Nicole Hancock
Indigenous community hosts full moon ceremony ...

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.

Indigenous community hosts full moon ceremony to heal Chedoke Creek

Montana water quality standard

Canadian Coal Mine Ramps Up Efforts to Challenge Montana Water Quality Standard

Canadian Coal Mine Ramps Up Efforts to Challenge Montana Water Quality Standard

An entourage of Canadian coal mining executives pressed into the Lincoln County commissioners’ conference room last week to deliver promising news for Lake Koocanusa, the 80-mile long reservoir that straddles the U.S.-Canada border in Montana and British Columbia, and which has been at the center of both statewide and international efforts to reduce transboundary environmental pollution for more than a decade. “Selenium levels in the Koocanusa Reservoir are safe,” according to a PowerPoint slide summarizing a March 30 presentation by representatives of the global mining company Teck Resources, who made the trip to Libby to deliver the news in person.

Read the Daily Inter Lake Article

Read the Daily Inter Lake Article

Canada's largest coal company is challenging a new Montana water quality standard that aims to limit concentrations of toxic runoff from the company's mines in British Columbia as it travels across the international border into the Kootenai River and Lake Koocanusa. Teck Resources Ltd. this month filed a petition with the state Board of Environmental Review, part of the Department of Environmental Quality, which last year adopted a stringent site-specific water quality standard for the trace element selenium, a byproduct of coal mining that's been found at high levels in fish tissue and egg samples on both sides of the border.

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