About 1,000 residents of a remote northern Ontario Indian reserve will be evacuated this week after authorities said the drinking water was showing dangerously elevated levels of potentially deadly E. coli, Ontario's minister for aboriginal affairs said Tuesday.
TORONTO — About 1,000 residents of a remote northern Ontario Indian reserve will be evacuated this week after authorities said the drinking water was showing dangerously elevated levels of potentially deadly E. coli, Ontario's minister for aboriginal affairs said Tuesday.
David Ramsay said roughly 1,000 of the 1,900 residents of the Kashechewan First Nation reserve off the western shores of James Bay will be flown out of the area, starting late Wednesday.
Residents of the reserve have been under a boil-water restriction for more than two years because of dirty water, which native leaders in the area say are linked to Kashechewan's 10-year-old water treatment that was built downstream from an existing sewage lagoon. Native leaders say the plant is beyond repair.
Roughly half of the residents of the reserve, located 580 miles (933 kilometers) north of Toronto, are suffering from a variety of skin infections, conditions that have been exacerbated by the high levels of chlorine being used to disinfect the water.
The entire community may have to be abandoned, Ramsay said.
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Community leaders have said its residents have been living in Third World conditions.
Ramsay said it will be the Kashechewan community that ultimately decides whether the reserve is worth saving or should move to a different location.
E. coli can be fatal for the young and the elderly.
Grand Chief Stan Loutitt of the Mushkegowuk Council of tribes in northern Ontario said the government deserves credit for moving on the issue, but he expressed frustration over the time it took.
"We're residents of Ontario. This should have been done weeks ago, years ago," he said.
Source: Associated Press
