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 Canadian mining company has been fined more than $16 million for polluting waterways in B.C.'s East Kootenay. The B.C. Ministry of Environment has imposed three administrative penalties on Teck Coal Limited, a subsidiary of Teck Resources, citing the company's failure to have water treatment facilities ready by a required date to limit emissions of nitrate and selenium from its Fording River operations in the Elk Valley.
Canadians value clean water and a sustainable environment. Environment and Climate Change Canada enforcement officers strive to ensure that businesses and individuals comply with laws and regulations that protect Canada's natural environment. On January 10, 2023, in the Provincial Court of British Columbia, Teck Metals Ltd. was ordered to pay a total of $2.2 million after earlier pleading guilty to two charges laid under the federal Fisheries Act and one charge laid under the provincial Environmental Management Act. The charges stem from a 2019 release of effluent into the Columbia River. The federal fine of $2 million will be directed to the Government of Canada's Environmental Damages Fund. In relation to the provincial charges, Teck Metal Ltd. was ordered to pay a total fine of $200,000.
Concerns are rising as work begins on a water treatment plant in Beausejour, Man., prompting some residents to challenge government officials over potential impacts on the Brokenhead River. The new facility in the east end of the town will treat well water using reverse osmosis. A pipe is being installed along Park Avenue to send the filtered well water the system rejects into the Brokenhead River, raising questions on how that might affect water quality and wildlife.
Canadians living in the Great Lakes basin have perhaps become spoiled at the seemingly endless availability of water. In taking it for granted, topics like the material cost of it or the amount listed on someone’s water bill can be seen as immaterial and unnecessary to discuss. But in many respects, water is also a fairly traditional resource commodity, one that governments have invested billions in maintaining. There’s a cost to all this, and not just for the liquid itself.
Seven years after Canada's largest tailings spill, the two engineers who were involved have been found in breach of their professional codes of conduct. On Aug. 4, 2014, a four-square-kilometre tailings pond breached at Mount Polley mine in central British Columbia, leaking vast amounts of water and effluent into Polley and Quesnel lakes and Hazeltine Creek.
Two new facilities have been unveiled in Fort St. John that are designed to improve emergency training and increase environmental sustainability. The city’s new water recovery facility is now operational and producing reclaimed water for industrial and agricultural uses. The $9.5 million project received a $5 million grant from the federal Gas Tax Fund. It can produce over 4,500 cubic metres, or roughly two Olympic-sized swimming pools, of reclaimed water per day.
When Chief Francis Laceese was seven years old he went fishing with his father at one of the traditional Tsilhqot’in fishing sites along the Fraser River and, during a break, scooped up a bucket of water to make tea over the fire. Today, no one would feel safe making tea from river water because of effluent flowing directly into the river from the Gibraltar mine, Laceese, 61, told The Narwhal. As Tl’esqox chief, Laceese is among the Tsilhqot’in leaders fighting against a provincial permit that grants the Taseko-owned Gibraltar mine permission to increase by 50 per cent the amount of untreated tailings pond water being piped into the river from the mine site 60 kilometres north of Williams Lake. The Gibraltar mine was first built in 1972 and is Canada’s second-largest open-pit copper mine.
New rules cracking down on pollution from dirty, cheap marine fuel kicked into gear this week, placing stricter requirements on cargo vessels and cruise ships that are plying northern waters thanks to climate change. As of Jan. 1, Canada is enforcing a new UN-backed cap on the amount of sulphur allowed in heavy fuel oil (HFO) in the waters north of the 60th parallel, federal officials confirmed to National Observer on Thursday. The cap comes as Transport Canada considers a proposal to ban all HFO for ships operating in the Arctic, to address the environmental risks of oil spills.
