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.
A major water main break has caused Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Que., to declare a state of emergency as half the population — about 26,000 households, or 56,000 people — has been without running water for more than 48 hours. The city, about 40 kilometres southeast of Montreal, says water won't be back until at least end-of-day Thursday.
After nearly two months, water customers in the Region of Queens Municipality are no longer under a boil-water advisory. The municipality posted a message on its website Thursday saying that the provincial Environment Department had approved lifting the measure and that "water quality production issues" had been resolved. The advisory had been in place since Aug. 9, after the area's water treatment facility was damaged by a lightning strike during a storm.
Wheatley's water treatment plant might not to be return to normal operations for a year or more, but a boil-water advisory isn't expected to last that long, officials said Wednesday. The communities of Wheatley and Tilbury in Chatham-Kent have been under a boil-water advisory for a week after fire caused damage to the water treatment facility.
Jean-François Boyer was awakened shortly after 4:30 a.m. Friday morning by someone pounding on his door urging him to look outside his third-storey apartment in Montreal's Saint-Michel neighbourhood. "I looked down from the balcony and saw that my car had water halfway up its doors," said Boyer. "I didn't know what to do." A major water main broke Friday morning, flooding streets in the neighbourhood and filling several basements and vehicles.
A precautionary boil-water advisory is in effect for a portion of Saint-Lazare, an off-island suburb west of Montreal. The advisory was issued Tuesday. The municipality says an unplanned outage occurred due to an aqueduct failure during work on a sewer project. The entire suburb is not affected. The advisory is for the area east of Montée Saint-Robert as a precautionary measure only, for a minimum period of three consecutive days. This is the time required for the water to be analyzed by a certified laboratory and for the results to be communicated to the municipality.
Oneida Nation of the Thames, a First Nation just south of London, Ont., that has been on a boil-water advisory since 2019, has secured $43 million in federal funding to bring treated drinking water to the community. The connection to the Lake Huron Primary Water System will supply potable water to more than 500 homes and public buildings to the community, which is home to nearly 2,200 residents.
The boil-water advisory in St. Stephen will remain until at least the end of the week after the town administration underestimated the amount of time it would take to get test results on its water supply, according to a statement the town released Wednesday. "It is with our apologies that we now say that the earliest we may receive the results from the bacterial growth tests will be the end of the week," said Wednesday's statement.
EPA Administrator Michael Regan said Tuesday that the agency is still working on a plan to bring long-term improvements to the water system in Mississippi’s capital city, which came perilously close to collapsing more than two months ago. “I am here for the fourth time in one year because I want to hear directly from you,” Regan told dozens of business people, elected officials, pastors and others during a meeting at Jackson State University.
A brief power outage there resulted in pressure changes at Wallaceburg’s water treatment plant that caused a break in a key watermain. That disruption prompted Chatham-Kent public health to issue a boil water advisory for Wallaceburg while students at the town’s high schools and elementary schools were sent home. Crews were working to repair the collapsed tower, Collie said. The electricity stayed on for Bluewater Power’s customers in Sarnia, but they still may have noticed “a couple dims of their lights” during the morning, McMichael-Dennis said.
Leaders of small Newfoundland and Labrador towns say water in their communities is so unreliable that in some cases, it has made residents ill. While government says it's slowly working on fixes, there's no clear end for boil advisories in sight. Black Tickle, a community on Labrador's south coast, has been under a chronic boil order for years, says Todd Russell, president of the NunatuKavut community council. The unpotable water has meant widespread disease among the locals, he said.
The advisory was first issued for the communities on May 12 as flooding in Hay River has affected operation of the town’s water treatment plan and resulted in higher than normal turbidity or muddy water. In a public notice on Tuesday, the territorial government announced residents in the four South Slave communities would no longer have to boil their drinking water as turbidity levels had dropped to acceptable levels in water from the water plant and other operational issues had been addressed.
Residents of Délı̨nę no longer need to boil their water before consuming it, the territorial government said on Monday afternoon. The boil-water advisory had been in place since May 10 after unusually high murkiness was reported in the Sahtu community’s drinking water. On Monday, a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Social Services said the advisory had ended and no associated illnesses had been reported.
A decision to extend the Lake Huron water supply system to a London-area First Nation has earned the full support of water board members. The Lake Huron Water Supply System management board unanimously voted Thursday to endorse a request by Oneida Nation of the Thames to connect to the water supply system, making it the first London-area First Nation to join one of the region’s two water supply systems. “It’s exciting to hear our local First Nation is one of the first in the area to pursue this type of partnership,” said Adrian Chrisjohn, chief of Oneida Nation of the Thames, southwest of London.
City of Iqaluit officials won’t venture any guesses as to when the water treatment plant will be back online. “I can’t even estimate at this point in time,” Coun. Kyle Sheppard said. The plant was shut down Wednesday to allow staff to inspect the facility to find the source of recurring fuel contamination of the city’s water supply. Nunavut’s Health Department put a boil water advisory into effect shortly afterwards. The city is currently pumping water from the Lake Geraldine reservoir through a bypass pipe that avoids contact with the tanks at the treatment plant. City spokesperson Stephanie Clark similarly said she couldn’t offer a timeline for when the water treatment plant will be working again.
About 100 homes in Fort McKay, Alta., are under a boil-water advisory after a water-line break caused the northern community's water distribution system to lose pressure. Residents didn't have access to water for part of Sunday. Alberta Health Services (AHS) and Indigenous Services Canada issued boil-water advisories, with AHS describing the issue as a water-line break.
Sipekne'katik First Nation is a under a boil-water advisory. According to a Facebook post made by Chief Mike Sack Thursday, two water samples taken from the community on Dec. 8 came back with unacceptable levels of E. coli. Sack's post said the boil-water advisory is expected to stay in place until at least Sunday or when all samples come back with safe levels.
Tataskweyak Cree Nation (TCN) in Northern Manitoba, which has been under a boil-water advisory since 2017, is one of the plaintiffs in a class-action lawsuit against the federal government that seeks to have access to drinkable water recognized as a right and spur the federal government to do more for it and other First Nations under long-term water advisories.
The federal government has not done enough to ensure people in First Nations communities have reliable access to safe drinking water, says the federal auditor general. In an audit report tabled in Parliament today, Auditor General Karen Hogan said many First Nations will continue to live without access to clean water without long-term solutions to address deficiencies in their water systems. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau committed during the 2015 election to eliminating all long-term drinking water advisories on public water systems on First Nations reserves by March 31, 2021.
This time of year, with the temperature plunging below -20 C, a snowmobile and an ice chisel are required tools for anyone in Tataskweyak Cree Nation in need of fresh water. There’s the bottled stuff, trucked into town courtesy of the federal government, but the weekly shipment of 1,500 cases is only sufficient to meet basic consumption needs. For cleaning, cooking and basic hygiene water, many residents need a supplementary source. And rather than use their tainted tap water, they follow a snowmobile trail several kilometres to Assean Lake, pails in hand.
