No information, no decisions: Yellowknife councillors discuss water rate options

Adiscussion in Yellowknife city council chambers on water rates led to plenty of suggestions but few answers, as council debates how to respond to a drastic increasein trucked water prices for some residents.

The city's Municipal Services Committee met Monday evening to discuss potential water and sewage rate changes for residents. Many city residents relying on trucked water services complained following a sudden rate hike.

Local contractor WB Water Services provides water delivery in Yellowknife, supplyingtrucked water to seven areas that don't have piped water, including Kam Lake, Old Town, and the EngleBusiness District.

Amendments to the City's contract with WB were made in 2016, which resulted in increased prices for call-outs and deliveries outside of service hours.

Those changes led to disgruntled residents who saw massive increases on their bills, including Fletcher Stevens of the NWT Brewing Company, located in Old Town.

"Our water bill went up 450%," Stevens told CBC."That was a shock that we didn't really anticipate or budget for."

In March 2017, the City put in a temporary rate system for affected residents, while council discusses options for a new rate system.

'I'm struggling with not even having a sense of what we're talking about'

City councillors only gave tentative feedback to options presented on Monday, saying that theylacked key information, includingthe cost breakdown between piped and trucked water services.

Coun. Shauna Morgan said that she typically believes in full cost recovery people paying the full cost of their water bills back to the City but didn'thave enough information to make any firm suggestions.

"I'm struggling with not even having a sense of what we're talking about," she said.

Bell also said he also typically believes in full cost recovery,but does not believe that people should pay more for living in a certain area of the city. If the city can't provide residents with more housing options in piped areas, he said, "then we can't go around demanding that people pay more."

Coun. Niels Konge and Coun. Julian Morse discussed expanding the pipe system to include areas that currently get trucked water, includingnew subdivisions in Grace Lake.

Konge asked for a 40-year-cost breakdown, which would include the cost for installing pipes in those areas, saying that while the final bill may be expensive, "over the life of the infrastructure, I simply believe that it's cheaper."

Another suggestion for the system was a blended rate, meaning that all Yellowknife residents would pay the same cost for water. That would lead to piped rates increasing as trucked rates decrease.

Whatever the solution that is chosen, Stevens said he remains optimistic.

"I think more work could be done to see what could work," he said. "We put people on the moon. There's no reason why we couldn't figure this out."