Investigation into the Impacts of a Global Pandemic on the Ability to Properly Operate and Maintain Water and Wastewater Treatment and Management in Indigenous Communities in Canada, With a Focus on First Nations

• Main Author: Adebayo, Feyisetan
• Other Authors: Black, Kerry, Achari, Gopal, Huang, Wendy, He, Jianxun
• Format: Master Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: Schulich School of Engineering 2022
• Subjects: COVID-19 pandemic; impacts assessments; emergency planning; water and wastewater utilities; First Nations; Indigenous communities; Qualitative Analysis; Thematic Content Analysis; Grounded Theory; Engineering; Engineering > Civil; Engineering > Environmental
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/1880/115277; https://doi.org/10.11575/PRISM/40283

The COVID-19 pandemic spurted research studies on impacts monitoring and emergency planning in the water sector, especially in utility operations. However, studies on Indigenous communities were not significantly explored despite the history of vulnerability to previous pandemics. Considering that the financial and infrastructural gaps had rendered the First Nations' water systems vulnerable to contamination and other crises, the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the possibility of increased vulnerability for water and wastewater utilities. Since emergency planning strategies and frameworks for First Nations were primarily outdated, the COVID-19 pandemic underscored the need for new studies and updated information. Therefore, the purpose of this research was two-fold. First, it investigated the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on water and wastewater utilities in Canada’s First Nations. Second, it explored pandemic planning and impact minimization mechanisms for future emergency planning. In this research, qualitative data collected through an online survey and open-ended semi-structured interviews from forty-two water professionals were analyzed to evaluate the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the operations and management of water and wastewater systems and utilities in Canada First Nations. Through Thematic Content Analysis and Grounded Theory, across-transcript research themes (i.e., common findings between participants) were developed to understand the variations of impacts across the sampled First Nations water professionals and how they compared with their non-Indigenous counterparts. Also, strategies for impact minimization in emergency planning were developed into a First Nation pandemic planning framework to improve the preparedness of water and wastewater systems and utilities for similar emergencies in the future. The end-users completed testing and validation: operators, supervisors, and managers. Findings from this study have been reviewed and verified through oral and written communication with the ...