Northern Quebec communities concerned about impact of burning garbage on health, environment
CBC
In the village of Inukjuak on the northeast shore of the Hudson Bay, trash isn't something that vanishes to some far-off landfill in the back of a garbage truck. It stays close by. Then, it burns.
"Burning of the domestic waste is a big problem in my community," Shaomik Inukpuk, the town manager of Inukjuak, told Quebec's environmental review board, the Bureau d'audiences publiques sur l'environnement (BAPE), last June during consultations with northern Indigenous communities.
He wasn't the only one raising the issue.
During the consultations in Quebec, Inuit and Naskapi communities expressed their concerns over the garbage problem.
North of the 55th parallel, the permafrost means the earth is too hard to dig landfill sites. Since there are no incinerators, waste is burned in the open. There are 14 such landfills in Nunavik — one for each community.
Quebec law requires garbage be burned "at least once a week, weather conditions permitting" in order to control the amount of trash and to "prevent wild and domestic animals from scattering residual materials." Burning is also supposed to prevent toxins from leaching into the soil.
But the BAPE's report, released last month, raises concerns over the practice and its impact on the health of nearby communities and on the environment.
And given what's at stake, the BAPE says it is surprised "that no public health study has been undertaken so far in Quebec to document the levels of environmental contamination and exposure of populations" living near northern landfills.
The regulation does not set a minimum distance between homes and northern landfills — and most of those landfills are located a few kilometres from the villages.
But in some cases, such as Inukjuak and Kuujjuarapik, they are only a few hundred meters from the nearest houses, "inside the community itself," according to Inukpuk.
This means that garbage smoke regularly wafts over the people nearby, as well as over the animals and fish they rely on for food.
"The smoke is not safe for our environment. Because the people living here still rely on country food, they have to go fishing, they have to go hunting, the food source that they go after is jeopardized by the smoke of the dump," Inukpuk said.
When the BAPE released its 698-page report about Quebec's garbage situation last month, it devoted a chapter to the problems facing northern Indigenous communities.
It confirmed what many northerners already suspected: It can't be good to have garbage burning right next door.
