The Hamlet of Pangnirtung

Published purpose

Municipal infrastructure including water supply, wastewater collection and treatment, underpin modern living and support public health. Developing and maintaining this infrastructure is challenging and costly in the Far North, where shortfalls and failure are acutely experienced. The availability of water supplies in sufficient quantities that meet, not only the water quality regulations but also the perceptions of Arctic residents, is fundamental. Many communities, including the Inuit Hamlet of Pangnirtung, collect water from rivers and store it in natural and manmade reservoirs, from which most or all of the municipally-supplied water derives. While such rivers and surface bodies are vital, communities are constrained by regulations limiting how much water can be drawn from either in order to ensure adequate streamflow or volume to support local ecology and aquatic species (Prowse et al 2006, Bakaic et al., 2018). For example, communities in Nunavut are allowed to pump no more than 10% of streamflow. According to Pangnirtung’s water license, it is not allowed to extract more than 120,000 m3 per year. In order to understand the sustainability of freshwater supplies in the remote northern/Arctic communities as well as potential erosion dynamics, the flow regime in the river must be well characterized and streamflow trends discerned under both current climate, and a range of climate change scenarios.