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.
Water quality researcher and engineer Dr. David McCarthy has been announced as the new Canada Excellence Research Chair (CERC) in Waterborne Pathogens: Surveillance, Prediction and Mitigation at the University of Guelph, supported by $8 million in federal funding over eight years. McCarthy brings his expertise in mitigating the risks of waterborne pathogens with tools and technologies to U of G where he will join the School of Environmental Sciences within the Ontario Agricultural College.
Three main barriers impede access to safe services for many people in high-income countries, according to the new paper. First, systemic racism underlies inequities and limits access to resources, said the article. Historically marginalized people and low-income communities are more likely to lack access to safe water and sanitation. Those groups include minority racial and ethnic populations as well as Indigenous communities, migrants and people of colour, said the co-authors. In the United States, for instance, the authors found Native American households are 19 times more likely, and Black or Latinx households are nearly twice as likely, to be without functional water and wastewater access than households identifying as white. Second, changes to infrastructure financing, including a move to full-cost pricing in HICs, have reduced subsidies to people lacking services. Third, gaps persist because availability and quality of services are tied to housing and property ownership. Linking property to water and sanitation services is a policy choice that disadvantages groups including migrants, people living in poverty and people experiencing homelessness or in unstable housing, said the paper.
Environmental experts say the Ford government's proposal to build thousands of homes in parts of the Greenbelt while adding other protected land elsewhere will cause a host of ecological problems. Last Friday, the provincial government announced a proposal to build 50,000 new homes in some areas that are now part of the Greenbelt, and add 9,400 acres of protected land elsewhere. Premier Doug Ford says it's all part of the province's plan to tackle the housing crisis by building 1.5 million homes over the next decade — as the federal government pledges to start bringing in half a million immigrants a year.
Snaking beneath Regina's streets are 600 kilometres of water mains built with asbestos-cement. That's about 60 per cent of some 1,000 kilometres of the mains that deliver water to homes around the city. Increasingly, some scientists and communities are questioning the wisdom in having drinking water flowing through pipes constructed from asbestos fibres.
