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.
A United Nations body has affirmed earlier findings that Canada's largest national park remains under environmental threats from dams, oilsands development and climate change. The UNESCO report, issued Friday, concludes that the vast Wood Buffalo National Park on the Alberta-Northwest Territories boundary shouldn't lose its place on the list of World Heritage Sites at this time. Some things in the park, such as whooping crane numbers, are improving.
“siwɬkʷ (WATER) IS SACRED AND IS LIFE FOR ALL PEOPLE. We know from our histories and our knowledge that water is one of the most important resources available to humans and animals.” But for Dawn Machin and Sarah Alexis, both from snƛ̓x̌ʷx̌ʷtan (Six-Mile Creek area in the North Arm of Okanagan Lake), there’s a disconnect between what water represents to humanity and how it’s perceived.
It was the Coldstream Ranch manager, Crawley Ricardo who, in 1905, hired engineer A.E. Ashcroft to look at creating an irrigation system from Jones Creek (now called Duteau Creek) with dams on Aberdeen and Haddo lakes in the hills south of Coldstream. The massive project started with the creation of the White Valley Irrigation and Power Company in 1906 to initially supply the Coldstream Ranch and Estates with water.
The 15th round of negotiations to modernize the Columbia River Treaty was held in Vancouver on January 25 and 26. The Columbia River Treaty is a water management agreement that was implemented in 1964 between the United States and Canada. The U.S. prepaid Canada $64 million for a 60-year agreement to ensure flood control operations would be provided. The Columbia Treaty doesn’t have an end date but can be terminated by either country as of September 2024 or onward, if 10 years' notice is given.
As glaciers melt and pour massive amounts of water into nearby lakes, 15 million people across the globe live under the threat of a sudden and deadly outburst flood, a new study finds. More than half of those living in the shadow of the disaster called glacial lake outburst floods are in just four countries: India, Pakistan, Peru and China, according to a study in Tuesday’s Nature Communications. A second study, awaiting publication in a peer-reviewed journal, catalogs more than 150 glacial flood outbursts in history and recent times.
We are losing wetlands three times faster than forests, according to the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands. When it comes to restoring them to their natural state there is one hero with remarkable powers - the beaver. Wetlands store water, act as a carbon sink, and are a source of food. The Ramsar Convention on Wetlands says they do more for humanity than all other terrestrial ecosystems - and yet they are disappearing at an alarming rate. The main problems are agricultural and urban expansion, as well as droughts and higher temperatures brought about by climate change. But if you have a river and a beaver it may be possible to halt this process.
Thousands of the world's large dams are so clogged with sediment that they risk losing more than a quarter of their storage capacity by 2050, UN researchers said Wednesday, warning of the threat to water security. A new study from the UN University's Institute for Water, Environment and Health found that, by mid-century, dams and reservoirs will lose about 1.65 trillion cubic metres of water storage capacity to sediment.
The snowpack covering California's mountains is off to one of its best starts in 40 years, officials announced Tuesday, raising hopes that the drought-stricken state could soon see relief in the spring when the snow melts and begins to refill parched reservoirs. Roughly a third of California's water each year comes from melted snow in the Sierra Nevada, a mountain range that covers the eastern part of the state. The state has built a complex system of canals and dams to capture that water and store it in huge reservoirs so it can be used the rest of the year when it doesn't rain or snow.
A B.C. mom says she's afraid to bathe her and her partner's four kids at home. Instead, they opted to wash in lakes and rivers near their residence in Hudson's Hope, west of Fort St John, this summer. Not satisfied to wait for solutions, Caitlin Vince, 37, helped found the Hudson's Hope Water Recovery Committee to address the ongoing issues with the town's tap water brought on by the construction of B.C. Hydro's Site C dam.
On a clear crisp morning in northern Manitoba, John Henderson III and Drayden Jobb launch a single-engine boat from the Conawapa boat launch in Gilliam into the waters of the Nelson River, to pull the net they set overnight to catch sturgeon. The two young men, both in their 20s, are from the Fox Lake Cree Nation, whose people have been hunting alongside the river and fishing it for generations. "The mighty Nelson," Jobb says as the boat makes its way from shore.
The advance of the climate crisis, marked by its extremes — droughts or deluges, fires or floods — makes abundantly clear the human habit of trying to contain and control water isn’t working. For her new book, Water Always Wins, National Geographic Explorer Erica Gies criss-crossed the globe, witnessing some of the unanticipated results of modern society’s preference for engineered solutions.
Her elderly neighbor is hard of hearing so Maria Luisa Robles, a convenience store worker in the northern Mexican city of Monterrey, shouted the question a second time: Have you run out of water? She had - and it wasn't just her. The taps across this working-class neighborhood of Sierra Ventana dried up over a week ago amid a historic shortage that's gripped the most important industrial city in Mexico.
About 100 Grassy Narrows First Nation residents have arrived in Thunder Bay, Ont., after the community was partially evacuated due to flooding. They arrived in Thunder Bay, which is about 400 kilometres southeast from Grassy Narrows, on Monday. Grassy Narrows Chief Randy Fobister said the evacuees from his community are all vulnerable people, including those with health issues and elders.
After a long winter, Easter weekend is a great time to get outside to enjoy the warming weather. But if adventures in the great outdoors are part of your weekend plans, please ensure you stay clear of waterways around OPG hydroelectric facilities. Recent snow melt, combined with spring precipitation, has the potential to cause rising water levels. High water flow, melting snow and ice, and unstable banks along waterways can be especially dangerous at this time of year.
They might be a beloved Canadian symbol, but beavers are being anything but patriotic in Grenville-sur-la-Rouge, Que. There are roughly 800 beavers and 200 dams in the small western Quebec municipality, located about 100 kilometres east of downtown Ottawa, according to Mayor Tom Arnold, who said all those dams are causing major damage. "We're talking about approximately 35 square kilometres of our municipality, right now, that's under water because of the beaver," he said. "The damages are extensive."
Dene National Chief Norman Yakeleya said that the issue of water safety, especially flowing from the oil sands, has been a concern for as long as he has been Chief. In a tele-press conference Yakeleya told media that he is “befuddled as to why an essential service, such as monitoring the quality of the water coming from the oil sands production fields, was suspended.” He said that water is essential for drinking, for fish, for the animals, and “for the sake of all people in the Northwest Territories.”
With some of the highest municipal water rates in Canada, a University of Regina (U of R) researcher says the city should start thinking about affordability programs for low-income families. “The international benchmarks tell us we should be in trouble now, because people who are living at the Statistics Canada low-income cut off are already paying more than the OECD (Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development) says they should be paying,” Jim Warren said in an interview Thursday.
The Columbia River Treaty, an international agreement governing the flow of water between British Columbia and six U.S. states, will be 55 years old this year. It has not aged well. The river springs from the Columbia Icefield in the Rocky Mountains of B.C. and winds 1,930 kilometres through the Northwestern United States – Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Nevada and Wyoming. No other river in North America spills more water into the Pacific Ocean.
