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.
If you walk along one of Nova Scotia's many shorelines, you'll see rocks, shells, and mounds of seaweed. But some of those beaches are also riddled with colourful rubber bands, ropes and fragments of plastic. According to Angela Riley, founder of Scotian Shores, a local business dedicated to cleaning the shorelines of the province, the province's biggest industry is also behind much of the pollution found near the ocean.
The adoption of water treatment technologies has drastically increased as efforts to preserve and protect the planet have risen to all-time highs. In a word, water treatment technologies are crucial when it comes to eliminating contaminants and bacteria from clean, potable water supplies. As such, wastewater treatments are to remove as many contaminants as possible before the rest of the water is sent back into the environment.
As the drought-ravaged summer pushes some ranchers toward the grim prospect of selling off herds, a pair of Manitobans are offering ways to pump water for cattle to those parched pastures — and business is booming. Fraser and Mark Schram, a father-and-son duo, run separate companies, both selling products that deliver the life-giving liquid to cattle in a way that helps producers manage the health of their animals and their pastures.
“They cut corners every day, every day,” said Justin Gee, vice-president of First Nations Engineering Services Ltd. Gee said he encountered these recurring problems while overseeing the work of a construction firm, Kingdom Construction Limited (KCL), building a water treatment plant 10 years ago in Wasauksing First Nation, along the eastern shore of Georgian Bay, about 250 kilometres north of Toronto. “You have to be on them every step of the way,” said Gee, who was the contract administrator on the project. “You can’t leave them on their own.”
