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.
Human-induced climate change “contributed substantially” to the atmospheric river and ensuing floods that devastated B.C. last year, a new study by Environment Canada scientists confirms, warning Canadians to brace for more of the same. “The chance this kind of flood will happen has increased by 100 to 300 per cent due to human influence,” Xuebin Zhang, a senior research scientist with Environment and Climate Change Canada, told Canada’s National Observer.
Iqaluit's city council voted unanimously Tuesday to provide a water rebate for residents. Nearly 8,000 residents were ordered not to drink the tap water when fuel was discovered in one of the city's two water tanks at its water treatment plant earlier this month. The 100 per cent rebate was proposed by Mayor Kenny Bell. It will cost the city over $965,000 in revenue for the month of October.
The European Commission took Italy to the EU's top court on Wednesday over the country's failure to provide clean drinking water to its citizens. The Commission said it was suing Italy because in some areas the levels of arsenic and fluoride in drinking water have long exceeded the maximum values allowed by EU law.
In the same way that rivulets, rain, streams and snowmelt flow together to create a watershed, a new digital platform initiative led by UCalgary in collaboration with IBM pools together data from multiple sources — sensors, scientists, and citizens — to create an accessible information reservoir that will support improved watershed science, policy and management across Canada.
Help could be on the way to update the North End Sewage Treatment Plant and fight pollution in Lake Winnipeg. The Lake Winnipeg Foundation, an environmental non-governmental organization, said the city is the single largest contributor of phosphorus in the lake, at around five per cent. Winnipeg South MP Terry Duguid, parliamentary secretary to the minister of environment and climate change, told 680 CJOB the federal government is willing to do its part to tackle the problem, but the North End plant only serves as a starting point.
