Kristen Villebrun and Wendy Bush hoped they wouldn't have to pray for Chedoke Creek, but four years after they first raised alarm about the water's condition, they were part of an Indigenous full moon ceremony to do just that. About 50 people showed up near Princess Point on the dark and frigid Monday evening for the monthly ceremony, which was particularly special as it focused on Chedoke Creek. The body of water that runs into Cootes Paradise had about 24 billion litres of sewage and storm water runoff leak into it due to a gate being left open.
Taylor Kormann didn't know what to expect when she signed up to collect the goopy leftovers of her laundry cycles for a year as a part of a citizen science project for the Atlantic Coastal Action Program. "It was almost shocking to see what's coming out of the laundry," Kormann said. Kormann and 22 other Saint John residents spent 2022 collecting the wet lint from their washing machines to measure the microplastics their wash cycles were contributing to the city's water system.
When ACAP Saint John set out on a four-year study of fish life and water quality in the Saint John Harbour, the environmental group wasn't setting out to answer any big questions. The study, which began in 2018, was designed to set a baseline for the general health of fish populations in the harbour. No one had made an effort to see how many species of aquatic life were in the tidal waters of the harbour, and in what numbers. Roxanne MacKinnon, the executive director of ACAP, said they were surprised by what they found.
Rain is a resource society can use and should: this is what Atlantic Coastal Action Program Cape Breton hopes to convey with its graphic design contest for ACAP’s summer rain barrel giveaway. “Stormwater issues are increasing with climate change because we're having more frequent storms and heavier rainfalls,” said ACAP Cape Breton project manager Jen Cooper. Much of the infrastructure in use today wasn’t built for the world we’re living in, with its heavier rain and snowstorms and more severe extreme weather events. This is resulting in more frequent minor to moderate flooding events in Cape Breton.
