Lynn Lau
Northern News Services

Fort McPherson (July 08/02) - The hamlet wants out of the water trucking business.

It's been eight months since the community moved its intake from a shallow source across the highway to Deep Water Lake 25, kilometres away.

Since November, the system has been plagued with one problem after another -- frozen parts, vehicle break-downs, and higher-than-expected water consumption. In December, household water deliveries were shut down for one day while employees worked on a pump that had broken at the filling station. In April, the hamlet increased water rates for commercial and government users in an attempt to cover additional costs, and as recently as May and June the pup trailer on one of the water trucks has been broken down, forcing workers to run additional trips.

The hamlet is now asking the territorial government to take over trucking the water from the intake to the treatment plant in town.

"It's just not working," says mayor Rebecca Blake. "We're just in fear of all the problems that are yet to come."

On May 30, hamlet council held a special meeting about the water problems. During the meeting, senior administrative officer John Smith said the operation of the water system was pushing $4.5 million. Councillors heard that the two new water trucks purchased for the job are not sturdy enough to handle the demands of the bumpy highway and heavy loads.

At the Department of Public Works and Services, regional superintendent Brian Lemax said water hauling will be contracted out later this month.

He said many problems seemed to stem from the hamlet hauling the water, when the idea at the outset was to contract the work out.

"The hamlet wanted to run the water system for a period of time to get familiar with the costs, so if it was privatized they would have a better idea of whether they were getting good value."

Despite the unexpected cost of building a garage and buying two water trucks for the hamlet, the project hasn't gone much over the budget of $3 million, Lemax says.

"We'll see how the system runs in the next six months," Lemax said.

"It might be running smoother. If it's not, we'll have to find what the problems are and fix them."