Full Transcript

Jay Famiglietti:
Are we ready?

Markus Brinkmann:
Yes.

Jay Famiglietti:
Yeah. That’s a trick to find out if you were muted. Okay. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.

Jay Famiglietti:
Hi, I’m Jay Famiglietti. Welcome to season two of Let’s Talk About Water. This is a podcast about the future of water and why you should care. It’s coming to you from the Global Institute for Water Security at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon.

Jay Famiglietti:
Today, we’re looking at the impact of COVID 19 and how we manage the planet’s water supply from here on in. We now know that the risk of waterborne transmission of COVID is not very high, but there are many other ways in which COVID impacts water and vice versa. Today, we’re going to explore the way the pandemic has affected water systems and water access in ways that we couldn’t have imagined just a few months ago. Among today’s stories, we will explore how scientists are rolling up their sleeves and getting their hands dirty chasing COVID 19 in municipal sewage, how one of this continent’s oldest and most vulnerable groups is experiencing additional and severe water stress caused by the pandemic, and how one indigenous man was moved by a water tragedy more than a decade ago, to make a difference to people worried about the crisis affecting the world today.

Jay Famiglietti:
But first, following our successful launch last year, we had plans for a bigger, better season two, slickly produced at our state-of-the-art university studios. But the impact of COVID 19 means the end of weekly visits for me to an actual recording studio. The one where a friendly producer hanging on my every word, handed me a cup of coffee before seating me in front of a $5,000 microphone.

Jay Famiglietti:
Well, we’ve had to adapt. So here I am in my office in front of a much less expensive microphone, sitting at the middle of my desk. But you know what? COVID won’t affect the great storytelling one little bit over the next dozen weeks or so of this new season of Let’s Talk About Water, even if I have to pull out my guitar and do some of the musical accompaniment myself. I call this one, The COVID 19 Blues.

Jay Famiglietti:
We begin season two of Let’s Talk About Water with a colleague of mine. Dr. Markus Brinkmann is a professor of exposure and risk assessment modeling at the University of Saskatchewan and a researcher here at the Global Institute for Water Security and in our Center for Toxicology. And Marcus has had a front row seat, along with fellow water researchers around the world, watching in real time as COVID entered our lives back in the winter. Welcome to the program, Marcus.

Markus Brinkmann:
Thank you so much, Jay. Thanks for having me.

Jay Famiglietti:
It’s a real pleasure. Now, Marcus, when the world started getting its head around how serious COVID 19 was back in January and February, what were the chief concerns of water experts like yourself?

Markus Brinkmann:
The first thing we really started thinking about was whether or not changes in used patterns of different chemicals, for me as a toxicologist by training that was really interesting, would change. So we started getting in contact with wastewater treatment plant operators, et cetera, et cetera, and talk about these things. And then in the process of that, they really got interested in potential transmission risks of COVID through wastewater. So this is kind of how we started talking to operators and the wastewater industry around the province.

Jay Famiglietti:
That’s really interesting. Was there ever a point in time when people thought about drinking water? That it might be transmitted through drinking water supplies?

Markus Brinkmann:
Yes. I think those questions have been asked. I think in terms of transmission risks through water, most of the studies we’ve seen recently show that they are relatively minor, especially since many of the wastewater treatment plants also have pretty sophisticated sanitization stages to clean the water so that no bacteria and other pathogens might leave the plants.

Jay Famiglietti:
So that’s not something that we expect to change, right? I mean, we understand now that it’s not really waterborne and as long as we keep up to our high standards of water treatment, we will be okay. Right?

Markus Brinkmann:
It would seem so. I think there is a couple gaps in our current understanding and most of our knowledge that we have is from conventional wastewater treatment plants, like the very sophisticated ones with activated sludge stages, et cetera. But many of the wastewater treatment plants in Canada and across the United States of America are actually lagoon based. So relatively simple plants where the wastewater enters so-called constructed wetlands for treatment. And to my knowledge, none of those have been studied yet. So there’s all sorts of transmission risks you could think of to small mammals, like muskrats and beaver, inhabiting those lagoons. But yeah, as I said, I think we are kind of blind on one eye at this point.

Jay Famiglietti:
Yeah. So that’s pretty interesting. I didn’t really realize that. So then, considering that this was a wildlife generated virus, do you think that there’s a chance… So, we’re off in a lagoon and the Canadian beaver are paddling around and enjoying themselves, but they’re pretty close to us here, especially here in Saskatoon. So do you think that there’s a risk of us being infected by COVID carrying beavers?

Markus Brinkmann:
Yes. I think the scenario seems realistic, but we are really lacking research dedicated to this particular question. So I think future studies would hopefully show these links or exclude them for the better. But yeah, not being an epidemiologist myself, I’m not sure how to go about those sorts of studies. We look at other experts to solve those problems.

Jay Famiglietti:
So, know I’m concerned Marcus because I walk along the river several times a day with my dog and I see all the beaver activities, so I know they’re out there. And I admire the work that they do greatly, but now I think I’m just afraid. Okay, so we’ll keep an eye on the beaver. I think many of us are now starting to understand that COVID is really much more of an airborne thing than a waterborne thing. And that’s when your work pretty much went straight into the toilet, right? No pun intended. Please tell us, what is that all about?

Markus Brinkmann:
So in a way, when humans are infected with SARS-coV-2, or they have COVID, they would not only be having the virus particles on their respiratory surfaces, like their lungs and their noses where health professionals typically take nose swabs to sample for COVID, but they would also shed the virus through their feces. And this is really where the toilet and the sewer system comes in, because everything we flush down our toilets will end up somewhere in a wastewater treatment plant. And this is where, for example in Saskatoon, all the water from all the residents would mix. And that is a potential site where you can sample and test for COVID, which seems surprising, but it works pretty well. It might take a couple days until you find measurable levels of the virus in feces, but that might still be earlier than any symptoms that people might show. And now the really big advantage, in my opinion, is that even asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic patients would already shed virus through their feces. So you might have a little bit of a time advantage there before you could actually see those people at the testing centers.

Jay Famiglietti:
So that’s pretty incredible, because then this can be used as a diagnostic.

Markus Brinkmann:
Exactly.

Jay Famiglietti:
Your work, you’re not the only person that’s doing this, right? My understanding is that many people are tracking, looking at sewage as an indicator of outbreaks, or maybe warding off outbreaks. Where does your work fit in with some of the other work that’s being done across North America and all around the world?

Markus Brinkmann:
Yeah. So I’m part of a larger group of researchers at the University of Saskatchewan, both in the Toxicology Center, as well as in the College of Engineering. And we all work together on trying to perfect the methods for detection of traces of SARS-coV-2 in wastewater, and then also trying to work with the engineers on the wastewater treatment side. Now that’s at the University of Saskatchewan, but we are part of a bigger group, the so-called Coalition of the Canadian Water Network, where really a group of people from all across Canada come together to help and standardize those methods to make sure that we use methods that, if we have a negative find in a wastewater treatment plant, that we actually don’t have any virus in there, trying to be as conservative as possible and making sure that the quality is controlled.

Jay Famiglietti:
Are we getting a different picture from studying sewage? So does studying, to be blunt, millions of gallons of undifferentiated human poop, does that give us a different picture of the COVID crisis than the results of the zillions of individual lab tests? So is it as good as a foot long Q-tip rammed up my nose?

Markus Brinkmann:
Yeah, you’re totally right. So what it is really is a population wide screening for potential COVID cases. So you don’t get those people sign up for individual tests that show symptoms and have to get tested potentially to go back to work and things like that, but you look at the entire population at the same time.

Markus Brinkmann:
It is really, really tricky to get back from the results we read in our sewage samples to a number of cases in the population. Doing that requires a lot of knowledge about the system. It’s possible, but it’s really tricky. I think where the real power of this lies is to see changes. So for example, this week in Saskatchewan and many other provinces across Canada, the kids go back to school and there has been a lot of anxiety about potential case numbers rising and surging, actually, as a result of that. Oftentimes kids do not show symptoms and they don’t show the same symptoms as adults do. So I think there’s a real chance if you detect an increase in the traces of COVID in wastewater, that you could say, “Okay, I think we have some community transmission going on here.”

Jay Famiglietti:
Are any decision makers taking advantage of this here or in other cities around the world?

Markus Brinkmann:
So we are working directly with the operators of the wastewater treatment plant in Saskatoon. So the city is really interested in it. The Saskatchewan health authority is aware of our research and they are really interested in it. But I think since it’s still really early days in the process of getting the methods right, they are not entirely sure how to use this information just yet. We will certainly share our information with everyone interested and hope that they can use it in decision making. But at this point, not many decision makers or authorities have used this information yet.

Jay Famiglietti:
Thanks so much for joining us today. Marcus, it’s been great to chat with you.

Markus Brinkmann:
Thank you, Jay, for having me.

Jay Famiglietti:
Markus Brinkmann is a professor of exposure and risk assessment modeling at the University of Saskatchewan and a researcher here at the Global Institute for Water Security and the Center for Toxicology. And he and his team are fighting back against COVID 19 by studying, believe it or not, our sewage. And we are flushed with pride about the success of his work. Thanks, Marcus.

Markus Brinkmann:
Thank you.

Jay Famiglietti:
We trade now from someone dealing with COVID 19 crisis by looking at water downstream from us, that is by studying our sewage, to someone who is concerned with getting good, clean, upstream water to folks living in one of the driest places on earth. Emma Robbins grew up in the Navajo Nation, in the desert country of the great American Southwest. It is an understatement to say that getting access to good water has never been easy in that part of the world. But Robbins, director of the Navajo Water Project, says COVID 19 has made that daily task a lot more difficult for lots of people in her community. I reached her in Tuba City, in the Navajo Nation in Arizona. Welcome to the program, Emma.

Emma Robbins:
Thank you for having me. I’m honored to be here.

Jay Famiglietti:
We are honored to have you. There’s a stark contrast, of course, between the Southwest and say the rest of the United States, but also what’s happening on the reservations compared to the rest of the country. So for many Navajo people, it’s not like it is for me when I lived in California or where I live right now in Saskatchewan. I can just turn on a tap and pretty much always expect safe water’s going to come out of that tap. What kind of things do many of the folks where you live have to do to get access to good water?

Emma Robbins:
So, exactly like you’re saying, there are 30% of Navajos on the Navajo Nation who don’t have that luxury of turning on the tap and who don’t have that luxury of having access even to safe water, whether that comes through a sink in their house, or if they’re hauling water from a source. And it’s a huge issue because everybody needs water to survive. When you think about what you do in the morning, you get up, you take your medicine, you take a shower, you make coffee, you water to your plants, your dogs and everything. And it’s a big issue, especially during COVID, because we’re told constantly that you need to wash your hands and stay at home, but when you don’t have running water, that’s not a possibility.

Jay Famiglietti:
So tell me a little bit, if you don’t mind about the Navajo Water Project.

Emma Robbins:
The Navajo Water Project was started about five years ago and it started when our CEO and founder of Dig Deep Water, the Navajo Water Project is under the umbrella of the human rights organization, Dig Deep Water. And he came across a nonprofit in New Mexico that was doing water delivery routes. And so this water delivery route started because so many people in their area did not have running water. And this was actually started by a school because they were seeing that their student population was missing classes often, and they were able to link that to the fact that people didn’t have running water in their homes. And so we teamed up with them. I came on very shortly afterwards, four and a half years ago. And what we started doing was installing what we call home water systems. And these are off-grid systems for families who don’t have piped water, who don’t have access to a safe water source.

Emma Robbins:
And these are comprised of an underground tank. There’s some plumbing, a pump that brings it in a water heater, a sink, and obviously you need power to electrify the pump. And so we very quickly saw that not only do people not have running water, but they don’t have electricity. Most of my family growing up did not have electricity or running water. I personally was very fortunate to have those two luxuries. And so we had to design a second system which implemented solar elements so that the pump could be powered. To date, we’ve done about 300 of these home water systems. We’ve since branched out from that first location in New Mexico to all three states across the Navajo Nation. Obviously, we’re a sovereign nation, it’s huge. If we were a state in the US we’d be the 10th largest. And so it takes a lot more than just going, throwing in a tank and making sure that it’s filled up by a water delivery route, we have to make sure that we’re identifying a safe water source as well.

Emma Robbins:
This area has a lot of abandoned uranium mines, a lot of the groundwater has arsenic and uranium in it. And so we need to make sure that not only are these sources safe, but that they’re going to be long term. With climate change we’re seeing that a lot of wells are drying up and that’s something that we simply can’t have. In addition to these home water systems, we also assist families who might have piped water, but aren’t able to afford expensive fixes. And it’s something that, the running water element is great, but what we’re moving into now, post-COVID, is installing septic and bathroom additions.

Jay Famiglietti:
Emma, you’re clearly doing God’s work. This is just amazing what you’re talking about. But I’m curious how COVID has impacted your mission of bringing those home water systems to more and more people.

Emma Robbins:
It’s been a pause. Obviously everything has shifted for everybody, but for us, we had to halt working in family’s homes. Obviously we are installing this plumbing, we’re installing sinks and we’re in close contact with community members. We don’t want to put them at risk and we don’t want to put our staff at risk. So since March, we have shifted to continuing to get people safe drinking water. When the pandemic first hit, I’m sure many of you know that the Navajo Nation was the hardest hit in the US there for a while, we had the highest infection rate per capita. Very unfortunately we’ve lost over 500 community members here on the reservation, many of which are elders. And so it’s really up to us to make sure that we’re protecting our community. Either staying out of their homes or bringing them water because when we lose our elders, we lose our culture, we lose our language, we lose everything. We lose everything that we fought for hundreds of years to keep alive.

Emma Robbins:
And so when things got really bad in the spring and summer, we had a collaboration where we received 262,000 gallons of bottled water. And we worked with Nestle and this was definitely just an emergency response that had to happen ASAP. We had to transport water safely to COVID positive patients, to people who were high risk, to our elders, single parents, folks who were non-ambulatory or wheelchair bound and people who just live super off-grid, like the communities that we were serving prior. And it got to the point where that was a really great quick fix, but it’s not a long term solution. Obviously bottled water creates more waste, it lasts for a couple weeks or days, but we wanted to find a middle ground from this really great donation where it was sort of a stepping stone between these bottled water and between our full on home water systems.

Emma Robbins:
Our full on home water systems are 1200 gallons. And so it’s required that these big tanks go underground because we’re at such high elevations here. It’s the desert, it’s dry, but temperatures do drop at night. So what we came up with was we started dropping, and when I say dropping I mean placing, 275 gallon storage tanks at homes, and these are above ground. And we elevate them so they’re safe from contamination. We leave families with buckets and soap, and we are committed to filling these up every two to four weeks, depending on how many people are in homes. So, so far we’ve done about 300 of these. We will have done 540 at the end of the year. And this has been sort of a silver lining because we were working in three different areas on the Navajo Nation, and now we’re working in like 10 different areas.

Emma Robbins:
And so again, getting back to that idea of building relationships and a large part of my job is to make sure that we’re collaborating with communities, that it’s not consentful but it’s collaborative. I think a lot of times people think, “Well, you’re from the reservation so you must know everyone and you must know how it works.” Again, we’re a huge sovereign nation, where one of our project sites are and where I’m from, it’s four hours. It’s a huge, huge, huge difference in culture, language, a million other things. And so the silver lining has been that we’re starting to work with other communities. And so when the pandemic lifts, hopefully we’ll have these long term projects that we did before. But it’s definitely been a huge shift. I’m hoping that in January we’ll be able to begin home water system installations. But right now the top two priorities are keeping people safe while still getting them drinking water.

Jay Famiglietti:
Emma, you are really a shining light in these dark COVID times, in these dark times of climate change and drought in the Southwest, in the fires that are happening across California and the west. Emma Robbins is director of the Navajo Water Project. She spoke to me from Tuba City on the Navajo Nation. Thanks very much for being on the program.

Emma Robbins:
Thank you. It’s been really great. [Emma says farewell in Navajo]

Jay Famiglietti:
An indigenous man in the Canadian province of British Columbia is harnessing technology to help manage water better. And Trever Andrew says that since the start of the pandemic he’s never been busier, serving people who want to buy his digital product. Andrew has developed an app called Sewllkwe Book, which works on any phone or tablet. It helps treatment plant operators improve water quality monitoring and control. Trever Andrew is a member of the Shuswap First Nation, and speaks to us from his office near Kamloops. Welcome to the program, Trever.

Trever Andrew:
For having me. I truly appreciate it.

Jay Famiglietti:
It’s really our pleasure. And so this app, this Sewllkwe Book sounds pretty important. Where did you get the idea for it?

Trever Andrew:
Well, it came up when Walkerton got hit in the year 2000 and when seven people died in Ontario, I was quite devastated. I have a- at the time she was four years old and I believe the young girl that died was roughly around the same age. And it hit me hard that from a glass of water, that people in Canada could be affected by water.

Jay Famiglietti:
Well, I appreciate that inspiration, how it’s motivated you to act, to develop this app. Can you tell us what it does?

Trever Andrew:
What it does, it allows the consumer or the end user into my world so they can see what’s going on with the water quality on a daily basis, so that they can have confidence that the person that’s managing the natural resource and the end result is in their best interest. So it brings everyone together, from networking and communicating. Networking to the experts that are out there that need to look at the water quality issues in your community, and the communications to the client.

Jay Famiglietti:
How long did it take you to develop?

Trever Andrew:
About 13 years.

Jay Famiglietti:
Oh, that’s a long time.

Trever Andrew:
Yes.

Jay Famiglietti:
But it sounds like it’s been well worth it. And I understand that it’s become much more popular during the pandemic. Why is that?

Trever Andrew:
I believe in Canada, innovation and technology is really slow and we’re not like the United States, we’re not like the European countries. But when the pandemic hit, all of a sudden people started to use different ways of communicating with technology and innovation. They embraced, they had to use it. And that was the same with my program. When they saw the platform, when COVID gave the platform to innovation and technology, a lot of people were starting to clue into how important it is to have innovation and technology entwined with your daily life, whether it’s the COVID or not the COVID.

Jay Famiglietti:
Yeah. So I understand the impact of change and shift to different technologies like we’re doing right now, and everyone is doing Zoom and Microsoft Teams and so on. And so it sounds like you were ready, almost pandemic ready, given the way things have gone. Not intentionally, of course, but that your app was right place, right time, so to speak.

Trever Andrew:
Yeah. Oh, absolutely. Being a water operator you have a huge responsibility of communicating to your directors and your chief and council or the political board, whoever you answer to. And it’s made my job now a lot more simpler to get the message out, that that’s the last thing during the COVID you should worry about, it’s your water quality.

Jay Famiglietti:
You know, I live in Saskatoon and I worry when there’s work done and we get the tags, the boil water advisories. I always worry about it. And it’s pretty interesting what you said. I mean about the slowness to adopt the new technology. The way we find out is someone from the water district walks around and hangs a tag on our door telling us that it’s bad and we need to boil water for several days. And then they walk around with a green tag when it’s good. And when you think about it, we could at least be doing email.

Trever Andrew:
The program, my program communicates to the client with texting or email.

Jay Famiglietti:
Yeah. I understand now why it’s become so popular. So what kind of clients are you attracting?

Trever Andrew:
I just got an email from Australia. They want to talk to me and how I can help them manage the water crisis that’s going over there right now with their country. It’s quite devastating to see what’s happening in Australia with that darling river, and to see the impact that it’s had on all the cultures over there is absolutely devastating. And I’m hoping with the innovation and technology that I’ve created, it can help them better manage their natural resources over there. Because from here in Canada, I can program them from here without flying over there. It saves them money.

Jay Famiglietti:
Well, these days, especially too, it’s an excellent point that you don’t have to fly over there. These days we don’t want to be flying over there and it has a lot of implications for the future. If and when things get back to quote unquote, normal, do we need to be doing all this flying? So I understand the value now much better after chatting with you. So have you been able to help a lot of people with operating water plants on First Nations? I understand from the reading that I’ve done that, especially in Canada, it’s quite a problem.

Trever Andrew:
Yeah. Right now I got two First Nations that are using it, but we need to get a lot more onto the program. And one of the biggest things is having been able to be on your podcast now, it’s getting a message out there that we have two problems in Canada. We have water quality and we have innovation and technology, and both of them need to have the same platform because they both aid and assist each other. And I believe that in indigenous communities, that innovation and technology hasn’t been brought to the table, I think they need to start with all cultures, start sharing that innovation and technology can help us all.

Jay Famiglietti:
That is a really important take away message, Trever. Thank you very much. Trever Andrew is the developer of a digital water management tool called Sewllkwe Book. Sewllkwe, by the way, is the Shuswap word for water. Thank you very much, Trever. It’s great to have you on.

Trever Andrew:
Thank you very much for having me, Jay. I truly appreciate it. And keep doing what you’re doing, bro.

Jay Famiglietti:
You’ve been listening to Let’s Talk About Water, a podcast about the future of water and why you should care. It’s a presentation of the Global Institute for Water Security at the University of Saskatchewan. If you want to hear more, subscribe to us on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast. You’ll find us on Facebook at Let’s Talk About Water Podcast or on Twitter @LTAWPodcast. Thanks so much to this week’s guests, Trever Andrew, Emma Robbins, and Markus Brinkmann. And thank you to all of those who helped put the show together, including Mark Ferguson, Laura McFarlan, Amy Hergott, Jesse Witow, Linda Lilienfeld, and our producer, Sean Prpick. Thanks also to the Walrus Lab. I’m Jay Famiglietti. Be sure to come back next week for a fresh new episode. And remember wear a mask, keep your distance, wash your hands and please stay safe.