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.
Mooney's Bay beach has been closed as the city investigates a potentially harmful blue-green algae bloom on the water. Blue-green algae are a type of bacteria called cyanobacteria that can form large blooms on water, said Emily Morrison, program manager of the healthy environments team at Ottawa Public Health (OPH).
Take a dip at Mooney’s Bay or the Petrie Island River Beaches Tuesday but Ottawa Public Health says that swimming is “not recommended” at Petrie Island East Bay and Britannia. Water samples are collected daily from City of Ottawa supervised beaches between mid-June and the end of August and tested for E. coli bacteria. When tests find high levels of E. coli, it’s more likely that other disease-causing organisms are in the water, too, the health unit said.Those organisms can cause skin, ear, throat or gastrointestinal illnesses.
Ottawa swimmers have faced the summer buzzkill of E. coli bacteria before, but this time human sewage isn't the culprit. Blame it on the goose poop. The City of Ottawa thought it had solved the bacteria problem at its worst hit beaches when it built a sewage storage tunnel to prevent sewage from overflowing and contaminating the Ottawa River.
