Quinte Mohawks live with order to boil water

They pump their water from wells and boil it before they drink. Meanwhile, they face the prospect of an expanded dump upstream from their homes. The Mohawks of the Bay of Quinte know a thing or two about bad water. Chief R. Donald Maracle, who has been fighting to ensure the garbage dump won’t poison his people’s water supply, says it’s no wonder the water crisis in the northern Ontario community of Kashechewan occurred. He says it’s because the collective Canadian attitude toward First Nations has been so cold.

“Canada is a very rich country. Ontario is a very rich province. There is no reason why these Third World conditions for First Nation people should prevail,” Maracle said in a telephone interview yesterday. “We can certainly understand the plight of the Kashechewan people. It’s a widespread problem.” Located about 50 kilometres west of Kingston, the Mohawk territory of Tyendinaga on the Bay of Quinte is home to about 3,000 natives who rely on groundwater for drinking, bathing and washing. In 2003, a consultant’s report showed 57 per cent of the reserve’s 620 wells were contaminated. One-third of the wells were too shallow to continuously yield water and 113 were deemed to be under the influence of upstream pollutants.

Now, the reserve also finds itself battling to keep Waste Management Canada from expanding the landfill sits on, increasing it’s intake to 750,000 tonnes of garbage a year from 125,000. The consultant’s report also indicated that the Richmond site is founded on fractured bedrock, which allows leachate to seep into a stream that runs through the dump right into the Tyendinaga territory.

“It’s just another battle. We don’t need a project to come in and make worse what is already a bad situation,” Maracle said. Maracle claims that among the pollutants seeping into the reserve’s surface water are E. coli bacteria, the same bacteria that forced the massive Kashechewan evacuation after residents became very ill. #8220;There’s nothing stopping another Kashechewan from happening anywhere that water is still being boiled,” said Bryan Hendry, a spokesman for the Assembly of First Nations. “It could happen at the Bay of Quinte. It could happen anywhere.” Hendry said that of the 37 Ontario native reserves under a boil-water advisory, the Bay of Quinte/Tyendinaga territory actually has some of the cleanest water supplies. He cites Moose Deer Point, a tiny reserve of 132 people just south of Parry Sound, where residents have been boiling their water for six years. “I find it just incredible that a place could be like that for so long,” Hendry said.

Some reserves may only have to boil drinking water for a couple of minutes, while others have to wait an hour. It’s so bad, he says, some places have to boil their water just to bathe because the concentration of bacteria is so high. At Tyendinaga, the water is at least safe enough for bathing, but Maracle still doesn’t endorse any use of unboiled water – for drinking or otherwise. “If you get into the water with a break in the skin, who knows?” he said. “I tell people here if they can get their water by any other means to do so.” Maracle says he’s been told by the Ontario government that $10 million is earmarked for a new water-treatment facility for his people, but he hasn’t yet seen any steps taken to build it. The continued population growth of southern and eastern Ontario worries Maracle, who says his water supply will keep deteriorating with greater agricultural and industrial development. He hopes Kashechewan will generate the necessary political pressure to fix contaminated water on First Nation’s Reserves. “Nothing less than a parliamentary approach will work,” he said. “We’re relying on the public purse. We need help.”

Meanwhile, natives of Kashechewan continue to be flown out of the northern community for temporary refuge in other Ontario towns and cities. Yesterday, Peterborough said it could take 125 people. About 815 people have been relocated to lodgings across the province, with the majority taking refuge in Ottawa, Sudbury and Cochrane. Kashechewan community leaders have identified another 87 people still in need of evacuation, while others will be airlifted to Sudbury on day trips for medical evaluation.

Kingston Mayor Harvey Rosen has already offered temporary shelter to some people here, but said yesterday “we haven’t heard anything yet.” He also said he’d received a few negative reactions to his offer to accept native evacuees. “They were reprehensible. So bad I can’t repeat them,” Rosen said. “I was actually quite shocked by them.” But he said negative remarks would not deter him from offering refuge to displaced people. “I think think it’s the right thing to do.”

– With files from Canadian Press

bharrison@thewhig.com