Lynn Lau
Northern News Services

Sachs Harbour (Sept 03/01) - After months of burying meat, drying meat, and sponging extra freezer space off the neighbours, Edna Elias is looking forward to seeing some new freezers in town.

Like others in the community, Elias is having trouble finding freezer space since the hamlet pulled the plug on its aging community freezer in the spring.

"We were really desperate for freezer space," says Elias. "We had to keep burying our geese in the snow until the snow went. Then, we had to make a bunch of dry geese. We were lucky because we found an old freezer that someone thought wasn't working." Still, she says her family has meat stored all over the place in different people's freezers.

That problem should be alleviated soon with the arrival of 10 new freezers just purchased by the hamlet. The 20-cubic-foot chest freezers will be distributed among the hamlet's 30 households according to need, says Phil Moon Son, the hamlet's senior administrative officer.

"The first round of freezers are going to be allocated through a committee," Son says. "The criteria will be who doesn't have a freezer, who has a big family..." It hasn't yet been decided who will get one, but even those families that aren't selected will probably be able to find more space in the freezers of friends and neighbours.

Elias' partner, Floyd Sydney, is the president of the Hunters and Trappers Committee, which is involved in the freezer project.

"Our freezers are sitting in Inuvik at the present," Sydney explains. The order was a little late, and missed the last barge. "Now, we're just waiting on some charters to get some good deals to fly them over the Beaufort Sea and have them ready for the families who need deepfreezes." He says he expects the freezers to arrive by October in time for the muskox hunt.

Until this spring, most residents made use of the community walk-in freezer that had been installed two decades ago to help people store their supply of fish and game more hygienically.

The Department of Public Works and Services was taking care of the maintenance and power bills but the duty was handed over three years ago to Resources, Wildlife and Economic Development.

Tim Devine, RWED's manager of wildlife and fisheries in Inuvik, says the operation of the community freezers in Sachs Harbour and other communities was getting so expensive, the government decided to look for more effective ways to use the funds.

"These freezers, with age and everything else, they were not as efficient as they used to be," Devine says. "To replace them was a significant cost."

Devine says it was costing $87,000 a year to keep freezers going in four communities, Paulatuuq, Aklavik, Tsiigehtchic and Sachs Harbour. Meanwhile, the department was only getting $44,000 from Public Works to cover the cost. That meant money was coming out of other operating areas.

In Sachs Harbour, where the freezer was costing the most, RWED spent an average of $30,000 a year keeping it running, when it was only supposed to be spending $12,000.

Two years ago, the department decided to turn the old freezers and the money it was getting to run them over to the communities in the form of block funding. "It's not a freezer program," Devine emphasizes.

Tsiigehtchic decided to buy individual chest freezers for its residents, while Aklavik and Paulatuuq have decided to shut down the community freezer and use the money elsewhere.

In Sachs Harbour, the hamlet kept the community freezer running for one more year before deciding to use the $12,000 block fund to buy individual freezers. The hamlet will buy freezers at $650 a piece plus shipping, until 2002, by which time everyone who needs a freezer should have one, says Sydney.