SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - Buried beneath the heart of Yellowknife lays a ticking time bomb. The water and sewer pipes beneath Northland Trailer Park have already started to collapse, and the homeowners in the park, many of whom are low income earners, cannot afford to replace them.

"The worst-case scenario is that so much of the infrastructure falls apart that the whole place is condemned," said Frame Lake MLA Wendy Bisaro.

The cost of replacing the infrastructure, now 15 years past its expiry date, could be as much as $18 million. Most of the water and sewer and infrastructure buried under Northland date back to when the trailer park was built in 1971.

According to Yellowknife Condominium Corporation No. 8, the board that administers Northland, the price tag would require the nearly 1,100 residents to pay about $550 extra per month over 15 years on top of their mortgages. There has already been a large break in a sewer line that will cost more to fix than the corporation can afford.

The corporation and the City of Yellowknife are currently looking for funding to help with those costs.

Bisaro said many ratepayers consider it a "tough sell" to help the trailer park with their tax money because Northland is a condominium corporation - a private enterprise where all the homeowners in the park collectively own the infrastructure and are responsible for its upkeep.

Nonetheless, it would be a terrible loss if Northland residents were simply pack up and leave, said Bisaro.

"We do have to remember that it's about four per cent of the Yellowknife population and two per cent of the NWT ... Where would we put these people?" said Bisaro.

"It's a really large low-cost housing area and there's no other one in Yellowknife."

Bisaro also noted that many of the trailers date back to the early 1970s and are likely not up to code. Thus many probably couldn't be moved to anywhere else in the city under the city's zoning bylaw.

City councillor Bob Brooks said the city is currently providing administrative services to the condo board, and is helping the corporation look for funding at the federal and territorial levels.

"We have no choice but to find a way to fix it so that we don't have a whole lot of people homeless on the streets of Yk that used to be residents of Northland," said Brooks.

Brooks said the issue of who is responsible for the dire situation Northland faces is "very complex and very convoluted."

Pearl Benyk, a member of the condominium board, said a big problem was that, historically, condo fees were kept far too low at around $65 a month by Northland's former owner Triple E Developments, which owned most of the lots during the 1990s and held the majority vote at condo corporation meetings until about 10 years ago.

The condo board has tried to raise revenues needed for infrastructure responsibly through condo fees, but was a tough sell convincing Northland residents that higher condo fees were necessary.

"You just try to make people pay twice as much, or three times as much," said Benyk.

"It's taken us this long to gradually get it up to $160 a month."

Wade Friesen, vice-president of the condo board blames Triple E Developments and its co-owner Cliff Johnson.

"With a lack of territorial legislation requiring (Johnson) to put away an infrastructure reserve fund, we were left with nothing (set aside for emergencies)," said Friesen.

Benyk said there should have been higher condo fees from the very beginning and millions of dollars set aside, as everyone knew the life expectancy was only until the mid-1990s.

"At the time that this was done there were no restrictions placed on (Johnson). He wasn't required to put aside a proper contingency fund, he wasn't required to charge a large enough condo fee to put that money aside, and he was given a carte blanche to run this thing the way he did," said Benyk.

James Clark, a real estate agent with HomeLife Sunrise Real Estate in Yellowknife, acted on behalf of Johnson for much to do with the trailer park and the lot sales, and was the former park manager of Northland, but he declined to comment.

Clark also refused to put Yellowknifer in touch with Johnson, who lives outside the NWT.

Triple E Developments bought the trailer park from Territorial Holdings in 1988, and started turning the trailer park into a condominium corporation the next year.

Many families owned their trailers, but all the land was owned by Triple E Developments, which acquired consent from the majority of Northland residents to turn the trailer park into a condominium corporation under the condition that anyone could continue renting their lots if they wished.

After that, Triple E Developments began to encourage people buy the lot under the trailers they were parked on.

Benyk bought her lot in 1990.

"I had three choices," said Benyk.

"I could continue to rent in a market with no rent control, and where the rent can be jacked up at the owner's wishes."

"I could move my trailer out of the trailer park, but ... it was a 1972 trailer," said Benyk. Because of the trailer's age, it was no longer up to code and there was no place in the city to move it, according to Benyk.

"Or I could buy into the condo corporation."

Benyk said the offer to buy the lots in the early 1990s was very appealing - rising rent on lots and low condo fees made the offer to buy land much more attractive for not only the low-income families, but anyone who was living in Northland.

Those still renting their lots from Triple E Developments in the early '90s faced rental charges that were rising sharply. Between 1989 and 1993 lot rental costs went up about 60 per cent to $415 a month from $260.

Eventually all the lots were sold off. According to Friesen, Triple E Developments sold its last lot sometime during the last two years.

Friesen said it's been tough enough just keeping up with the general maintenance with what money the corporation brings in from condo fees nowadays.

"We're trying to pay for infrastructure replacement while at the same time maintaining a failing infrastructure," said Friesen.

He said there have also been issues with water leakage from the aging pipes, and large costs associated with wasted water.

Benyk said out of the 258 homes in the trailer park, somewhere between 60 to 70 are behind on their condo fees in amounts anywhere from $10 to $6,500 each.

"There are people in there not paying because they can't pay. There are people in there who aren't paying because they're so far in debt because you reach a point where it's so overwhelming that you just throw up your hands," said Benyk.

"Some don't understand what a condominium is and they don't think they have to pay," said Benyk.

Friesen said beyond maintaining the underground infrastructure, the corporation's hands have been tied on spending money on anything else, including badly needed upgrades for two playgrounds that have fallen into disrepair.

"Our priority is infrastructure. I'm sure everyone would rather see water and sewer working in their house than have a nice park for their kids to play, which is an unfortunate reality," said Friesen.

He said time is running out to get the situation straightened out. Two big pipe breaks have happened in the last two years, including one in early February which can't be fixed until later this spring because residents' fuel tanks are positioned over the pipe and would need to be taken out. This would leave some residents without heat, and if the fuel tanks are too old, they may not be allowed to reinstall them.

A 300-foot above ground sewer line was installed along Norseman Drive in early February as an emergency measure.

Friesen said the condominium corporation doesn't know how much the repairs will cost in total because the sewer lines haven't been dug up yet, and no one has seen the extent of the damage. The symptoms of the damage, though, are hard to miss.

"Sewage was coming up out of the manhole. There was sewage in people's yards," said Friesen, noting the corporation spent $50,000 on cleanup for that one break.

Friesen did not need to describe the terrible scenario and serious health risks that would arise out of a massive failure of the sewer lines.

"Just use your imagination," said Friesen.

Now the corroded and decaying corrugated metal water and sewer pipes lay under the park like a massive time bomb. Disaster could strike at any time, and no one knows when or to what scale that will be.