compared to the national average of 79.3 (Government of Nunavut, 2002, in NTI, 2006). The tuberculosis rate in Nunavut was 17 times the national average in 2002, and the suicide rate was six times the national average in 2005 (NTI, 2006).

In 2001, 85.6% of the total Inuit population in Nunavut spoke Inuktitut as a first language, and 79.2% of Inuit spoke mainly or only Inuktitut at home (Statistics Canada, 2003 in NTI, 2006). 73% of Inuit households in Nunavut consumed country food (‘wild foods’ such as caribou, Arctic char, whale, seal, wild berries, etc.) at least half the time in 2001(ITK, 2007, p.8).

4.5 TRANSPORTATION

Air transportation operates year-round in Nunavut, and is the primary method of intercommunity travel. The major air transportation hubs in Nunavut are Rankin Inlet, with connections to Churchill and Winnipeg, Manitoba, and Iqaluit, with connections to Ottawa. Nunavut has 21 km of intercommunity roadway (Lewis Gidzinski, personal communication). Sealift (marine shipping) is the only means of transporting large or heavy cargo, and operates during the ice-free season from July to October.

5 Existing Infrastructure

5.1 EXISTING WASTEWATER TECHNOLOGIES

Twenty-one communities in Nunavut utilize lagoon and/or wetland treatment for their domestic wastewater, while four communities (Resolute, Pangnirtung, Rankin Inlet, and Iqaluit) have a mechanical system. A table of water use per community is in Appendix 1, and a detailed table describing wastewater facilities per community is in Appendix 2.

FIG. 6. Sewage discharge point (retention cell) in Baker Lake, with treatment wetlands in the background (Agata Durkalec, 2007).