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.
Kamloops is implementing stricter water use regulations amid worsening drought conditions in the Thompson River, a situation one conservationist says is putting salmon habitat at risk. The new water conservation measures the municipality in B.C.'s Interior is putting in place include a ban on water sprinklers for lawn irrigation. However, watering is still permitted with handheld spring-loaded nozzles.
A study that links low summertime water flows in a British Columbia river with lower productivity across 22 generations of a struggling salmon population could help guide how rivers are managed to support fish, the authors say. The study, published Friday in the journal Ecological Solutions and Evidence, used data from 1992 to 2013 to examine changes in the productivity of early summer chinook in the Nicola River, a tributary of the Thompson River in B.C.'s southern Interior.
