Water treatment plant gets off to an earthy start

The quality of drinking water in many First Nations communities has long been a health hazard affecting all citizens. Recently the Minister for Indigenous and Northern Affairs Carolyn Bennett announced a grant of 11.6 million toward the construction of a new Water Treatment Plant as part of the Trudeau government’s budget pledge of 1.8 billion investment addressing the safety hazards, health, water and infrastructure issues in First Nations communities to Slate Falls First Nation where since 2004 the 280 community members have undergone nine boil water advisories.

The project was put out to tender and was awarded to Kingdom Construction Limited who started work at the beginning of August. On August 5 distinguished guests who included the Honourable Bob Nault Member of Parliament for the Kenora Riding, Frank Mackay Council Chair Windigo First Nation and Slate Falls Chief Lorraine Crane were onsite to officially open the project by a symbolic turning of soil after which all present adjourned to the band office for a welcome and lunch which included an abundance of locally caught Walleye.

Nault who is presently on a summer tour of his riding, which will include visits to nine remote First Nations communities, was presented with a gift that included handmade moccasins by Chief Crane who opened with “Thank you for those who came today. This has been exciting, we are finally able to do this. I would like to thank everybody for the work they have done, it’s been a long process of negotiating but we finally got it.” He replied by saying“ I would like to thank the community for inviting me because in politics when you get the opportunity to see progress like this in the community and this is what we call progress. I think you are going a lot of improvements in the community in the next decade ” he said.

Despite rainy conditions a tour of the local school was part of the days activities Nault spoke about the day.

“Today our tour of Slate Falls is all about seeing the infrastructure, seeing the development of the community over the last decade, see what the strengths and weaknesses are as it relates to a modern community. So today we had the opportunity to do a little sod turning for their new sewer water project and that was announced a month ago it’s a 12.4 million dollar project so we wanted to come and spend a bit of time with their chief and council and then to get a sense of other issues. I drove on the road today from Sioux Lookout to Slate Falls with the idea of getting a sense of whether that road needs upgrading and make sure it’s an all weather road, it’s safe, it’s up to standard so we had a chance to do that, look at the school and went to the nursing station.”

He continued, “Part of the tour for me is to see what kind of an infrastructure the community has to work with and what they need to do to improve the plant and for sure one of the things that good quality sewer water gives you is better health outcomes for the whole community and that’s one of the issues that the government is very interested in making sure we don’t repeat, there has been a lot of important water issues, a lot of concern about the health of the communities so we are working very hard to do something about that.”

Chief Crane commented, “It took us about eight years of meeting and negotiating with Indian Affairs at present the water is not adequate but we still have to use it but it’s going to be good like we have a lot of young children whose health was really impacted by the water we have a lot of chronic elders and I just think it’s going to be a very big benefit health wise, a lot of us have issues with the water, the skin the water has always been a concern because of the health of the children and all the chronic people.”
She concluded, “Right now we are working on improving our road and also we have been working on our hydro and also getting our reserve land. We are a recognized Band but we don’t have our reserve status so that’s going to be one of my big projects we have been working at it since 1985.”

The construction will also generate work in the community as Kingdom Construction is hiring locally and looking for qualified Journeymen, Electricians, Plumbers, Carpenters, Pipefitters, Skilled Labourers, Form Setters, Cement Finishers and General Construction labourers.