When I moved to the North from the South, many small things surprised me. But one thing surprised me more than the rest.

There are no water pipes under my house.

There is also no sewage pipe going out of my house into the ground.

At first, I did not understand how this could work. In the South, water comes from a tap and goes away in a pipe, and you never think about it. Here in Nunavut, on Baffin Island, water and sewage work in a very different way.

Today I want to share how this system works, because it is one of the most interesting parts of daily life in the North.

Why there are no pipes under the ground

The main reason is the permafrost.

Permafrost is ground that stays frozen all year. It does not melt in the summer, or it melts only a little on the top. In many places in Nunavut, there is also hard rock close to the surface.

Because of this frozen ground and rock, it is very hard and very expensive to bury pipes the way people do in the South. A pipe under the ground would be at risk of freezing, breaking, or moving with the ground.

So most communities in Nunavut do not use underground pipes for water and sewage. Instead, they use trucks.

I found this so simple and so clever at the same time.

How water comes to my house

Let me explain the water side first, because it is the part I love the most.

Everything starts with a reservoir. It can be a river. It can be a lake. It can also be a man made lake that the community built just for this purpose.

The water from the reservoir is not ready to drink yet. So it goes to a treatment plant, where it is cleaned and made safe.

After the water is clean, it is pumped into a water delivery truck.

The water delivery truck then drives around town. It stops at each house and pumps clean water into a tank that we have inside our home.

This tank holds the water we use for everything. We use it to drink, to cook, to wash our hands, and to shower.

When the tank is getting low, the truck comes and fills it again.

How sewage leaves my house

The sewage side works in a very similar way, but in the opposite direction.

Outside the house, we have a second tank. This one is for wastewater, which is the used water and the sewage.

Every time we flush the toilet, or wash the dishes, or take a shower, the dirty water goes into this sewage tank.

The tank fills slowly over the days.

Then a sewage truck comes to the house. The workers connect a hose and pump the sewage out of the tank.

After that, the truck takes the sewage away to the waste area on the edge of town, where it is stored and treated.

So one truck brings clean water in, and another truck takes the dirty water out. Two tanks, two trucks, and a system that runs all week long.

My own experience with the tanks

I want to be honest about my own experience, because it is still new to me.

I have not yet needed to call anyone to pump out my sewage. The sewage truck comes to my house about once a week and pumps it out on its own schedule.

For the water, I have seen the truck come and fill my tank only about once so far. I did not need to ask for it.

So for me, the system has felt quiet and easy. The trucks come, they do their work, and my tanks stay full or empty as they should.

But it does not always work like this for everyone, and this is where the story gets very interesting.

The Facebook group as a “phone line”

In the South, if you have a problem with your water, you call a number.

Here, at least where I live, people also use Facebook groups. I see people using them to ask the municipality for water or for sewage service.

When someone needs their water tank filled, or their sewage tank pumped out, they simply write a comment in the group. The message is short and clear. Something like “House 500 needs sewage pump out. Thank you.”

It is simple, and it works for the community.

The most important people in the community

There is no day off for water and sewage in a small northern community. People always need clean water, and tanks always need to be pumped out.

You see the operators working seven days a week. They work in deep cold, in wind, in snow, and in the dark winter days. They drive from house to house, in every kind of weather, so that the whole community can keep going. 

I think about this a lot, and I have come to believe that these workers are some of the most important people in the community. They keep it running at its most basic level. These workers are the reason the community can function.

So I want to say thank you to them.

What this taught me about the North

Living in Nunavut has taught me to notice things I used to ignore.

I now know where my water comes from. I know what happens after I flush. I know the faces of the people who make it all work.

This is one of the reasons I love writing this blog. The North teaches me to see the systems behind daily life, and to be thankful for them.

Water and sewage may sound like a boring topic. But for me, it is one of the clearest examples of how community, hard work, and clever solutions come together in the Arctic.

And every time I see a truck drive by my window, I remember how lucky I am to have clean water in my tank, and someone to take the rest away.