Full Transcript

Bob Patrick:
And water, uneven access to drinking water in this country is something most Canadians are not aware of. Living in cities and towns, we turn on the tap and we don’t think about the health of our water, the safety of our water. We don’t have to, because it is being looked after through a drinking water distribution system. But that’s not the case in First Nation communities. So many Canadians don’t understand that or know that. So we have a water insecurity problem in the Global North, so-called developed world. And it’s our First Nations that experienced that on a regular basis.

Jay Famiglietti:
Hi, everyone. Welcome back to Let’s Talk About Water. I’m your host, Jay Famiglietti. Now, wherever you’re from, you’ve probably heard of or experienced some kind of water advisory. Maybe you were told not to use the tap water for a few hours because something in your local water treatment plant broke, or maybe there was a lot of algae in the Lake where your water comes from. Usually, it’s cleared up in a few hours, maybe a day. Well, here in Canada, there are First Nations that are currently under long-term drinking water advisories, meaning that for over a year, that’s right, a full year, these communities have been advised to either boil, not drink or not use water at all from their taps. And some have been under boiled water advisories even longer. The Neskatanga First Nation in Northern Ontario has been on a water advisory for 26 years.

Jay Famiglietti:
But from the outside, the problem may appear to have a simple fix, just build some water treatment plants. But with a new water treatment plant comes water treatment operators who need support operating new treatment plants on top of the frequent maintenance and repairs required to keep the systems up. And what if the water entering our plant upstream is already contaminated? What then? Plans need to be in place to make sure the source water is protected now and into the future. Well, today we’re speaking with two guests, Bob Patrick and Deon Hassler about several of these issues. We’re talking about being involved in decision-making mentorship and support for First Nations water treatment plant operators. We’re talking about how community source water protection plans can contribute to ending long-term water advisories.

Jay Famiglietti:
And we’re talking about what the future of drinking water looks like in Indigenous communities across Canada. First, let’s turn to Bob Patrick. Bob Patrick is a professor in the department of geography and planning at the University of Saskatchewan. And he’s an expert in source water protection. Bob, thanks so much for joining us today.

Bob Patrick:
Thank you, Jay. Thank you very much.

Jay Famiglietti:
Bob. Can you tell us how you would describe source water protection?

Bob Patrick:
Sure. To me, it’s almost a social science process where we begin with first talking about planning. It’s about having a community empowered to know that they can actually develop a plan to protect their source of water. Maybe communities don’t realize they have the ability to do that. So the process is really to start with a working committee to pull together people from that community, maybe some water experts, scientists, but really pulling together people who want to be part of an ongoing process. And then, doing an assessment of your water system, looking at how many connections are there, what is the source of the water? What are the land use activities that are going on in your watershed or around the aquifer? And then identifying those risks and coming up with management actions to lessen those risks. We might not be able to eliminate the risk, but we can often reduce those risks.

Jay Famiglietti:
It’s interesting that you describe it as a social science problem because the big picture really is, we’ve really become disconnected from understanding where our water comes from. Same with food, right? You go into a grocery store and there’s a banana. And so, same thing with water where you turn on the tap and there it is. And we don’t understand the pathways. And of course, source water protection fits fantastically these days into nature-based solutions. We should have been doing it anyway, but really need to raise awareness.

Jay Famiglietti:
Let’s turn to the First Nations situation. How do we get to this point with 58 different drinking water advisories in First Nations communities and Canada? How do we get here?

Bob Patrick:
Well, it’s a giant question. There’s so many layers. In some instances it’s poor water. It’s just, the water quality is just poor. In other instances, the water treatment facilities that were put in place decades ago were insufficient to address the water conditions in place. There’s been poor engineering, poor designs. There have been contracts that were not fulfilled. There’s been a lot of hands-off management from I’ll say Ottawa. There are many situations where there is no distribution system. So the houses are not connected to a distribution system and trucks are ready around the community, delivery water, when that water is, in fact, often contaminated in the truck.

Bob Patrick:
There’s burdens put on the First Nations that are just unmanageable. Many that I visited are doing their very best. In fact, often they’re doing just heroic jobs at keeping the systems running. Trucks that are running 24/7 to deliver water to households. But when they deliver the water, often, Jay, the in-ground cisterns are cracked. They’ve been put in place in the 1980s. They’re concrete often. So with freeze-thaw cycles of the Prairie they’re cracked or broken. Lids are broken off and so there’s contaminants, dirt and animals in the water. It’s just a poor system that was set up in many cases. Not in all cases, but in many cases it was a poor system, a poor design. And then it wasn’t maintained. They’re being maintained by the First Nation, but they’re not getting an infusion of funds to replace the cisterns.

Jay Famiglietti:
It’s so complicated. I understand now what you mean about there being so many levels of the problem when you try to reverse engineer to figure out what went wrong. So with all that in mind then, what are some of the next steps? What can be done to resolve these advisories?

Bob Patrick:
I think source water protection is a good first step. I mean, source water protection is the first barrier, recognized as the first barrier in the multi barrier approach. I think in the past, with First Nations and Metis communities and with all communities, we thought about the water just coming in and treating it and sending it out and everything will be fine. And we really have not thought deeply enough about where that water is coming from. I mean, really what would a water system be without a watershed, without a groundwater supply? So it all starts with the source.

Bob Patrick:
I think we’ve forgotten that as Canadians. We’ve thought about just building a treatment plant and certainly in First Nation communities, the federal government’s approach has been, we’ll build our way out of this problem. We’ll just throw money at a treatment plant, which you do need. You do need good water treatment, but you can’t just start with the treatment, you have to back up and look at where is this water coming from and how are we protecting this water in the first place?

Jay Famiglietti:
What do you see in the future in terms of source water protection planning and your own research?

Bob Patrick:
Well, I think the future is right now. Indigenous communities, First Nation and Metis communities are actually leading the way in this country in source water protection. I mean, I’ve assisted with a number of these in the Prairie region of Alberta and BC. There are probably more source water protection plans right now in First Nation communities that in municipalities. First Nations know, understand and appreciate the ability to go out and do source water protection. Indigenous people have been planning of the landscape for centuries. And so, the idea of protecting water is not something new to First Nations. It’s new to many Canadians, but it’s not new to Indigenous people. I see the future of Indigenous people continue to lead the way doing source water protection.

Bob Patrick:
Dealing with abandoned wells is a problem, Jay. There’s many, many abandoned wells or the landscape on the Prairies. These are old farmsteads or just old water sources that are now abandoned, but they weren’t properly decommissioned. Landfills are a big problem on the Prairie. Saskatchewan has more unofficial, I guess, illegal landfills, than the rest of Canada combined. Many of these are on First Nation communities. Federal government asked First Nations to build landfills, so the method was to dig a hole and when it’s full, I just dig another hole. And so the First Nations didn’t create the problem, but they’re having to live with that problem of that type of landfill system. So decommissioning these wells or decommissioning these landfills is an important piece. And that’s going on right now. Putting in transfer stations so they clean up these landfill problems.

Bob Patrick:
Just planning, just having good land use plans and identifying where you want to put new wells, protecting those wellheads, building fences around wells, to keep animals and people away from their source of well water.

Jay Famiglietti:
Now you’re a scientific advisor of the Safe Drinking Water Team, which sounds a little bit like a superhero squad. How would you describe the work of the Safe Drinking Water Team?

Bob Patrick:
Well, I mean, they are a superhero squad and I’m glad you brought this up, Jay, because I think this is one important phase or step that will help point in the direction of resolving the water problem in this country for Indigenous people. And the Safe Drinking Water Team really just took it upon themselves after years and decades of frustration, of fitting between different regulations. Federally, we don’t have standards, we have guidelines in this country. So trying to follow those guidelines, but also trying to fit into provincial standards. And First Nations, Metis communities falling between and not sure which guideline or which standard to be following, the Safe Drinking Water Team decided that they would develop their own standards, sort of an Indigenous drinking water quality standard. And so they looked at some of the best qualities, provincial and federal and pull together standards that would work best for their communities.

Jay Famiglietti:
That’s so interesting. I’ve never really heard about a community coming together to set its own standards. But if someone else isn’t going to do it for you, then you’re not left with many options. So yeah, they are superheroes. Well, so I’m glad you brought that up because, in fact, our next guest is Deon Hassler and he is actually a member of the Safe Drinking Water Team.

Jay Famiglietti:
Deon Hassler is a circuit rider trainer for the File Hills Qu’Appelle Tribal Council. He’s responsible for 11 First Nations bands in terms of technical services, for mentoring, training, and assisting water treatment operators in operating and maintaining their systems.

Jay Famiglietti:
Hi Deon, how’s it going?

Deon Hassler:
Oh, doing really good.

Jay Famiglietti:
Good. Now, you’re a member of the Safe Drinking Water Team. How would you describe the work of that team?

Deon Hassler:
We’re trying to find different approaches to training. We’re just trying to figure out a way that so we can make it better and be more appropriate for our needs in First Nation communities. Because like I said, it just really hasn’t been there. Our water quality in our communities are just really poor. So we just want to try to find a way to improve things. We’ve done a lot of research already and we’re putting it together. My big part of the association is education. How can we educate the operators and Chief of Council?

Jay Famiglietti:
Deon, can you tell me about some of the changes you’ve seen in water treatment during your career?

Deon Hassler:
All the biological systems, we’ve had them in one of our communities here, it was one of the first water plants that were built was biological, 2002. And over the past years, we’ve actually had about over 25 water plants in Saskatchewan but they’re biological plants. And we’ve proven that they can work with their high iron levels, high iron, manganese, ammonia levels that we have. They work. I mean, I’m having issues with green sand and RO systems.

Jay Famiglietti:
And when you talk about RO, you’re talking about reverse osmosis, right? So pushing the water through some kind of a membrane to filter out the bad stuff.

Deon Hassler:
Reverse osmosis and membrane treatment. They can’t handle as much iron and manganese. We’ve proven that they work, but we struggle with ISC to get them to understand, we want biological systems in our First Nations. We weren’t getting approved for those water plants at one time. But now, in the last few years, they’ve come around and approved these systems. In my communities, we are building biological systems, but we’re still struggling with green sands where there’s a couple of them that aren’t being replaced that I don’t know, I still feel that they should be.

Jay Famiglietti:
How about other challenges along the way? Have you had any really big challenges in your career?

Deon Hassler:
My challenges really don’t stop. It’s every day I have a challenge. It’s get them to bring up their certification levels because we still have operators that are aren’t fully qualified in their water plants, where they should be. Then they’ve been there for years. But I got to admit, it’s one of my biggest accomplishments, we’re having these couple of long time operators that weren’t certified and I finally got them certified. Maybe 15 years they were operators, but they didn’t have no certification.

Jay Famiglietti:
Well, congratulations on doing that. As I mentioned before, I’m relatively new to Canada. I’ve only been a permanent resident for almost a year, actually. But sometimes, some of the things that really surprise me are what’s happening in the Indigenous and First Nations communities with all the water treatment. What’s happening with the release of raw sewage across Canada. What’s happening with the water quality, well, I am so impressed that your community is coming up with its own standards. It’s a resource rich country and we don’t really think too carefully about what we’re throwing in the water. And man, I’m kind of blown away by these problems.

Deon Hassler:
Well, those standards that are made up, that’s a actually government thing. It’s not really done up by a Health. Health only has one vote. It’s all the provinces that have the votes. So who’s making the decisions when it comes to water quality? It’s the government. Water health issues are secondary.

Jay Famiglietti:
So one question I have for you, what about the younger generation? Can you generate interest in the next generation of circuit riders?

Deon Hassler:
Well, actually some of the communities, a couple of years ago, they asked me to come in and actually teach an hour or so with students, high school students that might be interested in doing a water plant. So actually, I was in three communities doing that. Well, because sometimes I do it to start with an hour, I end up doing two or three hours because they really listened to what I had to say. And it’s just building their interest.

Deon Hassler:
Also, with the Safe Drinking Water Team, we have the foundation that has kits for students that they can also practice some water quality, taking water samples. And we still right now, one of our big reasons for boiled water advisories are the cisterns because they’re not really proven to work very well because we still have feces that are still getting into those, cracking and that’s going on with those. Some of the things that they’re discovering when they go do cistern cleaning, animal parts in there. You don’t want to be drinking that water. So in our area here, we have boiled water advisories on anybody that’s on those systems.

Jay Famiglietti:
That is such a tough way to live.

Deon Hassler:
Well. We’re pushing for a pipe systems to every house, but that’s a big cost again, because houses are spread out so far.

Bob Patrick:
Your expertise is around that. The treatment plants and training operators and federal funding and the design of treatment plants. And is it working? Are we resolving some of the problems? Are you finding solutions out there or are the problems getting worse?

Deon Hassler:
Oh, with source water protection, I mean, it’s a great thing that we’re starting it because it’s part of my job requirement to do source water protection, emergency response, plant maintenance plans. But I know in the past, other circuit riders that were there before I was, they weren’t getting anywhere with the communities on doing source water protection. So that’s why we’ve talked before about me and you and trying to get into the bands to start doing source water protection and seeing how important it is to the community. And also the quality of drinking water. Like inviting you to come out and introduce it to communities, it’s a great start. It’s moving. We’re getting somewhere. Because like you said, nobody wants to do it, it seems like. So I thought, well, maybe we’ll try a different approach.

Deon Hassler:
And so that’s why I said using you and also the watershed doing water source water protection. I can’t do everything, so having your help, and we can do this together and we can now find different ways to do it. And especially at this time, with this pandemic going on, now that we talked about doing an online course for source water protection. So getting the word out there, I think, is probably the biggest thing. Communication. Communication is probably one of the biggest problems we have when it comes to the water because chiefs and councils, they’re little [inaudible 00:19:22] they’re the ones making all the decisions, but what do they really know when it comes to water? When I started this job, they didn’t even know, understand who I was or what I was doing. So I had to do an introduction to a big group of leaderships to let them know what I was there to do and help them improve. So I say, communication, teach our leaders and our administrators what the importance of the water plant operators are. Like I said, a big step for what we’re moving forward with.

Jay Famiglietti:
So guys, I’m wondering about the support of the federal government for your growing interest in source water protection. Are they supportive? Is there funding or do you find that you’re on your own?

Bob Patrick:
Well, they are supportive. It was a few years ago now that they asked that I develop a template, a framework model for doing source protection planning. So that is in place and I’m still using it. I’ve been revising it quite regularly, but there is a federal government template, 2013, and that’s sort of what we’ve used in communities to kind of help guide the process. And that’s that framework where you set up the committee and you go through the assessment to management actions and implementation.

Bob Patrick:
The framework is there. And there’s funding that comes through to do source protection planning from the feds. The thing is it’s not expensive to develop the plan. The plan itself is not an expensive process. To pull community members together for half a dozen meetings is not expensive. What’s expensive i the implementation. If you have to decommission a landfill, it could be a million dollars. To decommission wells, a few hundred dollars per well. So the cost will vary, but that’s where we need to source funding from the federal government to implement these plans. While we’ve been successful at developing the plans, the next phase of implementation has been tricky.

Deon Hassler:
Just to kind of elaborate on that. I know when I first started, the communication problem was still there. It’s trying to having to work with both and trying to communicate what we’re trying to do. But I was just kind of thrown into it without any kind of knowledge or any background of what they were trying to do. So I didn’t get any materials to help me out. So I was kind of just jumping into it.

Deon Hassler:
But being around for the eight years now, I have come across where I got more experience of what’s happening and how there are approach is and how things have worked. And I think they’re actually, they’re listening to a lot of my suggestions over the years and we’ve worked together on trying to do things, so communicating with them and trying to get things done, it’s actually gotten better in the past. But there are still people that are in the higher up positions that still have their opinions or their differences of how they want to help First Nations, I guess you could say. Because there are still some things that we struggle for, even to get repairs done. It doesn’t really always happen that quick. Some of them, we still have delays on projects that are going on right now.

Jay Famiglietti:
I commend you for taking this into your own hands and thinking about what you want for your community and setting your own standards.

Bob Patrick:
And we put source water protection, didn’t we, Deon, into the association guidelines, into the new standards that the First Nation Water Association will use. And to this date, the framework for source water protection doesn’t exist in provincial or even federal guidelines for drinking water quality. So again, I think the association, bringing those in and having those in your standards is really a great thing. And water, uneven access to drinking water in this country is something most Canadians are not aware of. Living in cities and towns, we turn on the tap, but we don’t think about the health of our water, the safety of our water. We don’t have to because it is being looked after through a drinking water distribution system. But that’s not the case in First Nation communities and so many Canadians understand that or know that. So we have a water insecurity problem in the Global North, so-called developed world. And it’s our First Nations that experience that on a regular basis.

Deon Hassler:
Because when I first came to the reserve where my parents grew up, there still were houses with no drinking water. They had to go up to the well and haul it in. So having water at their houses was a convenience. So I see now people struggle with that over the years, also with the sewage systems that they had.

Jay Famiglietti:
It’s amazing. So I have a colleague here who had to do that and she’s younger than I am and she talks about going out as a girl, having to walk out on the ice into the river and fill a bucket with water and bring it back. It wasn’t that long ago. We’re probably talking about maybe 25 years ago.

Jay Famiglietti:
Well, Bob, thanks so much for being here. And Deon, thanks so much for being here.

Bob Patrick:
Thanks Jay. Thanks a lot.

Deon Hassler:
Well, thank you, Jay, for inviting me today. Thank you.

Jay Famiglietti:
Our pleasure. Deon Hassler is a circuit rider trainer for the File Hills Qu’Appelle Tribal Council. He’s responsible for 11 First Nations bands in terms of technical services, to mentorship, training and assisting water treatment operators in operating and maintaining their systems and obtaining and maintaining certifications.

Jay Famiglietti:
And at the beginning of the show, we spoke with Bob Patrick, Dr. Robert Patrick is Professor in the Department of Geography and Planning and the Chair of the Regional and Urban Planning Program at the University of Saskatchewan.

Jay Famiglietti:
58 different drinking water advisories in First Nations communities and Canada. That number should be zero and it will be in the future because of the action being taken by people like Deon and Bob. By starting the hard work and by seeing it through from start to finish, by protecting the source of our drinking water to make sure the next generation of First Nations water plant operators, technicians, circuit riders and trainers are ready for whatever the future holds.

Jay Famiglietti:
Let’s Talk About Water is produced by the Global Institute for Water Security at the University of Saskatchewan with The Walrus Lab. I’m your host, Jay Famiglietti. Thanks to everyone who helped put the show together, including Mark Ferguson. Laura McFarland, Amy Hergott, Jesse Witow, Shawn Ahmed, Nikki Manfredi, Stacy Dumanski and our producer. Sean Prpick. As always, special thanks to Linda Lilienfeld and perhaps our number one fan Marcy May down in Southern California.

Jay Famiglietti:
We’ve only got two episodes left this season, so make sure you don’t miss them by setting an alert so you’ll know the moment a new one drops. Remember we’re on Apple Podcast, Spotify, Stitcher, and many other quality podcasting platforms. You can also stream us on Facebook on Let’s Talk About Water podcast or follow us on Twitter @LTAWpodcast. See you in a couple of weeks.