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.
Brent Fry, who farms grain and livestock, said it's common for his land to flood for three days when people upstream get 50 millimetres of rain. He said it has caused roads and access points to erode. "There are about four farms out there and all they're doing is draining whether they've got permission or not," Fry said. "I don't even know what to do because the government's not doing anything — they're siding with the big guys."
For some residents of northern Alberta and Saskatchewan, the North Saskatchewan River is nothing more than a flowing body of water that starts at the Saskatchewan Glacier in Banff National Park and winds its way northeast. But it's much more than that. The river is a part of a bigger network of streams and channels that feed into it on its path through the Prairies. We're talking about a watershed — an area of land that drains into a water body.
With China's biggest freshwater lake reduced to just 25 per cent of its usual size by a severe drought, work crews are digging trenches to keep water flowing to one of the country's key rice-growing regions. The dramatic decline of Poyang Lake in the landlocked southeastern province of Jiangxi had otherwise cut off irrigation channels to nearby farmlands. The crews, using excavators to dig trenches, only work after dark because of the extreme daytime heat, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.
