To get clean drinking water, residents of the Mohawks of the Bay of Quinte First Nations reserve must go to one of two fill-up stations.
less To get clean drinking water, residents of the Mohawks of the Bay of Quinte First Nations reserve must go to one of two fill-up stations.
But that’s not the case for the nearly 2,200 indigenous people about 10 miles away on the Mohawks of the Bay of Quinte First Nations reserve.
Six of its water systems are under long-term drinking water advisories.
But the commitment, which was part of a broader raft of pledges designed to bring about reconciliation with Canada’s indigenous people, has not been easy to address, and chiefs and others worry that a combination of red tape, undertrained water treatment plant operators and insufficient funding means that progress will be sporadic.
To avoid drinking water contaminated with blue algae or bacteria such as E. coli, residents of Ontario’s third-largest First Nations reserve boil water, pay for it to be delivered to them by truck, or haul jugs to and from the reserve’s two fill-up stations.
Despite the fact that Canada has the world’s third-largest supply of fresh water, water on indigenous reserves has for decades been contaminated with various chemicals or bacteria, tough to access or at risk because of broken-down water systems that can take years to fix.
Since becoming prime minister, Trudeau has earmarked nearly $2 billion to make good on his promise, but addressing the crisis hasn’t been easy.
In 2016, after four years of negotiations with the federal government, his reserve got something that many don’t have: a $31 million state-of-the-art water treatment plant, which provides clean water to 68 homes and various community facilities.
A report from Human Rights Watch in 2016 found that of the dozens of drinking water advisories in place on Ontario’s reserves, almost 60 were for systems less than 25 years old and 12 were for systems less than 15 years old.