Few hundred people remain in Kashechewan as water crisis force evacuations

Hundreds have been evacuated from Kashechewan First Nation after a sewage pump failure contaminated the water plant. Lydia Chubak reports.

Only a few hundred people remain in a northern Ontario First Nation community after failures of local water supply and sewage systems forced many to evacuate their homes.

Kashechewan First Nation’s executive director, Tyson Wesley, said about 400 people will be left in the 2,200-member community by Sunday.

Officials at the fly-in community that’s located on the western shore of James Bay declared a state of emergency on Jan. 4 after infrastructure damage had created an urgent public health and safety issue, with sewage creeping into people’s homes and contaminating fresh water systems.

“I think four planes are flying out today, and we’ve been getting five to six planes a day,” Wesley said in an interview on Saturday.

“We had issues with the sewage infrastructure and the sewage packed into the water treatment, which kind of entered the water filtration process and we had to shut off the water supply in the community.”

Wesley said there was a sewage flood in the only clinic in the community, which forced it to shut down.

“The clinic was not safe to operate in, and we had to create a temporary clinic as we are evacuating people out of the community,” he said.

Wesley said many people got sick over the past few weeks and eight people tested positive for a parasitic infection.

“We did have a high number of people getting gastro issues in the community and ... we had asked public health officials to increase or, provide more testing to see what’s happening,” he said.

“Stool samples came back and I think eight people might have contracted cryptosporidium.”

He said more test results are expected soon, which public health officials hope will help determine the cause of the infection.

“We’re doing additional tests in the water, in our water treatment plant, do that specific test, to find that bacteria,” he said.

“We’ll know more by next week.”

He said people who remain in the community are relying on bottled water for drinking, cooking and showering.

“We still have bottled water coming in,” he said.

“We’re still waiting for repairs in our water plant and our infrastructure to happen and we also are waiting for the clinic to be repaired and cleaned.”

Indigenous Services Canada had said it was prioritizing the evacuation of 500 vulnerable people and it has enlisted a company that specializes in water and wastewater management to resolve the issues that led to the shutdown of the First Nation’s water treatment plant.

Kashechewan residents who evacuated to Niagara Falls, Timmins, Kapuskasing and Kingston are relieved they can use tap water again, Wesley said, but they want to go back to their homes as soon as possible.

“They’re able to bathe their babies, and I know it’s a big relief compared to being in a community where you’re limiting your water consumption and cooking with water from bottled water and bathing your babies and bathing your children with bottles of water,” he said.

Wesley said his community has been evacuated many times since 2005 due to flooding in the spring.

“The ice on the river breaks up and heads to the bay where we’re situated, where the government put us is not really a suitable location as it is a flood plain,” he said.

“Our community does evacuate yearly, like we evacuate our most vulnerable because the system that’s meant to protect us is not really a guarantee that it will protect our community when a flood event happens.”

Maan Alhmidi, The Canadian Press

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