Clean water flowing from Yellow Quill taps

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For the first time in more than eight years, people living on Yellow Quill First Nation will be able to get safe drinking water simply by turning on their taps.

Water quality on the First Nation was so bad that the community had been under a boil water advisory since 1995. The advisory was finally lifted in early March, when a new $6.5 million water treatment system began operating, piping safe water to all the homes in the community.

Word that the water was now safe to drink came as a welcome relief to Yellow Quill chief Robert Whitehead, but for some members of the community, it will take more than an announcement to convince them the water quality problems have indeed been addressed.

"There are still some people who are very skeptical," Whitehead said. "I guess it's going to take a while for the people to get used to it."

After all, everyone in the community had a long time to get used to not having safe drinking water.

Part of the reason why water quality issues on Yellow Quill have finally been dealt with, Whitehead believes, is the amount of attention focussed on water quality after the problems in Walkerton, Ont. and in North Battleford. Seven people died and hundreds became ill in Walkerton in May 2000 when the town's drinking supply became contaminated with E. coli. Just under a year later, in April 2001, thousands of people in North Battleford became ill after their drinking supply was contaminated by cryptosporidium.

"With a comparison ... the kind of water that they were highlighting in the media so much is nothing compared to what we had here. And I think there was some talk of maybe going to court to address these issues," he said.

"And I don't know whether that's what caused the movement to happen. But definitely those two situations kind of highlighted us. And then also the fact that the media came out and basically got involved to say that our water was worse than what they had in Walkerton."

The system in place on Yellow Quill now is a state-of-the- art reverse osmosis water treatment facility that includes a biofiltration system engineered by Hans Peterson of the Safe Drinking Water Foundation, who started working with Yellow Quill in 1999 to help resolve the water problems plaguing the community.

"On the front end, they treat the water prior to it going to the reverse osmosis plant," explained Trevor Sutter, manager of communications for Indian and Northern Affairs Canada (INAC)-Saskatchewan region. "What essentially his process employs is a bunch of mineral-eating bugs that go through the water. They exist in the filtration system and the bugs basically distill the water. And then it's put into the treatment plant for further treatment. Apparently this process works fairly well. It's an interesting process because the tests that have been done on the water show it's very good, very good water."

Along with the new treatment system, the community also has qualified staff to operate the plant and monitor the water quality, thanks to a training program launched by INAC, Sutter explained.

"At Yellow Quill, there are two certified water treatment operators. There wasn't any before," he said, adding that through the program, the staff of about two-thirds of the First Nations treatment facilities in the province have received the necessary training.

The source of Yellow Quill's water has also been changed for the better. The community used to draw its water from Pipestone Creek, where extreme fluctuations in water levels and a high concentration of dissolved solids in the water combined to make it very difficult to treat effectively. Now, the water comes from an underground well.

While Whitehead said he doesn't understand all the science behind the new plant, he can tell that the process is working.

"The one good thing about it is that when you turn the taps on, it doesn't smell. You can't smell it anymore. And it's clear water. The other water was always colourd. Sometimes it was a light colour, sometimes dark. It all depended on what day it was I guess. So it wasn't very good water."

Before the new system started up, the water that came out of people's taps was contaminated, Whitehead said.

"You could turn the tap on before, like you could smell the sewer. That's how bad it was. Our houses smelled like that, sometimes the inside, it smelt like that for days because of the water. Even when we didn't turn the taps on you could still smell it."

"We're really glad that we have good water to drink now. I, for one, I drink that water right out of the tap now. I think the really sad part about the last water was that you could smell it, you could see it. The water you drink now is just clear. You can see right into it. And that's a big difference from what we had."