Terry Halifax
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Jun 16/00) - The Town of Inuvik discovered a shortfall of $1.3 million in under-billing to water customers during an audit of the Inuvik Utilities Committee.

And the Northwest Territories Power Corporation, which was responsible for billing, is on the hook for over half of that amount, according to Mayor George Roach.

Over the past four years, four accounts have been charged only 10 per cent of their total water bill. Two of those accounts were at Inuvik Regional Hospital, one of the hotels and the Power Corp. -- which was under-charged over $750,000 during that period, said the mayor.

"We wrote a letter about a week ago requesting a complete audit of all the accounts because we were informed about a month ago that there were four accounts which resulted in a $250,000 per year shortfall, or failure to collect -- under billing is the way (NTPC) put it," Roach said. "We've asked our lawyer how many years we can go back on a situation like this."

"The reality is, all the customers in Inuvik have over paid, so that those four or five accounts could have had cheap water."

Roach said about six years ago the government forced the utility to put in water meters.

"There were multiplier factors on some of these meters which the Power Corp. failed to notice," Roach said. "People actually paid 10 per cent of what they should have been paying."

"Your average customer would have noticed that, but I guess you don't say anything if it falls in your favour -- certainly if it went the other way, there would have been a lot of screaming."

The mayor said the town has been trying to assume control of the utility for 24 years and has now postponed the takeover of the utilidor system until the audit is complete.

Further delays

"My position is that there is money owed to the fund, which is owned by the (territorial) government until we take control of it," he said.

The Town of Inuvik is not going to take full operation of that utility until everything is absolutely 100 per cent correct."

Further delaying the utilidor takeover is the work place now occupied by the utilidor work crew. The Power Corp. will be taking over that building to use as a work area for their linemen.

"After the deal was pretty much done, the Power Corp. came to the conclusion that that was their building and they were going to use it for their linemen shack and the utilidor crew would not have a place to work out of," Roach said.

"So the takeover is kind of in the air right now, over these two issues."

He said the fault of the error lies with the Power Corp. and they should be pro-active in solving the problem.

"The Power Corp. works for the utility -- they have a contract to operate it; they fell down on their job, so where's the money going to come from?" he asked.

"We want this rectified -- whoever is going to wear it, is going to wear it -- it certainly isn't the consumers who paid their bills in good faith."

"In reality they're all owed an explanation or the money back into the fund," Roach said.

Peter Watt, spokesperson for the NTPC, declined to comment.