No showers, full sewage tanks: Nunavik residents say water system can't meet growing demand

Dr. Sarah Bergeron is used to improvising when the water runs dry in her community in Puvirnituq, Que.

She washes her hair in a bowl and throws dirty water outside if the sewage is full.

A few weeks ago, she didn't have running water for 10 days.

"You think about it in the morning when you wake up. You think about it at work. You think about it when you're going to bed at night," said Bergeron, a doctor at the local health centre who has lived in the community of 2,000 for five years.

"Everyone is trying to share their own tricks. But it's not a permanent solution."

Purvirnituq is just one of several communities in the autonomous Nunavik region of Quebec's far north that does not have pipe infrastructure and is struggling with water problems. In some communities, water access has even affected the health of residents — leading to difficulty controlling infections.

Dr. Amélie Desjardins Tessier says there are regulations in Quebec regarding the quality of water, but "nothing about access."

The medical adviser for the public health department in the Nunavik Regional Board of Health and Social Services has seen the issue of water become a "big burden" for households.

"[They] cannot take showers. They cannot wash their clothes or wash their dishes regularly," said Desjardins Tessier.

"We've had moments where people had to use bags instead of toilets."

While she says the health centre in Puvirnituq has a direct water line, it relies on sewage pickup like the rest of the community.

And she says something needs to be done.

"The population of the North is growing. We already have trouble servicing people with the equipment and the resources that we have right now and I do not see how it can get better," said Desjardins Tessier.

"The thing is, we never know who will take the ball."