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.
The local service district for Mainland, on Newfoundland's Port au Port Peninsula, has shut off its water supply, claiming it's undrinkable, and blaming the development of a wind energy project in the area. Dwight Cornect, director of the local service district, says LeCointre's Brook, the community's secondary water source, is discoloured. "The water is brown," Cornect said Thursday. He said he doesn't accept the government's assurances that the water has been tested and has no issues.
The company behind a massive, multibillion-dollar green energy plan is asking Newfoundland and Labrador's top court to stop protestors from blocking access to its work sites on the Port au Port Peninsula. Lawyers for World Energy GH2 were in Supreme Court in Corner Brook on Thursday afternoon for a hastily called hearing. A group of protesters has been blocking an access road to one of World Energy's sites, on Newfoundland's west coast, for weeks.
Depending on who you talk to on the Port au Port Peninsula, the region is either on the brink of an economic transformation or walking an environmental tightrope. Forty-five per cent of residents in the area drew employment insurance in 2019. But a company formed just a few months ago, World Energy GH2, promises a revolutionary wind-hydrogen project it says will bring hundreds of jobs and millions in revenue. The hiccup? That plan depends on building 164 turbines, each 200 metres tall, in an area about the size of the City of St. John's.
Bit by bit, Gordon Oliver's backyard is falling into the ocean. The Mainland, N.L, resident has already moved his fence back twice — three metres each time. His house now sits on the edge of a cliff, a few metres from the water's edge. "It's getting about the time now where I'm going to have to move," said Oliver, who built his house on an otherwise picturesque piece of land 35 years ago. "When we were kids we used to play softball here and you couldn't bat the ball over the bank. You got no problem to do it now."
An environmental group on Newfoundland's west coast says it supports a proposed wind-to-hydrogen project for the Port au Port Peninsula in principle but doesn't want the impact assessment or consultation process rushed for what could be a precedent-setting project for the province. Katie Temple, the executive director of the Western Environment Centre of Newfoundland, said while the World Energy GH2 proposal could help reduce reduce fossil fuel dependence, the process seems to be "happening very quickly," given the provincial moratorium on wind development in the province was lifted just in April.
