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.
It's a sight Andrew Arreak says he's never seen before in Pond Inlet: open water at a time when the sea ice should be thick enough to sled on. Some people are still going out in boats. Others are finding alternate ways of accessing the land, since the ice they rely on for hunting and fishing is now a month late forming. In the Arctic hamlet of about 1,600 people, high winds keep pushing the sea ice away from the community, Arreak said.
A report from Environment and Climate Change Canada said Ontario and Quebec have the poorest water quality in Canada, according to Blacklock’s Reporter. “Calculated trends using data from 2002 to 2020 show no site with improved water quality,” said the report. “During that same period, water quality deteriorated at 24 sites.” Water quality showed no improvement in the past two decades because of raw sewage dumped into waterways. Regional waterways with worsening quality included Ottawa’s Rideau River, Toronto’s Humber and Don rivers, and Quebec’s Chateauguay, Jacques-Cartier, and la Petite Nation rivers.
Taxpayers will find out in two months how much extra it will cost to fix the mechanical problems and lead-tainted water on board the navy’s new Arctic and offshore patrol ships. But Procurement Canada’s top bureaucrat has reassured parliamentarians that costs on the multi-billion vessels are coming down, despite figures showing the price tag actually jumped another $780 million over the past year.
Canada's spy service warns that climate change poses a profound, ongoing threat to national security and prosperity, including the possible loss of parts of British Columbia and the Atlantic provinces to rising sea levels. A newly released analysis by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) also foresees an increase in ideologically motivated violent extremism from people who want to speed up climate change solutions and those more interested in preserving their current way of life.
Sailors in Newfoundland and Labrador may say that winter isn't the best time to be on the water. But for two avid sailors from Manitoba, it's the perfect opportunity to try something new. Judith Graile and Wes Hyde drove from Manitoba to Lewisporte, living in a school bus while they refurbished their environmentally friendly sailboat, the Hakluyt. The couple have swapped out the boat's diesel motors for electric motors and have equipped the boat with wind generators and an eco-friendly woodstove. The couple are on a mission to promote healthy eating and draw attention to the changing climate by sailing to the Bahamas, returning to Newfoundland and finishing their journey with a trip to the Arctic next year.
Some parts of the Arctic don't look very polar anymore. Many regions are likely transforming from snowfall- to rainfall-dominant climates, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. "At the fringes, the transition is essentially occurring already," John Walsh, chief scientist at the International Arctic Research Center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, said in a briefing at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union on Tuesday.
As we work to curb emissions, another source of greenhouse gases is coming to the surface. An international study released this fall shows that permafrost thaw could contribute as much greenhouse gases to our atmosphere as a large industrial nation by the end of the century. In the Arctic, warming is amplified, with annual temperatures having warmed 2.3 C since 1948, more than twice the global rate, according to Environment and Climate Change Canada.
Though models indicate an overall increase in precipitation, future droughts and soil moisture deficits are projected to be more frequent and intense across the southern Canadian Prairies during summer by the end of the century under a high-emission scenario. So how does that work? When you look at the water supply chapter of our changing climate, timing is very important. David Sauchyn, director of the Prairie Adaptation Research Collaborative at the University of Regina, is a lead author of a report detailing the changes we can expect in the Prairies as our climate warms.
The conservation site, called the Mackie Ranch conservation project, includes a large section of native grassland as well as part of the eastern shoreline of Chaplin Lake, a few kilometres off the Trans-Canada Highway between Moose Jaw and Swift Current, according to the NCC. Grasslands are among the most at-risk ecosystems in the world, according to the national conservation organization. They filter water, help prevent flooding as well as droughts and sequester carbon.
A week-long water crisis that has left residents of Nunavut's capital city Iqaluit without drinking water is also exposing a chronic problem for many northern communities: It's almost impossible to safely get rid of garbage. Close to 750,000 plastic water bottles have flooded the city in recent days after city staff last week found fuel in Iqaluit's water supply. While a coalition of businesses has since teamed up to ship the empty bottles back, most of the city's trash never returns south.
“We started hearing a noise, like breaking, or coins falling,” says Marco Tedesco, a climate scientist at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. He makes a loud, sustained crunching sound, recreating what he and his team heard, years earlier while doing fieldwork on the Greenland Ice Sheet. Below the surface of the ice near where they were standing, a flood had begun. “The water below starts to move, but you still have snow on top,” Tedesco says of the phenomenon. As the flowing water gains momentum, overlying snow and ice give way and reveal a meltwater stream or river.
Water scarcity in rural Alaska is not a new problem, but the situation is getting worse with climate change. Lasting solutions must encourage the use of alternative water supplies like rainwater catchment and grey water recycling. They must also address the affordability of water related to household income, say researchers from McGill University. Washing hands with clean water is something most people take for granted, yet for Alaska's rural residents, this is often not the case. When people pay for water by the gallon, serious thought is given to how much is used – even during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Spotty research and inconsistent monitoring have made it impossible to evaluate the health of most Canadian watersheds, a study has found. “It’s still largely unknown,” said Elizabeth Hendricks of the World Wildlife Fund, which has just released its second evaluation of the condition of Canada’s freshwater environments. Hendricks said the report points to the need for standardized, national water monitoring done by local communities.
New rules cracking down on pollution from dirty, cheap marine fuel kicked into gear this week, placing stricter requirements on cargo vessels and cruise ships that are plying northern waters thanks to climate change. As of Jan. 1, Canada is enforcing a new UN-backed cap on the amount of sulphur allowed in heavy fuel oil (HFO) in the waters north of the 60th parallel, federal officials confirmed to National Observer on Thursday. The cap comes as Transport Canada considers a proposal to ban all HFO for ships operating in the Arctic, to address the environmental risks of oil spills.
