After years of suffering the effects of contaminated water, the Cree Nation of Split Lake, Manitoba has proven that remote communities can restore water quality without relying on expensive and distant laboratories.

The success of the IDRC-sponsored project in Split Lake holds great promise for any community in the developing world where simple, inexpensive and reliable tests for water quality are needed. Perhaps more importantly, the project proves that new technologies can be mastered by communities possessing only modest technical training.

The Split Lake experience reflects increasing interest in indigenous communities across Canada in joining Western science with traditional knowledge to solve environmental health problems such as water quality.

For almost 10 years, IDRC has been supporting a research network in developing countries to create simplified water quality testing technologies (See below). These technologies were proven to work when tested by trained field and laboratory technicians. But could local people in these countries do it themselves? For Dr Gilles Forget, Director of Health, Society and the Environment at IDRC, the basic question was: "Can we transfer this know-how to the community?"

Split Lake was more than ready to be a pilot test site. According to Band Chief Norman Flett, there had long been concerns about the quality of the community's water supply and its health impact. Elders and children were - suffering regular bouts of diarrhea, a problem particularly serious in infants. Children also had skin rashes from swimming in polluted recreational waters. The community sits on the shores of Split Lake in northern Manitoba and counts some 1,600 inhabitants. It is surrounded upstream and downstream by developments in the Churchill-Nelson hydro-electric project. These developments brought drastic changes in lifestyle and a decline in water quality, says Chief Flett.

Split Lake has a water treatment plant and two types of distribution. Roughly half the households are served by pipe directly from the plant. A truck delivers water to the remainder of homes, where it is stored in large water barrels. Unhygienic practices can bring contaminants into drinking water at any point between the treatment plant and the end use. For example, the hose from the water truck might be dragged through a yard, or dirt or unwashed utensils might get into a water barrel. Fluctua- tions in water levels caused by the hydro-electric projects may worsen the contamination of both drinking and recreational waters.

UNTIMELY DELAYS

Convincing the provincial and federal governments to address water-quality problems was not easy, says Chief Flett. The water-quality monitoring program run by Health and Welfare Canada proved too time-consuming and untimely. It required a community health representative to collect samples at predetermined sites and send them by land or air to provincial laboratory facilities hundreds of kilometres to the south. Delays of four to six weeks meant the test results were of no use in pinpointing problems so they could be fixed.

The water-quality problems in Split Lake were familiar to Peter Seidl, an Environment Canada biologist. He had studied the impact of northern Manitoba's hydro-electric projects on water quality in native communities. Mr Seidl's work led him to consult Dr Bernard Dutka of Environment Canada's National Water Research Institute (NWRI). Dr Dutka was also involved in the IDRC research network on water testing technologies. In this way, the interests of IDRC and the Split Lake Band found common cause.

IDRC wanted to determine whether a community such as Split Lake could acquire sufficient expertise to carry out relatively simple but effective tests of microbiological water quality. "We have always been focused on the people themselves," says Dr Forget. "We thought that we should go down the educational level to see how far we could go before people couldn't do these tests themselves."

The first phase of the Split Lake study, begun in 1990, evaluated the field performance of two water-quality tests, the Presence/Absence (P/A) and the A-1 Broth tests. Victor Spence, a member of the Band Council and Chair of the Health Committee, took on the job of project leader. He was supported by Mr Seidl (who continues his involvement from a new post at the International Joint Commission for the Great Lakes) and by Dr Dutka, who carried out laboratory validation and evaluation of the modified test procedures. A small laboratory was set up in the nursing station and band member Douglas Kitchekeesik was trained to perform the tests. Mr Kitchekeesik's wife Alana later became the second community technician.

"The testing that we established in our community resulted in more awareness of the quality of the water," says Chief Norman Flett. "People were able to find out within a couple of days or so if their water source was contaminated and the problem was rectified." Following the success of phase one, a second phase began in 1991 to evaluate two other tests in northern conditions, the hydrogen sulphide (H2S) and coliphage tests, and compare their effectiveness with the two initial testing procedures. An additional project component assessed the knowledge and practices of the community with respect to water quality and use, with a view to strengthening community health interventions. During this phase, Doug and Alana Kitchekeesik completed a four-week program at a provincial government laboratory in southern Ontario to broaden their knowledge and skills.

SIGNIFICANT REWARDS

For both IDRC and the Split Lake community the collaboration has brought significant rewards. IDRC now knows it can transfer this type of technology directly to a community. "We were quite pleased to see that people themselves -- not scientists, not highly trained technicians -- can actually do this testing and are empowered to secure clean water that is not going to provide them with anything but healthy lifestyles," says Dr Forget.

Up in Split Lake, the resolve to make local water testing a permanent service was demonstrated by the community's recent hiring of the Kitchekeesiks as its official technicians. The new awareness of how water can be kept clean is changing attitudes, and may eventually have more far-reaching impact. "We proved that it can work in a small isolated community. We feel that other native communities across Canada and across South America can benefit from these labs that we established," says Chief Flett.

Indeed, there is great scope for many more native communities to address water quality and other environmental health issues, according to native biologist Henry Lickers. He lives in the Mohawk community of Akwesasne on the St. Lawrence River and chairs the Chief's Committee on the Environment for Canada's Assembly of First Nations.

Like many native communities around the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence River, Akwesasne has witnessed a degradation of both water quality and traditional economies based on fishing, trapping and agriculture. "PCBs, mercury, myrex, dioxins, dibenzylfurans -- a whole host of alphabet soup of contaminants have been introduced into our water systems to such an extent that even the fishes that once sustained our people, to about 75% of our protein source, can no longer be consumed," says Mr Lickers.

NATIVE HEALTH NETWORK

But a positive development, Mr Lickers notes, is the expanding network of native communities throughout the province of Ontario investigating water quality and environmental health problems. "These are native scientists, native leaders, chiefs using our own traditional knowledge of the way to work within our communities in order to look for solutions to some of these problems," says Mr Lickers.

Mr Lickers says his scientific training taught him how to describe the world down to the level of the microgram. But it was his grandfather who gave him the spirit of the land. "He talked about the things that affect my soul."

Mr Lickers says that uniting traditional environmental knowledge with western science creates "an incredibly powerful tool." He is witnessing an increasing number of partnerships between native groups and the Canadian government to tackle problems of health and the environment. "Native people are willing and able to take control of these types of things. We have the tools, what we need are the resources to help us carry out this function."

FOR MORE INFORMATION, CONTACT:

Dr Bernard Dutka
Research Scientist
Rivers Research Branch
National Water Resources Institute
Canada Centre for Inland Waters
Environment Canada
Burlington, Ontario Canada
Tel: (416) 336-4923

SEE ALSO:

The Knowledge Path from Cree to Mapuche

NUTS AND BOLTS OF WATER-QUALITY TESTING

Water quality tests look at the microbiology of water samples to identify viral, bacterial and parasitical agents linked to hepatitis A, diarrhea, typhoid and other illnesses.

The research supported by IDRC since 1984 in nine countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America to develop simplified water-quality tests has led back to three older but perfectly sound technologies. Along with the more recent coliphage test, they have been adapted to serve the basic needs of isolated communities simply, reliably and cheaply.

Two tests are best suited for monitoring drinking water quality. The Presence/Absence (P/A) test mixes the water sample with a special broth medium, incubates the mixture overnight at ambient temperatures (between 20 C and 30 C), and depends upon a colour change to indicate the presence of contamination.

The hydrogen sulphide (H2S) test uses a treated paper strip that is incubated with the water sample. If bacteria are present in the sample, they produce hydrogen sulphide, which turns the paper black. The test can also indicate the severity of water contamination. Two other tests are intended for monitoring water sources and recreational waters. The coliphage detection test indicates the presence of "coliphages," viruses that accompany fecal coliforms like Escherichia coli and prey on them. Fecal coliforms in water are a sign that other dangerous bacteria, viruses or parasites transmitted by people may be present. The water samples incubate overnight between 27 C and 31 C in petri dishes containing small disks of filter paper that hold the dried E. coli host bacteria. Clear spots in the dishes mean the bacteria have been prevented from growing because of coliphages, thus indicating contamination of the water with fecal coliforms.

The A-1 Broth test requires water samples to be incubated in a tube of culture medium at 44.5 C for 24 hours. If there are any fecal coliforms in the sample they will survive this heat and produce gas that will be visible in a second tube inverted inside the first tube.

IDRC Reports is published weekly on-line by the International Development Research Centre.
Its aim is to keep an international readership informed about the work IDRC supports in developing countries as well as other development issues of interest.

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