Government authorities began an emergency airlift Wednesday to move more than 1,000 residents from an impoverished Indian reservation where drinking water was contaminated by raw sewage.
The abrupt evacuation order, after months of wrangling between government agencies, highlighted poor conditions on native reservations and raised questions about Canada’s sewage discharge practices.
Most remote northern towns and reservations dump sewage directly into lakes or rivers, according to a series of reports by the Sierra Legal Defense Fund, based in Vancouver. Even larger cities, including Montreal, Halifax and Victoria, dump raw sewage into the seas.
The evacuation was being carried out at Kashechewan, a Cree reservation on the western shore of James Bay, about 600 miles north of Toronto.
The water intake of the community of about 1,900 is downstream from a sewage outlet.
