Lottery for a life

ST. THERESA POINT -- Zach Harper waited 75 years for a house with running water and a flush toilet.

One week after Harper got it, he died.

Asked last year whether he believed the federal government would ever fund proper plumbing for him, the widower was skeptical.

"He'll ask God that question," said his son-in-law Geordie Rae, translating the elder's Oji-Cree.

Reserves to get upgrade

Nine First Nations with the diciest drinking water will get upgrades to their treatment plants and pipes over the next four years -- good news for a province plagued with water woes.

Anna Fontaine, Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada's regional director for Manitoba, says nine bands, such as Hollow Water and Peguis First Nations, that have "high-risk" water systems will see cash for upgrades to ensure their drinking water doesn't make band members sick.

"Those aren't the only ones that are being done," Fontaine said. "Those are just the ones that are high-risk."

The move follows a damning federal report released in July that assessed every water and sewage treatment system on Canadian reserves and found nearly 40 per cent of water plants were so troubled they posed a high risk to human health.

Misery and indifference

WASAGAMACK -- Richard Andrews is a man of few words and a fan of understatement.

Standing in the gloom of his sagging trailer, he surveys the muddy floor, the goopy flypaper dangling from the kitchen ceiling, the piles of dirty clothes and the dishes stacked in a sink with no faucet. Graffiti and children's scribbles cover what remains of the walls, around holes that allow pink insulation to peek out. It's freezing in the winter, mouldy when the furnace kicks in and worse than even the slummiest apartment in Winnipeg.

"This place should be condemned already," Andrews says with a shrug.

Andrews lives, often with five other adults and his seven or eight grandchildren in what is likely the most squalid home on the reserve with the most pressing sanitation problems in the province. There is no running water to wash clothes, bathe the gaggle of muddy toddlers, do dishes or keep the floors clean. The family shares a slop pail, lined with a garbage bag, in what passes for a bathroom.

Easy to judge, difficult to escape

When we stepped into Richard Andrews' home in Wasagamack, we had only one question: Why the hell are you living here?

For Free Press photojournalist Joe Bryksa, who has visited two dozen homes without running water all across this province, it was the worst he'd seen. Dirty clothes piled everywhere, floors gritty with mud, window frames crusted with mould. Most walls were covered with scribbles, and every piece of furniture looked like something left beside a dumpster.

There are six adults and seven kids under the age of nine who live, off-and-on, in the old trailer, with no indoor toilet or running water. A few of the toddlers were so caked with mud I, to my own shame, paused for a second before lifting one up to help him onto a rickety porch in a yard strewn with garbage.

Why would anyone allow their children to live in a home like this? Why not pay for a water tank or a septic field? Or find another house? Or move to Winnipeg? Or Thompson?

Degrading third-world conditions one more hurdle for disabled man on reserve

ST. THERESA POINT -- A little whistle means Kevin Taylor has managed to hoist himself over the slop pail by himself and doesn't need his mother's help.

Taylor, a shy 30-year-old who has cerebral palsy and can't walk on his own, has a few bathroom options in his St. Theresa Point home, and they're all a humiliating hassle.

He can use his crutches to get from his perch on the living room sofa to the small room that serves as the bathroom. That's where the new slop pail is parked under the chair-like commode, near the plastic basin that serves as a makeshift sink. If Taylor's in a hurry, though, he usually drags his body down the hall in a scooching motion he's perfected and heaves himself up onto the commode.

Stuck with the flow

RESEARCHERS are collecting samples of drinking water from a dozen randomly chosen Manitoba First Nations to test for traces of metals, such as mercury, that can slowly poison.

"I mentioned to them I wanted water samples across from the old garbage dump because that's upstream of where our water intake is," said Hollow Water Coun. Denelle Bushie.

He's also worried about what might be coming downstream from the Bissett gold mines via the Wanipigow River that supplies drinking water for Hollow Water residents.

Northlands First Nation has similar concerns about uranium mines across the Saskatchewan border.

Boiling mad

HOLLOW WATER FIRST NATION -- Water detective Clarence Peebles is on the case. Every time the water plant operator sees a suspicious puddle -- day or night, his weary wife confirms -- he leaps out of his truck and scoops up some water.

If a test strip dipped in the water turns pink, Peebles knows somewhere under the ground is a pipe leaking his precious chlorine-treated water.

A single pipe break or a running toilet can be enough to overwhelm the community's aging treatment plant, designed 20 years ago to supply a maximum population of 720.

About 1,000 people now live on the Hollow Water reserve, but it will likely be 2015 before their treatment plant is expanded enough to meet local needs.

‘A slap in the face’

Indian and Northern Affairs Minister John Duncan promises to let First Nations help rewrite a proposed drinking-water law that outraged aboriginal leaders and the Liberal Opposition when it was introduced in the Senate in May.

No law governs the quality of drinking water on First Nations, so no one has the authority to set standards and enforce them -- one of the reasons almost one in five First Nations has contaminated tap water.

Former Indian and Northern Affairs minister Chuck Strahl tried to close the gaping legal hole this spring by having aboriginal Sen. Patrick Brazeau introduce the Safe Drinking Water for First Nations Act in the Senate.

But First Nations say the bill is deeply flawed because it explicitly overrides their treaty rights and could lead them to be fined for problems largely out of their control.

Red Sucker Lake water woes boil over

OTTAWA -- The chief of a northern Manitoba First Nation says his reserve is nearing a water crisis after more than half of the band's residents were cut off from a primitive water system.

On Monday, Red Sucker Lake Chief Larry Knott ordered residents to stop using water from the holding tanks beneath their homes after four tanks were randomly tested and all contained bacteria.

More than 100 houses in Red Sucker Lake use the tanks, which are filled by trucks with clean water from the community water-treatment plant. The water from the tanks is piped to taps inside the homes with electric pumps.

They are the only homes with any vestige of running water in Red Sucker Lake, a fly-in community 700 kilometres northeast of Winnipeg. The rest of the residents get their water by filling pails at the nursing station and walking or driving back to their houses.

Less water than a refugee camp

ST. THERESA POINT -- Geordie Rae traipses wearily through the bush to a neighbour’s house a couple of times a day, panting under the weight of a plastic pail of water.

The five-minute walk with a used oil or chemical bucket that weighs 19 kilograms when full is too much for the kids to manage, and the family’s vehicle isn’t running.

In Island Lake, the dirt roads dissolve into deep, muddy ruts in the rain, making expensive four-wheel-drive trucks and sport utility vehicles the only practical option. When you’re unemployed and covering astronomical grocery bills for food that has to be flown in, it’s hard to afford a taxi ride to the nearest community water tap.

Social assistance delivers six pails of water every week for Rae’s father-in­law Zach Harper because he’s an elder. Everyone else fends for themselves.

Poor sanitation, poor health

ST. THERESA POINT -- Baby Jacob’s face is covered in crusting sores that look painful, but he sleeps in his mother’s arms, beautiful moccasins made by his great-grandmother on his dangling feet.

Young mother Valene Flett waits patiently with her adopted son at the nursing station.

Nurses aren’t certain what Jacob’s itchy skin condition is — eczema, perhaps — but they’ve told Flett the best way to help the child’s skin heal.

“Keep him clean all the time,” she said.