EDMONTON — Contaminated drinking water on Alberta reserves is to blame for sickness and possibly even deaths, a federal review panel was told Thursday.
A water supply official for the Saddle Lake First Nation, one of Canada's largest reserves with more than 7,000 residents, gave a grim outline of foul water and sick residents during his presentation to the expert panel.
“We've got death at the tap,” said Tony Stienhaurer, who says the reserve has also been under a boil water order since 2004. “We've got a high incidence rate of cancers, diabetes and young children that are born with cancer.”
“Water has done an enormous disaster in Saddle Lake.”
The reserve is now using a temporary water filtration system that provides some residents with drinking water, but many people don't have cars and have to walk several kilometres to retrieve the water, he said.
Mr. Stienhaurer also complained that he has been stonewalled in his attempts to find out how many residents of Canada's reserves have become ill from contaminated drinking water.
A health official from the Driftpile First Nation was set to tell the panel Friday about a similar situation resulting from poor water quality on her northern reserve, where residents have been forced to boil their water for more than a decade.
“We've had a lot of deaths in our community,” said Florence Willier.
“There was a lot of stomach cancers and gastrointestinal problems that we are now seriously thinking maybe we could have linked it to the water,” Ms. Willier said in an interview outside the hearing. “I would say there have been over 200 people with stomach problems.”
Ms. Willier says the reserve now has a new state-of-the art water treatment system, but has been given no federal money to hire someone to operate it.
The reserve is scrambling to come up with the $85,000 annual salary she expects will be needed to hire a Level 3 water technician. But she also fears the person could be quickly lured away to other communities building new water filtration systems and looking for qualified operators.
“We know there's people waiting on the sidelines waiting to offer them $90,000 to $110,000 a year,” she said. “We're in a no-win situation.”
The expert panel was formed by the Ministry of Indian Affairs and Northern Development in late May, 2006. The three-member panel started its hearings in Whitehorse and will be travelling across Canada in the coming weeks. It is expected the panel will finish its work by August, with a report on drinking water conditions across the nation's reserve system due in September.
Both Ms. Willier and Mr. Stienhaurer say they're hoping the review process results in a strong set of drinking water standards for reserves and federal funding to pay for both filtration systems and the technicians to operate them.
But they also say they doubt that these kinds of problems would have been allowed to fester for so long in non-native communities.
“Media would have been alerted. The minister would have jumped on it,” said Ms. Willier. “We have to prove 110 per cent that we are as much a Canadian as a white person.”
Floyd Provost, who manages the water plant for the Piikani First Nation, told the panel that it really comes down to a matter of “political will” to make changes to ensure safe drinking water on reserves.
Grand Chief Stan Louttit, a member of the expert panel, says one of the main things he hopes to see coming out of the hearings is a firm set of standards for water supplies on reserves.
“Water needs to be regulated somehow and we're trying to find that out,” Louttit said in an interview.
“A lot of the communities being remote are out of sight and out of mind, and generally the public really don't see some of the problems.”
Steve Hrudey, a professor of environmental health studies who is also a panel member, says it has become clear that water problems on Canada's reserves need attention.
“I haven't heard enough to characterize it as urgent, but clearly there are problems that need to be dealt with,” Hrudey told reporters.
He says the panel will not be making recommendations, but will simply provide an analysis of the regulating options available to the federal government to assure safe drinking water.
“The decisions will be up to the minister and the Assembly of First Nations.”
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