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.
The mayor of Glencoe, Ont., says the cost of cleaning up and repairing the damage from Wednesday's deadly rainstorm has pushed his rural community to ask the province for financial relief. Environment Canada said Wednesday the town received 135 millimetres of rain during a downpour that turned driveways into ponds, roads into streams and filled basements with sewage.
The Port aux Basques area of Newfoundland could face yet another severe weather event with dangerous implications on Saturday. On Friday morning, Environment Canada issued a storm surge warning for the community and surrounding area on the island's southwest coast. The region is still rebuilding and cleaning up after post-tropical storm Fiona ripped through the area in late September, demolishing 100 homes in its wake. In mid-November, another rainstorm brought additional flooding, further complicating the clean up effort.
The City of Hamilton says it has just discovered sewage has been leaking into the Hamilton Harbour for 26 years because of a hole in a combined sewage pipe in the industrial sector. It's unclear how much sewage has spilled into the harbour. But Nick Winters, director of Hamilton Water, told reporters on Tuesday afternoon "it's going to be a big number," adding the city will publicly release the number as soon as they have it.
Last week, the federal government revealed that cleaning up Yellowknife's Giant Mine is now projected to cost $4.38 billion instead of $1 billion. This is, by one measure, greater than the mine's total estimated revenues during its operation. Quantifying, in dollar terms, the impact of the mine on the local economy, the environment, and the people who live on and use the area's land and water is complicated, if not impossible.
Another major project expected in 2023 is construction of a year-round water treatment plant, which will allow the cleanup team to stop storing water on-site for much of each year, in turn hastening the speed at which the site can be remediated. A lot of the work still to come involves, at least in part, managing water and reducing the risk contamination of that water might pose.
As floodwaters continue to recede, the Town of Fort Frances, Ont., has begun cleaning up and making infrastructure repairs. But that will take some time. "The problem with doing all of these repairs is ... the water is going down, but it's still very high," said Travis Rob, Fort Frances's manager of operations and facilities. "So we really can't start any of this work until the water reaches that normal level.
A group of Grade 7 students delivered some shocking results to the Region of Queens Municipality council meeting December 22. The South Queens Middle School students had been working on a Social Studies project to test fecal bacteria, or enterococci, levels in the Mersey River. The students found readings of between 230 and 340 enterococci to 100 millilitres of water. Under Health Canada regulations, it is not advisable to swim in water where there is 70 enterococci/100 ml. And at 170 enterococci/100 ml, the water should not touch skin.
