Unsafe to drink – The Globe and Mail
A Globe review shows water treatment plants are failing on reserves across Canada. For every system the government fixes, plenty remain in a shambolic state
Several days each week last fall, water trucks left Sudbury and drove 130 kilometres west to the Serpent River First Nation, a reserve on Lake Huron’s north shore. There, they emptied about 18,000 litres into a reservoir to supplement the community’s water treatment plant. John Owl, the plant operator, said it ran 24 hours a day and still could not provide enough water to meet the needs of the reserve’s 350 inhabitants. Not that they could drink it – it is subject to a drinking water advisory.
A snowstorm in December shut the Trans-Canada Highway, blocking the water shipments. A pipe ruptured in the crawlspace of an abandoned home, draining about four truckloads of water. And as temperatures dropped, the plant’s output fell. “As the water gets colder, it gets denser and it’s harder to push through the filters,” Mr. Owl explained.
