Lynn Lau
Northern News Services

Fort McPherson (Jan 21/02) - Hamlet employees are doing their best to deal with a new water-hauling system that has been plagued with problems since the intake was moved to a new lake in November.

The old source contained too much organic material, resulting in unacceptable levels of cancer-causing trihalomethanes in the tap water.

While the new source, at Deep Water Lake, 27 kilometres out of town, produces clean, clear water, getting the water to the treatment plant in town has presented no end of headaches.

"The whole design of the system has some major glitches in it," says Mayor Rebecca Blake. "We definitely have to revisit this and make a decision do we want to continue to work out glitches or look at something new."

The most pressing problem has been the lack of indoor parking for the two new water trucks, resulting in valves, brakes and seals freezing up. "We had a few days of minus -38 C and that was just horrendous. Some days we were only hauling two loads in a 12-hour shift," Blake says.

And the parking isn't all. The volume of water used was underestimated by about 60 per cent and the hamlet has since had to hire an extra driver to keep up the water supply topped up.

In late October, the pipes from the old water intake froze. To save money, the pipeline from the lake to the treatment plant was abandoned in favour pumping water into trucks at the lake. The plan had been to keep the old pipes working to serve as a backup.

Then in December, a pump at Deep Water Lake broke down, interrupting water hauls, and forcing the hamlet to cancel household water deliveries for one day, Dec. 22.

Fort McPherson is the only municipality in the territory that has to haul water such a distance to its water treatment plant, says public works superintendent Brian Lemax.

"I think we're finding out the problem areas at a time of the year when it's very difficult to deal with them, so its causing a little more complications and frustrations."

He says the new water system was supposed to start operating in the summer, but construction at the intake and remodeling at the water plant were delayed, as was the delivery of the specialized water trucks. That led to the winter launch of the new system.