Canada's potable water problem

By Andy Blatchford

The Canadian Press, August 30, 2009

Unlike the majority of Canadians, Loyal Mansbridge's quest for water takes him past the kitchen sink – way past.

For most of his life, the 80-year-old retired fisherman from Quebec's Lower North Shore regularly rowed a kilometre across a bay to fetch pails of water from a brook.

All that for a drink, and if he was lucky, maybe a bath. The only difference is he used to row in the old days; today he's got an outboard motor.

In a G8 nation well-endowed with fresh water, many Canadians still struggle to acquire the potable kind.

While very few places in Canada lack running water altogether, like Mr. Mansbridge's town, Health Canada reported almost 2,000 boil-water advisories across the country last year.

The town mayor compares it to Third World conditions. He says residents knowingly drink unsafe levels of E. coli, even winding up with stomach problems, because they don't have much of a choice.

Most of Mr. Mansbridge's neighbours in the isolated fishing community of Mutton Bay have never had drinkable water flow from their faucets.

“If I can turn my tap on ... before I die, it'll be a good thing for me,” Mr. Mansbridge said in a phone interview.

The village, perched on the rocky edge of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, spent years lobbying for cash from the province.

They have also been drilling in search of a clean-enough groundwater source.

But what was once a pipe dream will soon be reality, as work began last week on a project that will pump water into Mutton Bay's 60 homes – for the first time.

Mr. Mansbridge, born and raised in the town of 120, said locals expect the new $1.7-million municipal system to be gurgling by the end of December.

“It will be a pretty good Christmas present – I'd say, anyway,” he said.

In April 2008, the Canadian Medical Association Journal reported there were 1,766 provincial boil-water advisories across the country – plus 93 warnings in First Nations communities. It estimated that 90 Canadians die annually from tainted water.

This year, 113 First Nations were under drinking-water advisories on July 31, Health Canada said.

But Steve Hrudey, a University of Alberta water expert, says drinking-water advisories were designed for emergencies, not everyday life.

“To have boil-water advisories in place for months and years, as is the case in a number of Canadian communities, is basically saying ‘We don't want to know,' ” Hrudey said.

Governments should be doing more to ensure smaller communities have access to clean water, he said.

“I think in a country as rich as Canada, to be paying as little attention to small community water supplies as we are, is really kind of sad,” Hrudey said.

“People will pay for Internet and cable TV and whatever else, but will question having to pay anything for water.”

Back on Quebec's Lower North Shore, the mayor of Gros-Mecatina, the municipality that encompasses Mutton Bay, compared the village's water situation to the “Third World.”

“We're living in 2009, in one of the richest countries of the world, and in some parts of this country there's no such thing as [clean water],” said Randy Jones, adding he brought a bucket of dirty Mutton Bay water to Quebec City's legislature 20 years ago in protest.

“They don't know what it's like to turn on a tap, or a faucet, whatever you want to call it, and wash their hands and not have to worry where the water's coming from.”

In the mid-1990s, Mutton Bay dug a community well on a steep hill outside the village.

But the pump house supplies only limited amounts and is inaccessible in winter, forcing residents to continue with their two-hour missions across Mutton Bay.

Jones said locals have been using the brook water, even though they've known for the last 25 years that it contains unsafe levels of E. coli.

As a result, many people in the community have suffered from stomach problems over the years.

Asked why people have stayed in Mutton Bay for so long without suitable drinking water, Jones responds that the answer is simple.

“It's a four-letter word: home,” he said.

Residents in the economically depressed area never had the time or money to travel long distances to lobby for something better, he added.

“We're out of sight and out of mind and people are preoccupied with surviving,” Jones said.

Mr. Mansbridge, who still lugs water back to his home with buckets similar to ones he used 70 years ago, said regardless of where the water comes from, he's never even considered uprooting.

“Born in Mutton Bay and I hope to die here,” he said.

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