The Ontario Energy Board has fined E.L.K. Energy Inc. $5,000 following an investigation into the utility's handling of its assets.
The investigation found no official documentation inspections of assets had been carried out and no evidence any corrective actions had been taken on identified issues.
Essex is the majority shareholder with E.L.K. and councillor Sherry Bondy had raised concerns in the past resulting in her council pay being pulled for 30 days following a recommendation from the town's Integrity Commissioner.
She says it's a big deal any time a utility is fined and she's hoping this will force E.L.K. to make some improvements.
Bondy says she's feeling vindicated.
"Unfortunately, I'm not surprised. This is what I was alluding to all along. These are the type of questions I was asking at the board level over two years ago. What does our asset management plan look like? How is our record keeping? And I wasn't getting a straight answer then."
She says there's still more questions that need to be answered.
"It's commonly known out there that the Town of Essex is the sole shareholder of E.L.K. Energy. So I think we need to have that discussion with our board members saying, hey, the writing's on the wall, there was red flags all along and why didn't you get ahead of this? And why did this happen?"
Bondy says it all comes down to accountability.
"Now that this has come out, we need to have that hard conversation. I would like a complete independent audit of E.L.K. Energy. I also think their board meetings should be open to the public because they need to be accountable. It all comes down to accountability and there hasn't been any and we need to see some."
E.L.K. has acknowledged changes need to be made and has agreed to training for staff on record keeping and third party inspections of assets.
Bondy adds she'd like to see a detailed action plan made public.
E.L.K. supplies electricity to Essex, Kingsville and Lakeshore.
— with files from AM800's Rusty Thomson