Blog
Latest news about the Safe Drinking Water Team
There are still 28 boil water advisories left on First Nations in Canada. That's according to Indigenous Services Minister Patty Hajdu. She says the challenge now is making sure there are qualified people to operate the water treatment systems. "A lot of it comes down to water operators," Hajdu said on Wednesday after her visit to Northwest Angle #33.
Flood-impacted Manitobans with private wells and cisterns can test their water supply for free, as the province pushes to waive off fees temporarily. The move will subsidize costs related to water testing. In an announcement on May 8, the province said the push aims to lift some of the financial burdens caused by flooding. It comes into effect Monday and ends on Aug. 31.
Six days into the flood, Harman Kaur and her husband took a drive past their acreage and found thousands of their ruby-red blueberry bushes were still completely buried in the murky, brown floodwater. Leaking pesticides swirled around the field. Garbage and gas tanks floated past. The smell of fuel filled their noses. "There was a complete layer of oil on top [of the water], and we're talking what I could just see from the road," said Kaur, 29, whose family has owned their farm in the Arnold area of Abbotsford, B.C., for more than a decade.
The Mohawks of the Bay of Quinte First Nation is expanding its water system to deliver clean drinking water to hundreds of residents who have been grappling for more than a decade with seven drinking water advisories. The Bay of Quinte is on Lake Ontario and the First Nation is not remote or isolated. It’s just off Ontario’s Highway 401, between Toronto and Montreal. Chief R. Donald Maracle said his community has suffered from a lack of safe water since 2008, due to fecal, bacterial and algae contaminations. A regional drought made many groundwater wells go completely dry in 2017.
The COVID-19 pandemic has made it even harder for some residents in Harrietsfield, N.S., to get clean drinking water. The Halifax-area community's well water has been contaminated for years, forcing dozens of households to get potable water from nearby St. Paul's United Church or bring it home from work. With many businesses shut down and people working from home, that's no longer an option, said resident Marlene Brown.
Water is something most Canadians take for granted. We have so much of it, it's no wonder. Per capita, our country has the world's third-largest freshwater reserves, but yet in many Indigenous communities, water can be difficult to access, at-risk because of unreliable treatment systems, or contaminated. That's the case in Delaware First Nation, an Indigenous community of about 500 people an hour southwest of London, Ont., a place where fishing was everything 60 years ago.
