Nicole Hancock
Indigenous community hosts full moon ceremony ...

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.

Indigenous community hosts full moon ceremony to heal Chedoke Creek

climate change impacts

Local experts call for more West Kootenay data to adapt to climate change

Local experts call for more West Kootenay data to adapt to climate change

A mountain of data will be needed to get the full picture of climate change impacts on the West Kootenay ecosystem, say planners, scientists, and members of the region’s environmental community. To draw attention to two web-based tools for water and climate data in the Columbia Basin, Nelson-based non-governmental organization Living Lakes Canada brought together a panel of local experts on Oct. 12. “The idea is that we don’t have enough data on our watersheds in the Columbia Basin to make informed decisions about how to react to climate change,” said Nicole Trigg, communications director for Living Lakes Canada. “This was a great opening conversation on a very important topic.”

Scientist sounds water crisis alarm

Scientist sounds water crisis alarm

The megadrought affecting the western United States has prompted a scientist to warn that Canada’s prairie provinces need to better plan how water is used across the entire Saskatchewan river system. “A water expert from California we had up here a few years ago said that Alberta and Saskatchewan reminded him of California and Arizona around 1912,” said John Pomeroy, the Canada Research Chair in Water Resources and Climate Change at the University of Saskatchewan. “We’re still getting by OK, we have pretty loose agreements, everybody’s getting along, it’s fine – but we have trouble ahead.”

Good news: Some climate change impacts are 'reversible.' Here's what that means

Good news: Some climate change impacts are 'reversible.' Here's what that means

The latest UN climate report this week raised the alarm over the "irreversible" impacts of climate change, such as rising seas and coastal flooding that we will continue to experience for centuries or longer — even if we stop emitting greenhouse gases and halt global warming now. "We are now committed to some aspects of climate change, some of which are irreversible for hundreds to thousands of years," said Tamsin Edwards, a climate scientist at King's College London and co-author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report released Monday. The good news is that some impacts, such the warming of the Earth's surface, can be reversed by removing carbon from the atmosphere — at least in theory.

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