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.
The COVID-19 testing system has been overwhelmed by the Omicron variant, making it impossible to know how many people are infected. Monitoring for the novel coronavirus in wastewater could help fill the gap, says Rob Delatolla, a professor of civil engineering at the University of Ottawa and one of dozens of researchers across Canada that have been developing and using the technique. "I think it just became that much more valuable," he said.
Once a month, Susan Chipman drives to a mountainside spring that burbles from the ground in North Vancouver and fills four 20-litre containers with water to use for drinking and cooking. When full, each container weighs 20 kg. Chipman lives on the top floor of a three-storey walk-up apartment in Vancouver. Her building has running water, of course, supplied and sourced by Metro Vancouver from protected reservoirs even higher up in the North Shore Mountains. But it lacks an elevator. So, she hauls her water jugs up the stairs, one in each hand for balance. “It’s a bit of a chore in the true sense of the word, but it’s worth it, I think.” Chipman says she was hooked from the first sip. She tasted it and thought, “OK, this is real water.”
