It’s a quaint bungalow, relatively new, with all the modern conveniences.
All except for one: the water is undrinkable.
It has been for years.
And Skye doesn’t expect that will change anytime soon.
“They keep talking about running water, that one day we’ll get water. But it won’t be in my lifetime,” the 81-year-old says.
The lack of drinkable tap water is a fact of life for most of the 12,146 people living on this reserve — the most populous in the country.
As many as four out of five homes in this community are not connected to water lines, driving most families to rely on wells or cisterns for their water. The trouble is they’re almost universally contaminated by run-off from nearby farms, industry and human waste.
More than 300 homes have no access to water of any kind.
“We used to have real good water when we were kids,” says band Chief Bill Montour. “But over the years, it’s deteriorated.”
Decade long Boil Water Advisory
Well water, which has been subject to a band-issued, boil-water advisory for more than a decade, poses the biggest risk. One survey found as many as 86 per cent of the wells to be contaminated.
“This is not OK,” says Sarah Dickson, a civil engineering professor at McMaster University and an expert in groundwater contamination. “As Canadians, we should be ashamed there are people living in our country under these conditions and with this quality of water.”
“The question is how do you solve the problem?”
A $41-million water treatment plant under construction just north of the Grand River is touted as part of the solution. Expected to open this fall, it will more than quintuple the capacity of the existing system and push drinkable water to the 480 homes in Ohsweken already on water lines.
A proposed 800-home subdivision on the north edge of the reserve will also be on the system, says Montour.
But it doesn’t fix the issue. Instead, it complicates it.
To begin with, the plant won’t improve access for the roughly 2,200 homes, schools and businesses that aren’t on water lines. Montour has a five-year goal to extend water lines to every home on the reserve, but the cost — about $120 million — is a problem. So is the community’s existing wastewater system, which isn’t capable of handling an expanded load.
Whether homeowners welcome such a change is another matter.
“We’re used to it,” says Mike Martin. Like many of those living on the reserve, the 29-year-old hires a private company to truck water into his cistern. At this time of the year, he goes through 2,000 gallons every few weeks — close to $1,500 worth annually, just to clean and shower.
He won’t drink it, despite the cost. It’s not regulated. In fact, private delivery services actually contribute to water contamination on the reserve, rather than cure it.
Still, Martin doesn’t complain.
“It’s how we grew up,” he says.
Skye’s home on River Range Road is littered with cases of Nestlé bottled water. Like Martin, she opts to drink that instead of the water she has trucked in. The bottled water, at least, is subject to regulations.
It’s an additional expense — and a significant one. But it’s better than risking her health.
“I just don’t trust it,” she says. “I don’t know where they get the water.”
Political differences, impending legislation and a projected population explosion at Six Nations — due in part to higher birth rates among Ontario’s First Nations — are also factors, as are the enormous costs of new infrastructure and uncertainty around who, exactly, is responsible for footing the bill.
In a perfect world, money would come from the federal government. According to the Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada website, water and wastewater infrastructure is its responsibility.
But the feds aren’t paying, at least not for anything over and above the $26 million they contributed to the new plant.
And despite The Spectator’s repeated requests (See Sidebar) no one — including federal ministers and a local MP — will say why.
Paul General, the manager of Six Nations Eco Centre, knows it’s not a perfect world.
“So, I think you find the dollars wherever you can find them,” he says.
Montour agrees. He knows better than to rely on the feds for funding, and he’s exploring other possibilities.
He says public-private partnerships are one option, as is selling treated water from the new plant to the non-native homes bordering the reserve, such as those in Brant County. He’s also considered a water utilities commission, which would essentially provide water to residents for a fee.
“A lot of people are going to jump all over me — it’s taxes,” he says. “Well, wake up and smell the roses. There’s no great white father coming over the hill with a bag of money anymore.”
Health Canada is responsible for water quality on the country’s First Nations reserves.
That includes Six Nations.
In the past 12 months, the department found potentially harmful bacteria in 60 per cent of the wells tested on the reserve. But there’s reason to believe contamination is much more widespread — in part, because it’s underreported.
Since Health Canada draws samples only at the request of homeowners, the test results reflect a small proportion of the reserve’s wells. Since last April, for instance, the department processed 27 well water samples.
That’s 27 samples for close to 1,500 homes.
More fulsome surveys also support much higher rates of contamination. A 2004 study, for instance, found potentially harmful bacteria in 78 per cent of dug or bored wells tested. More than a fifth contained E. coli — the bacteria that killed seven people and sickened thousands of others in Walkerton.
A year earlier, a larger survey found 86 per cent of dug or bored wells tested were contaminated with potentially harmful bacteria. There was E. coli in almost a third of them.
Close to half of drilled wells, which are deeper and generally less prone to contamination, contained potentially harmful bacteria — primarily because they were left unsealed or unmaintained.
In rural Hamilton, by comparison, 22 per cent of well water tests were positive for total coliform bacteria, while 5 per cent contained E. coli. Most homes in other neighbouring communities, such as Cayuga and Caledonia, are on water lines.
“This is a serious public health issue,” said aboriginal affairs critic Carolyn Bennett. “Health Canada is responsible, and they have direct responsibility to be testing regularly.”
A former family physician, the Liberal MP understands the risks better than most.
“I remember going out there and hearing about the water issues, hearing about the cloudy water coming out of their taps,” she says. “It’s a disgrace.”
It’s also a danger.
While neither Health Canada nor Six Nations Health Services have reports of illnesses, such as gastroenteritis, related to poor water quality on the reserve, many in the community insist their friends and family members are suffering.
“The kids on the reserve are always getting diarrhea. And my sister had E. coli,” says Helen Miller, a member of the elected band council. “People get sick a lot.”
In the long term, microbiological contamination — and the chronic diarrhea that often comes with it — can cause dehydration, malnutrition, even reduced IQ levels in children, says Dickson, the McMaster prof.
“We need clean water to maintain our health,” she says.
Water Woes not limited to Six Nations
Outside Belleville in Tyendinaga, another community is struggling with water security.
“We’ve got the housing and we’ve got the roads,” says Don Maracle, longtime chief of the Mohawks of the Bay of Quinte. “We just need the water.”
On his reserve, less than a third of the 1,000 or so homes are on water lines shared with neighbouring Deseronto.
Like Six Nations, the rest rely on wells or cisterns for drinking water.
Almost 60 per cent of the wells are contaminated, says Maracle. And for the past five years or so, all well water on the reserve has been subject to a boil-water advisory issued by Health Canada.
“People have polluted wells and there’s not really anything we can do about it,” the chief explains.
The band is, however, trying to ensure its residents have access to clean drinking water. Homeowners who install purification systems, for instance, are subsidized for half the cost. And a regulated water delivery service has been set up, which locals can tap into for a fee.
The initiatives help from a public health perspective, but they don’t bring Maracle closer to his long-term plan — to extend water lines to every home on the 7,300-hectare reserve.
For that, he’ll need money. And a new $19-million water plant, which he’s waiting for the federal government to approve.
He’s not the only First Nations leader that’s been left hanging.
In 2011, the federal government released the results of a nationwide assessment of First Nations water and wastewater systems. It found close to 75 per cent of the water systems on 571 reserves that participated pose either a high or medium risk to human health, and it would cost $4.7 billion on top of annual operating and maintenance budgets to bring them up to par.
More than 300 systems were classified as high risk. At the time, the government made a commitment to invest in improvements at 72 of them — a band-aid solution that some politicians say addresses only part of the problem.
“The study was faulty in that it only looked at water systems, it didn’t look at wells,” says New Democrat MP Jean Crowder. “It didn’t even touch the places where there is no drinking water at all, where water is trucked in.”
In January, the Harper government reannounced $330 million for new infrastructure over the next two years. Crowder and her colleague Bennett agree it’s woefully insufficient.
It’s also significantly less than previous budgets for capital improvements, such as the $1.25 billion that was committed to infrastructure between 2006 and 2010.
“Two years out from that report, and there’s no plan. And we’re actually seeing them cut money,” Bennett says.
“Do they think we’re stupid?”
Third World conditions?
It’s not unusual for politicians to dub conditions on Canada’s reserves “Third World.”
The label, however, is typically saved for places such as Attawapiskat or Pikangikum — isolated northern First Nations where living conditions are so deteriorated they routinely attract the national media lens.
Six Nations is different.
It’s the country’s most populated reserve, and among the most developed. It’s wealthy — at least as far as First Nations go — and less than an hour from several of Canada’s largest urban hubs.
It’s a place Crowder and others should have no reason to describe as “Third World.”
But they do.
“For people to live in Third World conditions right next to a major metropolitan centre — there’s something wrong with that,” says Crowder, the NDP aboriginal affairs critic. “It’s shocking.”
The reason for the persistently poor conditions?
A lack of consistent funding for water and wastewater infrastructure is part of it. So is the absence of legislative standards, and the federal government’s failure to ensure water is tested regularly, a 2011 status report by the auditor general suggests.
Confusion and a lack of co-ordination between the federal government, bands, the province and public agencies are also factors.
“We spent a huge amount of time just trying to sit down with the federal government to talk about these issues,” says Ontario Aboriginal Affairs Minister David Zimmer. “Sometimes it’s like swimming in wet cement.”
On top of that, there’s never been a real strategy to fix the problem.
“There’s not been a long-term plan,” says Bennett. “The new plant, obviously, is hopeful. But we also need to figure out what to do with the wells and whether all those homes will be hooked up.”
For its part, the federal government has taken some steps to address the issue.
Last year, it tabled the Safe Drinking Water for First Nations Act, which provides for the development of federal regulations governing the provision of drinking water, water quality standards and the disposal of wastewater on reserves.
The bill has already passed through the Senate but has been sharply criticized by First Nations groups who say it doesn’t provide the resources to help bands meet the new standards. It also isn’t clear who is liable when regulations aren’t met.
The concern, as Ontario’s regional chief Angus Toulouse has succinctly put it, “is that First Nations are being set up to fail.”
Can’t afford to wait for the feds
Carolyn Bennett doesn’t hesitate when asked what would help the situation on the reserve.
“I think the first step is to have a plan, and it has to be what, by when, and how,” she says. “When will 100 per cent of the people living at Six Nations have safe drinking water?”
Many in the community agree extending water lines is essential, especially when it comes to ensuring public health in the long term. But there are also immediate steps, such as smaller investments in well repairs.
“Very often, it’s the well construction itself that’s leading to the contamination,” says McMaster’s Dickson. “So if we could spend the money on rehabilitating these wells, a lot of the problems could potentially go away.”
Local officials on the reserve are aware the issue is significant, and agree it should be acted on now — even if they have to do it themselves.
“We can say Harper should be totally accountable,”says Councillor Bob Johnson.“But what good is it going to do us?
“We’ve got some responsibility locally to do some investing and come up with a plan,” he adds. “Even if it takes us 10 or 20 years, we’ve got to start somewhere.”
Montour, the band council chief, is eager too. He knows the reserve’s economic potential depends on it.
He also knows he can’t afford to wait for the feds to loosen the purse strings, particularly with the population expected to more than triple within the next 40 years. So he’s looking into options such as partnerships with the private sector in order to move things along.
He says getting safe drinking water to every home on Six Nations is his “top priority.”
But it’s not going to happen overnight.
In fact, Montour and others say a long-term solution to the reserve’s ground and surface-water woes that eradicates rather than treats contamination could easily be “a hundred-year project.”
A hundred years. To secure what the United Nations has declared a fundamental human right.
“The pristine water that my grandfather used to fish sturgeon in, in the ’50s and ’60s — it took a number of years to deteriorate,” he says.
“It’s going to take the same amount of time to clean it up again.”
No answers
Over the past month, The Spectator made several attempts to arrange an interview with a spokesperson at Aboriginal Affairs Canada. Those requests were denied.
Federal Aboriginal Affairs Minister Bernard Valcourt’s office also declined an interview despite repeated requests by phone and email, as did the office of Conservative MP Phil McColeman, the federal representative for Six Nations.
The office of federal Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq did not respond to The Spectator’s requests for an interview.
Original Article
Source: thespec.com
Author: Teri Pecoskie
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