For half the year, residents in this Nunavik community say they bathe in yellow water

Rebecca Wynn describes what she sees coming out of her taps in Aupaluk, Que. as "yellow, pee-ish water." 

She said she also has to take medication before every shower, because of the amount of chlorine injected into the town's water supply to kill off any bacteria.

"It gets angry red-coloured and I get super itchy. I already have a couple of different skin issues so [the water] is just exacerbating that," Wynn said. 

For half the year, that's the reality for the community's 250 residents, situated on the shores of Ungava Bay. 

In the summer, Aupaluk mayor David Angutinguak said they get clean drinking water from a river a couple of kilometres out of town, but access to that river freezes by November.

Until then, Angutinguak said they have to pump as much as they can into a water tower, hoping that'll be enough to tie them over the following months. 

Once that supply runs low, any water that isn't for drinking is taken from a nearby lake and a different river, right by the township. That water, as Wynn described, looks yellow. 

This year, the water in the water tower ran low earlier than expected. Angutinguak said they've had to order 200 five-gallon jugs of drinking water from the south. 

Aupaluk relies on two water trucks to deliver water. 

One is indefinitely broken. The other, local mechanic Dany Nadeau said, breaks down at least once a week. 

"Sometimes it can take two, three, four, five days for parts to arrive. You can't do anything," he said. 

That damage comes from the blowing snow, which Angutinguak said makes keeping the road to the lake open a challenge. That road is now cut off again this week because of water overflow.