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.
Water is often the most crucial factor in controlling crop yields. The amount of water used by crops can be affected by several factors including the availability of stored soil water, amount of precipitation during the growing season, crop rooting depth and various environmental aspects such as day length, amount of solar radiation, humidity, temperature and wind.
Karim said the company charged him "egregiously incorrectly" as if he used all 124,000 litres — enough to fill a mid-sized in-ground pool — in one month. As a result, he said Alectra was applying a higher "Block 2" rate for most of it and overcharging him by almost $200, "which for me is the difference between food and water," he said. When Karim explained the discrepancy to Alectra, he said they agreed they'd incorrectly billed him.
The City of Hamilton estimates 337 million litres of sewage — roughly 135 Olympic-sized swimming pools worth of sewage — flowed into the harbour since 1996. That's roughly 13 million litres per year for 26 years. "City staff developed this estimate based on the water meter usage data for all of the properties connected to the combined sewer pipe," read a media release from the city on Monday morning, adding this method was identified as the most accurate way to represent the discharge over the 26 years.
The City of Saint John will not provide an update on how much its long-awaited "safe, clean drinking water" system will cost. A CBC news right-to-information request reveals that the figure isn't publicly available. The request resulted in 2,100 pages of documents about the project, with most records of price blacked out.
