A few decades ago, members of the Ucluelet First Nation in Ittatsoo used the beaches of the Vancouver Island community as a playground and the pristine waters of the Pacific Ocean as their own vast ice box.

"They used to go down there at low tide and pick crabs in the eel grass. It was our refrigerator," said community member Tyson Touchie.

"All the clams were edible. It always could provide for you year-round. And it hasn't been that way for the last 30 years."

For decades, in the absence of a proper sewage treatment system, the community pumped raw sewage into the ocean. Septic systems collected solid waste, but liquid waste was pumped though a diffuser into the ocean, near the mouth of Ucluelet Harbour and Barkley Sound.

This week, the community unveiled a new sewage pump station that will not only help clean up the harbour and beaches, but will allow the First Nation to open 24 new housing units.

The community could not add any further housing to its existing sewage treatment system until it was upgraded, under federal rules, and chief Coun. Violet Mundy said the band didn't want to continue pumping effluent into the inlet.

The new sewage pump will deliver effluent through a submarine pipe under Ucluelet Harbour and into the municipal sewage settling ponds and treatment plant.

The new treatment system meant a new subdivision for Ittatsoo, the main community of the Ucluelet First Nation with a population of about 200.

Construction built for the west coast

All but six of the 24 housing units are three- and four-bedroom ranchers, duplexes and triplexes built to resist moisture and prevent the mould that has plagued the community's homes.

During a quick tour of the subdivision, Touchie said the band hopes the new construction method will make it impossible for the rain to get through the walls.

He said many of the old homes were not built for west coast conditions, like the steady rain that fell last Thursday.

"We were stuck in a housing crisis," he said.

"We were stuck in this process where one house would be falling apart. We'd go and fix it. Another house would be falling apart. We'd go and fix it. And we'd just be going back and forth in that same cycle, over and over, trying to repair these houses that are rotting."

He said there were families of six living in homes where the only source of heat was the oven. They lived in the kitchen.

The new houses even incorporate local cedar, he said.

Christina Klotz, a 25-year-old Ittatsoo resident, now is living in one of the new homes and she gives the two-bedroom apartment, part of a six-unit multiplex with a common room, high marks.

"We have heated tile floors," she said. "They're really good. They're really nice apartments."

Heading into the future

Last November, the construction company and developers won a national award from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. (CMHC) for the project.

Trevor Jones, project manager and CEO of the Ucluth Development Corporation, called it a huge step for the community.

"We can swim in the water again, we can eat some of the fish perhaps soon, and we get to move into another 20-or-so housing units as a result of this project coming on line," he said at a ribbon-cutting ceremony Tuesday in Ittatsoo, located across the harbour from the District of Ucluelet on the west coast of Vancouver Island.

Jones said the sewage system, including pumps and underwater pipes, cost about $2.6 million and was funded through the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development.

Together, the sewage treatment and the housing were worth about $6 million to the Ucluelet First Nation, signatories to the Maa-nulth Treaty. Funding came from the Ucluelet First Nation, CMHC and the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs.

Touchie said the community has long wanted to address the problem.

"So when our kids grow up, they're running on the beach, they're eating the clams and not getting sick from them."

With files from The Canadian Press