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.
For decades, starting in the 1950s and ’60s the City of Winnipeg laid hundreds of kilometres of asbestos cement pipes across the city. Now those pipes and the asbestos fibres within them are causing concerns. A recent W5 investigation has found there are 721 kilometres of asbestos cement pipes in Winnipeg, and 25 per cent of the water main networks is also made of the material.
W5 investigated aging asbestos pipes across Canada and the potential health hazards if it ends up in your tap water. We spent several months trying to get to the bottom of two things: Where are these pipes, and is there asbestos in Canada’s water? We reached out and asked over 100 towns, districts and municipalities what types of pipes were in use, and whether there were maps of these networks.
