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Crew prepares for Resolution Island clean-up project

Workers trained to handle hazardous waste, remove hundreds of barrels of contaminated soil

DENISE RIDEOUT

A student cleans up a mock oil spill as part of a hazardous-waste training session last week in Iqaluit. The students are now part of the work crew cleaning up PCBs at Resolution Island.

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(PHOTO BY DENISE RIDEOUT)

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About 50 workers will spend the summer transporting hazardous waste from Resolution Island, the site of a former American military base, onto ships bound for a treatment facility in Quebec.

Over the next month and a half, the workers — Inuit hired by Qikiqtaaluk Corporation — will wear yellow protective suits, rubber gloves and air masks, and scour the island’s tundra for contaminated soil.

Resolution Island, which was used as a military radar base by the United States Air Force from 1953 to 1972, is now a waste site full of PCBs, lead, cobalt and petroleum. Much of the damage was caused by PCBs that leaked out of old electrical equipment.

The main focus of this season’s clean-up is to remove hundreds of barrels of contaminated soil that workers have collected over the past four summers.

"We want to ensure we get to ship out the contaminated soil this year," said Harry Flaherty, who is heading up the clean-up project for Qikiqtaaluk Corp. Since 1997, the Inuit-owned development corporation has been sending Inuit who have been trained in hazardous waste clean-up to work at Resolution Island.

The work crew, totalling about 50, will transport 275 steel containers of PCBs down to the beach and load them onto ships that will bring them to a PCB treatment facility in Quebec, Flaherty said.

Last week, some of the crew members set out for the small island, located near the southern tip of Baffin Island, to set up the camp where they will live for the summer.

Proper training is essential

A crucial part of preparing for the project was training workers to spot contaminants and the proper ways to handle hazardous materials.

David Cain, whose Ottawa-based company Pro Medic trained the crew in emergency spill response, said knowing how to handle potentially harmful material is essential.

"They will handle all the hazardous materials on the island and bring them out on the boats," said Cain, wearing a neon orange paramedic’s vest.

In one training session, held last week, 17 Inuit learned the ropes by taking part in mock clean-up exercises.

Gathered at an abandoned site near Baffin Correctional Centre, the students donned yellow protective suits, three pairs of gloves and air masks and got ready to tackle a "contaminated site."

Two men walk slowly around the site, littered with drums of oil and scrap metal, checking for any hazardous materials. They see smoke billowing from one of the drums and shout out "hot zone!" One of the men marks the dangerous spot with a stick.

"It’s very critical to assess what the hazardous materials are," explains Barry Lesiuk of Interra Environmental Inc., a Calgary-based company that’s training the crew in hazardous-waste removal.

Once the two men assess the "contaminated site," another two men, dressed in white suits from head to toe to protect themselves from contaminants, start the clean-up process.

They extinguish the small fire. Then they make a paste to plug the hole of an oil drum which has been leaking.

Using long, blue tubes that look like stuffed socks, the two men in white suits soak up the spilled oil. Each tube can absorb three litres of liquid at a time.

Eric Tikivik, who is acting today as the on-site assessment assistant, stands by watching the clean-up.

"It’s very serious work we’re doing," said Tikivik, who is heading to Resolution Island for his fourth summer.

The spill cleaned up, the students throw the tubes and rags into a neon orange bag designed to hold hazardous materials.

Before stepping out of the "hot zone," the crew members undergo a cleaning of their own. They’re sprayed with anti-bacterial cleaner, scrubbed with a long brush, rinsed and dried off by two students dressed in protective gear.

"Scrub them just like in a car wash," Cain advises the students.

Following the training, Qikiqtaaluk Corp. started flying the workers into Resolution Island. They will start transporting the contaminated soil from the island toward the end of July, when the ship arrives in port. The clean-up is expected to run until September.

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