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.
New research out of York University found that fluoride exposure via drinking water may increase the risk of hypothyroidism in pregnant women. In a smaller subset of participants, the researchers found lower IQ scores between boys whose mothers had been diagnosed with hypothyroidism compared to boys whose mothers had normal thyroid levels.
Canadians are proud of the Great Lakes, and for good reason—they supply two large countries with a lot of fresh drinking water, support irrigation and other agricultural activities, and are crucial in shipping and transportation in the area. Plus, they’re great for sailing, swimming and watching the sunset. “Lakes are great indicators of what’s going on in the watershed,” says Sapna Sharma, an associate aquatic ecology and limnology professor at York University. “They give a good idea of what environmental degradation may be happening on land.”
Canadian lakes are in hot water over climate change, a new research survey has concluded. "Canadian lakes are warming twice as fast as the rest of the lakes globally," said York University biologist Sapna Sharma, a co-author of a paper published in the journal Bioscience. Sharma and her colleagues pored over 143 studies from around the world to try to summarize how climate change is affecting the globe's 100 million lakes. Lakes that have been ice-covered at least part of the year are experiencing the biggest changes, they found.
With a backdrop of mountain vistas and a rink of natural ice, the annual ice hockey tournament at Grand Lake offers a picturesque snapshot of Colorado’s beauty. What’s not apparent is the problem brewing under players’ skates. This year’s tournament was held a month later than normal, with thin ice forcing organizers to postpone the event originally scheduled for the third weekend of January. “We had slushy conditions and less than six inches of ice. There just was no way it could safely be held,” said Steve Kudron, mayor of Grand Lake. That is a reality that many communities that live near lakes, which freeze and provide myriad activities during winter months, are increasingly confronting. According to a major UN report on climate released on Monday, as the planet warms, the amount of ice, and amount of time it keeps a body of water solid, are diminishing. Those changes are forcing communities to adapt and curtail some winter activities while also raising the spectre of long-term environmental and health issues.
For one thing, the majority of homes do not have drinkable running water at Six Nations. Yes, we did get a water treatment plant and yes, it's operational but hooking your house up if you're currently not on the system costs anywhere between $8,000-$10,000 depending on how far your house is from the water main. At the old farm house, we have a cistern that gets filled once a month as we do all the cleaning and bathing with trucked-in water. Rez connections are such that I text one of my cousins and he brings it on demand. Once a week, we fill two 22-litre water jugs for drinking water at a water supplier on Chiefswood Road (also another cousin).
Lakes in the Northern Hemisphere have been warming six times faster since 1992 than they were at any other time period in the past 100 years, a Canadian study suggests. The study, entitled “Loss of Ice Cover, Shifting Phenology and More Extreme Events in Northern Hemisphere Lakes,” was published in the October issue of the Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences and led by York University in Ontario.
