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 huge problem," Robinson, founder of Norton Engineering, said in an interview on CBC Kitchener-Waterloo's The Morning Edition. "We get blockages in sewers, we get fatbergs, pump stations shut down and all that material ends up at the sewage treatment plant." Robinson, who used to work for the City of Kitchener, said people have been known to flush things down the toilet because of a lack of immediate access to a trash can.
Today, Tim Louis, Member of Parliament for Kitchener—Conestoga, and His Worship Gregg Davidson, Mayor of the Township of Mapleton, announced over $5 million in joint funding towards the design and construction of a new pumping station to replace the Drayton Sewage Pumping Station. The project will also consist of installing new sanitary system connections, called forcemains, to the existing wastewater collection system, and constructing an overflow storage facility. These upgrades will allow the system to accommodate higher volumes of water during storms and prevent sewage discharges.
Go into any store these days and there's a mixture of people wearing masks to prevent the spread of COVID-19 and those who are opting not to wear one. It may have people feeling like they're in COVID-19 limbo. Dr. Hsiu-Li Wang, the Region of Waterloo's medical officer of health, says currently there's "no cut and dry threshold" when it comes to mask wearing and "it will vary according to individual comfort levels."
Wastewater testing in the Region of Waterloo shows the Omicron variant of COVID-19 has pushed infection levels to more than 10 times higher than ever before but there are early indications that infections may be starting to level off. Thursday's data published by the Region of Waterloo contains the first sign of hope for a slowing down of infection during the latest wave of the pandemic.
