First Nations wastewater treatment systems in Canada: Challenges and opportunities

Abstract

The Government of Canada has prioritized the availability of water and wastewater services for the Canadian First Nations Communities (CFNC) and introduced the First Nations Water and Wastewater Action Plan. Several studies explore that many wastewater treatment systems (WWTS) in the CFNC do not meet the effluent discharge limits. The objectives of this study were to examine the existing WWTS in CFNC, investigate the progress and improvement opportunities, evaluate the risk levels, encapsulate the financial condition, and provide recommendations for the overall improvement of the WWTS in CFNC. The authors found significant improvement in 2011 when 98% of the Canadian First Nations houses received wastewater services in comparison to only 50% in 1978. However, 1,777 First Nations houses did not receive any wastewater services. In 2011, 21% of the wastewater systems were operated exceeding the facilities’ design capacities. The overall high-risk and medium-risk wastewater systems have reduced from 14 and 51% in 2011 to 6 and 41% in 2014–2015, respectively. The Government of Canada committed to provide $4.2 billion for the 10-year period (2011–2021) against the estimated cost of $6.3 billion. Increasing and proper utilization of the allocated budget is recommended to fill up the financial gaps.

Keywords:

• sanitary system
• First Nations
• wastewater treatment systems
• wastewater lagoon
• risk level

Public Interest Statement

Canadian First Nations Communities (CFNC) are facing greater challenges to reduce the high and medium risk level wastewater treatment systems. The severe lack of research in this area makes it harder to understand the real scenario. This leads the authors to compile the available information to get a clear overall scenario of the WWTS in CFNC. It was explored that 1,777 houses did not receive any wastewater services in 2011. According to the latest survey in 2014–2015, 6% wastewater systems were identified as high-risk level. The most concerning figure was related to the medium-risk level systems (41%). It is concluded that more funding is required to eliminate or reduce the high and medium risk level systems. The information from this article would be useful to the government and non-government agencies, policy-makers, CFNCs, and researchers for the future programs and policies related to WWTS.

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interest.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mofizul Islam

Mofizul Islam is a master’s student in the CREATE H2O program, which is designed to address the research and training gaps of the Canadian First Nations’ water and sanitation security, under the supervision of Qiuyan Yuan, an assistant professor at the University of Manitoba. Yuan’s research goals include development of sustainable technologies for water and waste treatment processes. Her research team unravels a variety of environmental engineering topics including nutrient removal and recovery, landfill leachate treatment, biomass fermentation, and anaerobic digestion. Mofizul Islam’s research is focused on improving biological treatment efficiencies of landfill leachate using selected fungal strains, which produce and secrete enzymes, to degrade complex structure of recalcitrant compounds of leachate. Since CREATE H2O program is the first science engineering research training program working towards the improvement of Canadian First Nations communities, researchers and especially the First Nations community personnel would like to access the knowledge and research gaps from this article to mitigate the issues related to the wastewater treatment facilities.