Derek Neary
Northern News Services

Fort Simpson (Mar 31/00) - A co-owner of a Fort Simpson small business working as a sub-contractor on the village's sewage treatment plant complained to village council Monday night about not getting paid for the job.

Pat Waugh, representing Kiwi Electric, told council that Kiwi has nearly $40,000 in accounts receivable related to the sewage treatment plant dating back to January. Two of those invoices were approved for payment by the contractor and the project foreman, she noted. She said that the other sub-contractors on the project also have payments due.

"Every one of them have families," she said emphatically, adding that they also have bills to pay to other local businesses.

Mayor Norm Prevost said he and senior administrative officer Bruce Leclaire worked for three days last week to find a way to pay the local sub-contractors, but because of a notice of lien on the sewage treatment plant by the technology supplier, it could not be done.

Prevost said the village consulted with its lawyer, but determined that they couldn't cut the cheques without going through the courts first.

"What will happen if we end up paying them money, we would have to pay again through the courts. We would have to pay it twice," he said Tuesday. "We've asked (our legal team) to move on it to ensure that our contractors and sub-contractors can get paid out as soon as possible."

He couldn't say how long that might take.

The sewage treatment plant is basically "ready to go," according to Prevost, other than a few "little bugs" because it's a sophisticated system. The other problem is that the sewage tanks are leaking.

"We can't fill them with sewage and have sewage running through the walls of the concrete tanks," he explained. "So we've got to deal with that problem."

The notice of lien -- which resulted two weeks ago after a dispute between the technology supplier, Foothills Industries, and contractor Camillus Engineering Consultants Ltd. (CECL) -- could prevent the project from becoming operational for quite some time.

"We don't know. That's what we're looking at. We want to get this plant up and running as quick as possible," he said.

Waugh mentioned she and her husband had encouraged the other sub-contractors to complete their work on the sewage treatment plant in spite of the notice of lien.

"Somewhere along the line, the fact that the village hired CECL to do a job that they were hoping to model of the rest of the territories has been forgotten," she said. "It is something that we should all be doing our utmost to achieve. I can only see this happening if all the parties involved are willing to work together."