Lynn Lau
Northern News Services

Tuktoyaktuk (Nov 26/01) - There's holes in the road, and holes in the driveways.

Everywhere in town, people are feeling the pinch of a gravel shortage.

The roads are so bad, Wayne Gruben says he has to change his shocks every six months. Gruben is the owner of Blue Bird Enterprises, and he complains that all the wear on his three vehicles makes it difficult to run his taxi service.

"You get whiplash driving on the roads in the spring time, no kidding," Gruben says. "Most of these roads are really terrible -- the most terrible roads in the Northwest Territories, I think."

At the Tuktoyaktuk Airport, the maintenance stockpile of gravel has been all used up. When the time comes to resurface the runway, the Department of Transportation will have to bring it in from Inuvik at a cost of $80 to $100 per cubic metre, says regional superintendent Gurdev Jagpal. That's about three times the cost of gravel in Inuvik.

Two years ago, E. Gruben's Transport hauled gravel from a source 22 kilometres away. First they had to build a winter ice road to get to the gravel. It cost $200,000 just to build the road, said Merven Gruben, operations manager for the construction company. The company sold it to the government for house pads and to homeowners who could afford the $50 a cubic meter to put it on their driveways.

The stockpile from that haul two years ago ran out this summer. And Gruben says unless someone wants to front the money, E. Gruben's won't be building another ice road to haul gravel this year.

The hamlet is supposed to be responsible for upkeep on existing roads a responsibility that was turned over from Municipal and Community Affairs several years ago. But there hasn't been any money given to the hamlet for roads, and the type of gravel required for the roads hasn't been hauled in years, says mayor Ernest Pokiak.

Pokiak wants to see an all weather access road built to the gravel source E. Gruben's hauled from two years ago. But that will take money, and gravel.

The hamlet is hoping to attach several projects to the same access road in the hopes of convincing the federal and territorial governments that the road is needed. The gravel source in question is not far from the proposed Tuktoyaktuk to Inuvik highway, and the hamlet is also looking into building a cemetery and moving its dump to a location along the road as well.

Pokiak says the federal Department of Indian and Northern Affairs had identified some funds to built the road, but it had attached a condition to the funding. In order for the hamlet to get the money, it would also have to get financial support from an aboriginal group like the Inuvialuit Regional Corporation. When contacted by News/North, the IRC referred questions about the road project to the territorial government.

Meanwhile, the territorial government says it isn't the one that's supposed to pay for new roads.

"The responsibility for new roads rests with the federal government," says Peter Vician, deputy minister for the territorial Department of Transportation.

"However, we see the road from Tuk to the gravel source, and the road from Tuk to Inuvik as priorities for northern development."

No one from the federal Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development could be reached for comment last week, but as far as the Vician was aware, there was no deal as yet for building a road to the gravel source.