Bad water foils attempt to build healthy community

Slate Falls First Nation says it’s paying a price for trying to build a more liveable First Nation community. 

Back in the 1990s, when residents moved to the new reserve located 120 km north of Sioux Lookout, leaders planned houses spread out in a horse shoe pattern around the lake. Each duplex in the community has lakefront access, giving residents space and access to the land and water.

"Even though it looks nice, there are problems, there are issues," said band councillor Katy Loon.

The biggest problem is the lack of safe drinking water. Houses are served by a series of pump houses where water is drawn from the lake, run through a filter and briefly passed through a chlorination system. But the system lacks the capacity to properly rid the water of e-coli and other contaminants.

"It’s a crisis in our community because of the detrimental impact on our health," Chief Lorraine Crane said.

Crane said the First Nation has been asking Aboriginal Affairs to improve the water system for more than a decade.  She said the answer has been study after study, without a fix.

"And to this day, there is no solution and I don't see anything coming," Crane said. "We keep getting caught [for having poor drinking water quality] and then we're into another study again."

Loon said there is good ground water in Slate Falls and the First Nation would like to drill wells but Aboriginal Affairs policies prohibit it.

Now the water problem is affecting Slate Falls in exactly the way they hoped to avoid – overcrowding. Without safe drinking water, no new homes can be built in the community and the existing ones are becoming jammed full of young families.

Dinah Loon, 82, shares her two-bedroom duplex with her granddaughter, her husband and three children. The family of five sleeps in one room, while the children share a mattress on the floor. Through an interpreter, Dinah Loon said it’s stressful taking shifts to use the tiny kitchen and single bathroom.

"I believe there would be a lot of people who would want to come back and work here and live here," councillor Kathy Loon said. "I mean look at it, everybody has a nice lakefront. They don’t get that in town."

But unfortunately, Loon said "good human resources" leave the community.

"I believe a lot more people would come home if there were houses for them — and if there was water for them."

Slate Falls is just one of more than two dozen communities in the Nishnawbe Aski Nation that is without safe drinking water. Grand Chief Stan Beardy said, if the problem is to be fixed, the government will need to allocate "a lot more" funding for First Nations water upgrades than was identified in the recent federal budget.

Beardy said the Conservative’s own study showed $4.9 billion over 10 years is required. The budget identified $330,000 over three years.

CBC News asked Aboriginal Affairs what it plans to do about the water supply in Slate Falls First Nation and about government policies around drilling wells in First Nations, but no one has responded to the inquiry.