What's it all for?

November 15, 2007 2:40 AM

I was scrolling around my home province of Ontario in google maps, and I happened to stumble across this.

Despite the relative isolation of this town, all its wonderful weirdness is captured in shockingly high resolution relative to its surroundings. Any Theories? Specifically, can anybody identify those square mystery holes? They look like extremely deep, uniform shafts of some kind.

posted by tehloki to Science & Nature (19 answers total)

Peculiar indeed. However, the "deep shafts" look like shallow ponds with sloping sides to me. Still, I have no idea what they could be.
posted by jonesor at 2:48 AM on November 15, 2007 [1 favorite]

Best answer: They look like reservoirs to me. I think they are partially-filled, lined pools of water, not empty space.
posted by adiabat at 2:48 AM on November 15, 2007

It's Fort Severn. Live Search.
posted by Authorized User at 3:00 AM on November 15, 2007 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Your "Live Search" link doesn't work for me. Well, at least I know the name of the town now.. and it has an interesting backstory! Kudos to whoever can find out what those dark squares are.
posted by tehloki at 3:04 AM on November 15, 2007

I was thinking they might be waste pools for a pig farm. But I don't see the farm.
posted by sully75 at 4:06 AM on November 15, 2007

Steam our clouds?
posted by bluefrog at 4:59 AM on November 15, 2007

"or"
posted by bluefrog at 4:59 AM on November 15, 2007

I think it's squared off piles of something like salt or fertilizer covered over with black tarpaulins. That would explain why there appears to be car tracks right round the edge of both "shafts".
posted by roofus at 5:21 AM on November 15, 2007

I think sully75 is right. I saw artificial ponds exactly like these on an episode of Dirty Jobs. They were used to store animal waste (the idea being, I think, to keep excessive nitrates out of the groundwater).
posted by hjo3 at 5:43 AM on November 15, 2007

Best answer: Here's an aerial shot of Fort Severn. Those "featurelss holes" look more clearly like your typical septic field/water treatment system with banked dykes around the perimeter. The big blue-roofed building in the middle of town is most likely the arena, community centre, band hall, or a school.

Up the road I think I see a garbage dump then a gravel pit, then the airstrip. It looks like there are a couple more gravel pits along the road. Eventually the gravel road turns into dirt road and winter road, which would only be passable in winter when the muskeg/swap is frozen and the snow has been graded. According to Authorized User's wikipedia link, the winter road connects the town to other communities in Northern Manitoba.

It's very unlikely that anybody is doing any animal farming as far north as Hudson's Bay. I think those pools are just for disposing of people waste.
posted by teg at 5:47 AM on November 15, 2007

Polar bears would have a field day with a pig farm. :)
posted by teg at 5:48 AM on November 15, 2007 [1 favorite]

Best answer: I think those features have to be concave rather than convex, or one would cast a shadow on the other, from the looks of things.

It looks like Fort Severn has an energy-saving program, written about here: [pdf]

The relevant quote, on page 86: "Waste heat from the diesel-generating engines is transferred across the road to the First Nation's water treatment plant to heat the building and provide heat to the community water supply as a primary method of freeze protection."

So if that is, in fact, a steam cloud over the other similar feature, this could be the explanation. The "large complex" you've tagged is sort of "across the road" from the features you're interested in. And it sounds like the water treatment plant is probably a large complex, if they need a creative way to heat the building.
posted by adiabat at 5:51 AM on November 15, 2007

Also, it's not animal waste. Here's a pig farm. Here's a municipal reservoir. There's an obvious difference in color.
posted by adiabat at 5:57 AM on November 15, 2007

Response by poster: Oh yeah. Definitely municipal waste resevoir. Man.. those aerial viewpoints with no frame of reference really screw with your perspective.
posted by tehloki at 6:11 AM on November 15, 2007

From the Fort Severn photo gallery, here are some of the town buildings, including the water plant building. It appears one of those 2 pools was added within the last 5 years.

I'm now guessing that the 2 pools closer to town are for treatment of drinking water, and the 2 further away (partially covered by a cloud) are for septic treatment. Safe drinking water has been a huge issue for Canadian reserves in the last few years, so there's been a large investment in water infrastructure lately.
posted by teg at 6:17 AM on November 15, 2007 [1 favorite]

Nice find, teg. Now I want someone to write an FPP for me about living on the edge of Hudson Bay.
posted by adiabat at 6:27 AM on November 15, 2007

Response by poster: Adiabat, my father lived in Churchill, Manitoba for much of his youth. You can interview him if you want, heh.
posted by tehloki at 6:30 AM on November 15, 2007

I think those features have to be concave rather than convex, or one would cast a shadow on the other, from the looks of things.

That and, assuming they're on the same frame (or from the same set of frames) of sat. photos, the shadows we can see on nearby buildings suggest that light is coming in from the bottom right—so the illuminated top-left faces are catching the most direct sun, hence must be closest to normal to the sunlight, which would leave them slanting downhill. Definitely concave (though that seems clear by now).
posted by cortex at 7:46 AM on November 15, 2007

They look like dugouts to me.
posted by blue_beetle at 8:13 AM on November 15, 2007