Wekweètì residents are being told to boil their drinking water for at least a minute after a lengthy power outage froze equipment at the community’s water treatment plant.
Naka Power says a problem with two of Wekweètì’s three generators left parts of the community without power for about a day.
Fred Behrens, Wekweètì’s senior administrator, told Cabin Radio late on Friday morning that power had gone out about 24 hours earlier.
“The old part of town has power. The airport and the far end of town going to the airport have power,” Behrens said on Friday, “but the middle part of town doesn’t, including the community government offices and youth centre.”
The health centre also lost power, he said.
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“Hopefully they’re not frozen,” he said of the affected buildings, “but I wouldn’t be surprised if they are. We tried our best efforts but, you know, at 36 below.”
Behrens had warned residents to conserve water because he believed the treatment plant had been damaged during the outage.
On Friday afternoon, the NWT’s chief environmental health officer confirmed the plant had suffered “freezing damage” and issued a boil-water advisory.
“The treatment plant currently cannot properly treat the water,” the advisory stated.
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“The community in collaboration with Maca are working to resolve the mechanical failure as soon as possible.”
Naka Power Utilities said power had been fully restored in the community by 2pm on Friday.
“The outage was caused by a mechanical issue with two of the community’s three generation units,” Naka Power Utilities manager Vic Barr stated in an email.
The outage reminded Behrens of a days-long outage in the community in 2024 as it hosted that year’s Tłı̨chǫ Annual Gathering.
At the time, the cause of that outage was attributed at least partly to Wekweètì’s generators being overloaded by the sheer number of people in the community.
According to Behrens, Naka Power has speculated that the same issue might be to blame this week.
“We had a funeral here on Monday that brought in a lot of people and they’re saying that may be the cause,” he said, “because we had so many people here – that drew all that extra power – that it overloaded the system for Thursday.”
