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.
Now six years on, GWF is the largest and most published university-led freshwater research program in the world and includes 213 faculty investigators, 531 end-users, 1,826 new researchers, and a network of 23 Canadian universities working on 65 projects and core teams. The program has also established or operates 76 water observation sites, 27 deployable measurement systems, and 31 state-of-the-art university-based environmental and aquatic analysis facilities.
Four research centres at the University of Saskatchewan are getting nearly $170 million in funding, and the work done at one centre is necessary for understanding and addressing a water crisis in Canada, its director says. "Water problems we are facing in Canada seems to be getting more severe. Costs of droughts and floods have reached about $40 billion since the turn of the century. It was just one or two billion before that in Canadian history," John Pomeroy, director at Global Water Futures Observatories, said in an interview.
$15.25 million is for GWFO: GWFO is an integrated network of 76 instrumented basins, rivers, lakes and wetlands, 27 deployable observation systems, and 31 state-of-the-art water laboratories. Together they provide data to quickly address flood, drought and water quality issues, GFWO operates across seven provinces and territories, including the Great Lakes Basin. USask leads the nine-university collaboration that operates the network to monitor and help support the development of solutions for the impending water crisis that faces Canadians due to climate change, poor water management, the proliferation of toxic contaminants, and environmental degradation.
