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SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - It's high time the community of Dettah had its own water pumphouse, says John Carter, executive director of the Yellowknives Dene First Nation.

According to Carter, while water in Yellowknife costs 1.5 cents per litre, it's 6.5 cents per litre in Dettah and the band is subsidizing most of it.

John Carter, executive director of the Yellowknives Dene First Nation, shows off Dettah's tanker truck used to supply the community with water from the city's pumphouse. He said the long commute for water is a burden for the community. - Mike W. Bryant/NNSL photo

He said Dettah water costs so much more because it has to be picked up 16 km away at Pumphouse No. 2 on the Yellowknife River, which supplies Yellowknife with its water. It takes about six trips with the band's water tanker truck to service all 42 homes in the community.

"We got to go all the way down to Pumphouse No. 2 to fill up and drive out here, fill up tanks and then drive back to Pumphouse No. 2 to fill up again and so forth," said Carter.

The band charges Dettah residents $85 a month for their water, which Carter said doesn't come close to covering the cost of supplying it.

He said the territorial government should free up some infrastructure dollars to build a pumphouse in Dettah. The community is one of four in the Northwest Territories without any kind of water treatment plant. The others are Enterprise, Colville Lake and Kakisa.

"The band is very heavily subsidizing the homeowners to make water affordable," said Carter.

"I'm sucking up $650 a month in costs if you're using 10,000 litres of water. We have to subsidize the water or else no one could afford to live here."

Bob Bromley, MLA for Weledeh which encompasses Dettah, raised the issue in the legislative assembly Thursday.

He argued that it would be more cost effective for the territorial government if it built Dettah its own pumphouse, which could take water directly from Yellowknife Bay. The Department of Municipal and Community Affairs contributes $170,000 annually towards Dettah's water supply, supplemented by $160,000 in indirect contributions from the NWT Housing Corporation. The band, meanwhile, pays the city of Yellowknife $160,000 year to use Pumphouse No. 2.

Bromley also said it would be more environmentally friendly because there would no longer be any need for a carbon emission belching truck going up and down the Dettah road to get water.

"Even if a pumphouse were to cost $2 million, a very generous estimate, the financial payback would be less than ten years," said Bromley.

Robert McLeod, the newly minted minister of Municipal and Community Affairs, told Bromley he was willing to sit down with Dettah leaders to talk about it.

"I will try and get a meeting lined up at the earliest convenience, because it really is just a short trip out to Dettah," said McLeod.