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 company has partnered with major players like Danone, Nestle and Pepsi as they prepare to launch 100 per cent plant-based plastic products that are fully recyclable and 100 per cent carbon neutral. "There is a significant effort that is happening,” says Lambton College’s Vice President of Research and Innovation Mehdi Sheikhzadeh. “Across the region, across Canada, around building a clean-tech sector, but in this specific case this is a bio-clean tech sector."
Sarnia is going to spend a lot of money replacing water and sewer assets over the next 60 years, according to the latest projections from city staff. Building off a recent storm sewer infrastructure report that predicts hundreds of millions of dollars in replacement expenses cumulatively until around 2080, the story is about the same for water pipes and sewer system replacement costs, city officials recently reported to council.
A small Canadian company working out of the Western Sarnia-Lambton Research Park is taking on one of this century’s greatest challenges —abundant access to clean water for people, farms and industry. Forward Water Technologies has developed a proprietary technology that uses ‘forward osmosis’ to convert dirty wastewater into clean water. The technology was born at an Ontario university lab and has now reached the demonstration stage in a pilot plant at the Sarnia facility. “The winds of change are blowing,” company president and CEO Howie Honeyman said of addressing climate change and resource protection.
