FALHER, Alta. – When it comes to water horror stories, Andre Berube has plenty.
And with reports of the drinking water disaster in Walkerton, Ont., fresh in people’s minds, the talk around the coffee shop in this northern Alberta community turned into horror story one-upmanship. In Walkerton, water contaminated with E. coli killed at least seven people and made thousands ill earlier this month.
Berube recalled one winter in which his neighbors had unusually bad dugout water. It stunk more than usual, was blacker than normal and tasted bad.
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Corrective measures
The family broke a hole through the ice and tried to aerate the dugout to improve the quality, but it didn’t help.
“The water was literally black,” said Berube, chair of the Smoky River Rural Water Co-op.
When the ice went out of the dugout that spring, the farmer noticed something sticking out of the water. It was the leg of a moose.
The moose had been decomposing in the drinking water all winter. The farmer roped the leg and pulled it to shore, but when the decomposed moose hit land, its body fell apart. The family spent hours pulling pieces of moose out of their drinking water dugout. The smell was horrific. They even had to throw the rope away because of the smell.
The family is using the water again, only because there is no other choice.
It is not a rare scenario on the rural Prairies, where residents are forced to rely on whatever water they can find.
“You want horror stories, we’ve got them,” said Berube, who wants the provincial government to help its Smoky River Rural Water Co-operative to build a pipeline that would bring decent drinking water to farms and small villages.
Because of the hard clay soi,l there are no wells in the Peace River area of northern Alberta. Water for drinking, washing and livestock comes from the same dugouts. They are strategically built to catch spring water runoff from fields and ditches.
In most years it’s not bad. The water is more yellow than black and people get used to the smell. But in the past two years of drought and no runoff, the water situation has become critical, said Berube.
“Whatever runs out of the field and through the ditch, we’re stuck with it. If there’s a dead cow or a coyote in the ditch, and they don’t know about it, they drink it,” he said.
No laughing matter
Now the water is becoming dangerous, said Berube.
In the past two years, farmers have sprayed pesticides in attempts to save any of the remaining crop from insects. This is in addition to the regular fertilizer and farm chemical residue that runs off the fields in heavy rains and during spring.
“We’ve been spraying insecticides big time and we’re getting that,” said Berube.
The litany of horror stories is long, said Berube, and the need for clean water is great.
Last year the Smoky River Rural Water Co-operative connected 41 farm homes to Falher through a $913,000 bank loan and a federal government grant through the Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Administration. But the money has run out with hundreds of families on the waiting list.
Without more federal and provincial assistance, the project is on hold and residents are forced to drink dangerous water, Berube said.
