FISHER RIVER -- At midnight on a bitter Manitoba winter night when the sewage plant on a remote First Nation breaks down, who you gonna call?

Troubleshooter Ken Mattes.

He has installed a water plant for the Canadian Forces in Egypt and built warm flush toilets for soldiers cleaning up radioactive debris from a Soviet satellite that crashed in the Arctic.

"We had running water in a week."

Engineers have fanned out across Canada to evaluate the state of water and wastewater services on almost every one of the country's 610 First Nations.

The $9-million assessment comes in the wake of a long list of damning government reports, issued over more than a decade, that warned about the health consequences of not solving reserve water woes.

The project, co-ordinated by Winnipeg engineer Heather MacKenzie, is supposed to help the federal government pin down what it will cost to bring up to standard every First Nations water and sewage plant in Canada.

A similar assessment in 2003 pegged the cost at about $1.7 billion over five years. Almost that much was spent by 2008, but 117 First Nations still have to boil their drinking water.

NO one can accuse the Canadian government of ignoring water and waste-water systems on First Nations over the last 15 years.

The Library of Parliament estimates $3.5 billion was spent between 1995 and 2008 and hundreds of millions more have been committed since.

After that kind of staggering expenditure, why is tap water on so many First Nations unfit to drink and why do half the homes in Island Lake lack running water?

Then-Indian Affairs minister Chuck Strahl pretty much admitted this spring his department cannot keep up with infrastructure needs on reserves -- unless there's a major change in how projects are funded.