Arviat Community Concerns: Seabed Bathymetric Charting (Aqqiumavvik) (TD 13, English, SO 7(2))

TD-13-7(2)-EN

Nunavut — Committees

Arviat Community Concerns Regarding Seabed Bathymetric Charting The coastal waters of the west Hudson Bay become increasingly precarious due to warming climate, reduced precipitation and very high rates of post-glacial rebound. Arviat experiences some of the highest rates of post-glacial rebound in the world. This creates navigational challenges for small boats and local harvesters, but it is an increasingly dangerous situation for larger ships having to approach the community. Fuel Resupply The community is expanding at a rate that makes it difficult for sufficient fuel resupply.

Due to the sharply shallowing waters, fuel resupply ships can no longer come in fully loaded. At low tide the ships actually sit on the seabed. This is an environmental concern.

Since Arviat can no longer receive full loads of fuel, the result is several partial loads coming in across the shipping season. The final resupply is happening very late in the season, after ice has formed. There have been incidents where the fuel ship has been stuck fast in the ice. At one time, their motorboat could not operate in the ice and cold to lay the resupply line. The ship rented a local snowmobile. This fell through the ice with the driver aboard. At other times, the ship has required rescue when it was unable to bash its way out of the ice.

Needless to say, this disruption to ice formations has outcomes for community harvesters and wildlife. We believe that laying the fuel line across long stretches of ice is inviting an environmental incident. There is very little capacity in the community to address any incident which might result.

Currently, the manifold for the resupply is located near the Northern Store – midway into the inlet. Because the ship can no longer fully enter the inlet, the length of the resupply line is long. This requires a longer time to pump. The hope is to move the manifold further to the east along the shoreline. For efficiency, it would be best located close to the site of the new tank farm. However, since there are no charts for waters along the coats, the proposed move is to the current resupply base.

This also will require a very long overland line for pumping the fuel over to the tank farm and result in potential hazards. The community of Arviat is anxious to secure accurate seabed maps of the area around Nuvuk/Eskimo Point in order to be able to undertake the best community planning for future resupply and for staging.

A small community project to map depths on the eastern side of the community shows indications of possible anchorages. Having a reliable chart of the Nuvuk waters would possibly alleviate several of these issues by reducing the length of the resupply line; enabling the ship to anchor closer to the new tank farm; ensuring that the ship could come in with a larger load, thus reducing the necessity of coming after ice has formed. General Resupply General resupply by both NEAS and NSSI occurs multiple times a year.

With the proposed new SIBS housing plant and large construction projects that will be occurring in the next 5 years, the number of resupply trips will increase. Projected projects include building a new tank farm, building the Inuit Nunangat University, a new Housing Association building, a hotel and a community shelter complex. Ships cannot get close to the community, so they anchor well off Nuvuk to the far eastern side of the community. They unload onto barges which then have to travel the length of the bay to offload.

We have had incidences where containers have been dropped into the sea or where ships in rough weather have actually moved out to open waters for safety. This situation is complex at best but is complicated by the complete lack of any reliable, recent charts for this coastline. The inset of this chart shows the area marked Eskimo Point which we would like to have mapped. Arviat is looking for a long-term solution to what will be an increasing need to resupply – increasing frequency and increasing amounts. It is especially important to find

the best, safest and more environmentally secure coastline where these activities can take place. The Aqqiumavvik Society has initiated marine mapping to support safe travel for community members. However, they do not have the capacity to accomplish the scale of mapping that is required for safe community development. To this end, we are appealing to the Canadian Hydrographic service and to Fisheries and Oceans Canada to provide support in efforts to identify safe coastal waters for the purposes of community resupply.

Document details

Collection	Nunavut — Committees
Citation	TD-13-7(2)-EN
Type	statute
Volume / chapter	TD 013 7(2) EN Correspondence Concerning Aqqiumavvik Seabed Mapping Project
Language	en
Format	pdf
Source	TERRITORIAL
Identifier	af7ea0b212cc3d42e22abc482ca664da31eace96

Source file is stored in the law ingest library (pdf).