INUVIK - Twin Lakes MLA Robert McLeod agrees with town council that an independent audit should be done on the power plant, but he stopped short of saying he would push the territorial government to pay for one.

"I'm not saying I would push for it, but I can't see myself not supporting it," said McLeod. "We need to have a look at it. You have to listen to the people. They're frustrated."

At town council's committee of the whole meeting Nov. 8, members agreed to send a letter to Premier Floyd Roland, minister for the NWT Power Corp., asking for an audit of the plant to be funded by the territorial government. The letter, which has since been sent, also asked an audit committee be struck including one councillor, Jim McDonald, who's an electrician and owner of McDonald Brothers Electric in Inuvik.

Roland was away on a government trip to Europe this week and couldn't be reached for comment. But McLeod said the two have discussed the topic at length and agree some sort of an operational review of the plant is necessary.

Since September's seven to 10 hour blackout, more outages have hit the town, often several times a week. The latest came Tuesday morning. The power corp. has maintained that most of the outages have been a result of upgrades being made to the power plant system which have now been completed. Mike Bradshaw, power corp. spokesman, said the town is currently being run on the back up diesel generator system but an outage will occur in the near future to switch to the main natural gas system.

The power corp is expected to bring on a new chair and president soon, which McLeod said might bode well for Inuvik.

"Sometimes people have a way of operating things for so long," he said. "Bringing in new blood with new ideas might improve operations territorially and for Inuvik."

Mayor Denny Rodgers said he'll wait about two weeks for a formal response from Roland before considering what to do next.

With temperatures already dipping to -20 C, he said people are worried.

"People are getting genuinely scared," he said. "The people deserve to know what's going on."

He said council wants representation on the committee to ensure the audit is done impartially and has no connection whatsoever with the territorial government or power corp.

Rodgers said a recent review of the power corp's, which produced a positive evaluation, was incomplete. He said the proposed audit has to include customer input.

"How do you do a review if you don't talk to customers?" he said. "If someone was going to do a review of me as mayor and the only person you interview is me, I'll tell him I'm doing an amazing job."

Council's proposed audit plan would go far in appeasing disgruntled customers, he said.

"Residents have lost trust in the power corp. They have to get it back."

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