Nunavut Housing Corp. defends dumping materials
The acting president and CEO of the Nunavut Housing Corporation says it would have been too expensive to organize the sale of surplus building supplies that wound up in the Igloolik dump in September.
Adam Gordon was responding to criticism about NHC dumping brand new building materials, including plumbing and electrical hardware, drywall in the package, insulation and exterior doors. One Igloolik resident estimates he and a friend drove away from the dump with $70,000 in goods.
"Putting those items up for surplus sale as an ultimate disposal method... the value of that has to be greater than the process of going through that surplus sale,” Gordon said.
Gordon said the the NHC did give some material to the local housing authority, but the rest ended up at the landfill.
Gordon also said extra materials are often bought for construction projects in the North, in case anything is damaged in transit.
“I can also say based on our prior review there was some materials ordered that were probably surplus to the project,” Gordon told the CBC.
The material was left over from the $200 million Nunavut Housing Trust project that built 725 housing units between 2006 and 2010. In the process, the NHC went $110 million over budget.
A review of the housing trust project by the NHC lead to a candid report in 2012 called “Lessons Learned.”
Gordon said the Housing Corporation does plan to sell its leftover sea cans in Igloolik for $3,000 each. That could mean almost $100,000 for the NHC.
He also says the Corporation has changed its practices to try to make sure material doesn't go the dump.