About 100 people who were evacuated from the Kashechewan reserve in northern Ontario last month will return home Friday.

They are going back to the James Bay community to help with reconstruction efforts the federal government is funding after a public outcry about conditions on the Cree reserve.

The work involves renovating and rebuilding homes, and ensuring the community's water treatment facility is up to standard.

Once that work is done, most other residents will be back in their homes by mid-December.

Water infected with E. coli led the Ontario government to evacuate about 1,100 residents of Kashechewan to Ottawa, Sudbury, Cochrane, Timmins, Peterborough and Sault Ste. Marie.

Many of the evacuees had to be treated for persistent skin conditions they linked to heavy chlorination of their drinking and bathing water over the past few years.

At least one intake pipe for the community's water treatment plant is downstream from Kashechewan's sewage lagoon.

That led to a series of boil-water orders that culminated in the mass evacuation.

Since then, the Canadian military has installed water purification systems that can supply up to 50,000 litres of clean water each day.

In the longer term, the federal government has offered to move the community to a better area a short distance from its current location.