The Six Nations of The Grand River is the largest First Nations reserve in Canada with over 27,000 members, and approximately 12,000 living on the reserve (Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada, 2020). The Six Nations is located near Brantford, Ontario and many residents face accessibility issues for safe drinking water, with little effort put in by our government to assist them. In this study, we aimed to investigate potential landscape and geological factors that could be related to water contamination of Escherichia coli for sampled groundwater wells in 2003, 2004, and 2018, as well as investigate areas of significant clustering through spatial analysis in the Six Nations reserve. We used generalized linear mixed modelling to investigate whether or not potential landscape and geologic predictor variables such as slope, depth, static water level, land coverage, stream proximity and order, and sub-watershed had any significant relationships with the presence or absence of E.coli contamination. Although no results show that relationships are occurring with these predictor variables and contamination, spatial autocorrelation analysis and hotspot analysis show that there is a highly significant amount of clustering occurring with wells that are contaminated, particularly at 6th Line and Tuscarora Road. Too few samples exist on record to accurately analyze the effect of landscape and geologic predictor variables on well water contamination. Overall, spatial results indicate potential areas of concern for the community and highlight the need for further research to be conducted within the Six Nations in order to identify threats to drinking water accessibility.

2018 Dataset
132 samples of E.coli contamination, address, type of well, location, owner, and other physical-chemical data.
48 of these samples looked for mercury contamination.
Global Water Futures - Ecosystem Health Sub-team - 2018; unpublished data Makhdoom et al., 2018

https://gwfnet.net/fileserver/T-2023-05-28-f16rGxFeFukf2JjCiwvbf2sMw/Lehman_2020_3IR3_Final_Report.pdf