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 P.E.I. and federal governments are both pitching in to help build a new water tower in Cornwall. Cornwall is P.E.I.'s fastest growing community, with a population that grew 23 per cent between the 2016 and 2021 censuses. Water pressure has been an issue for some residents. The tower will not only increase the capacity of the town's water system, said Coun. Elaine Barnes, chair of water and sewer, but also provide backup supply.
First Nations and environmentalists say they are angry the federal and British Columbia governments continue to stonewall American requests for a joint investigation of cross-border contamination from coal mining as meetings of the panel that mediates such issues wrap up. "They can sit on every fence they want, but at the end of the day, we're going to do what's right," said Heidi Gravelle, chief of the Tobacco Plains First Nation, one of several bands upset over selenium contamination in southeastern B.C.'s Elk Valley from coal mines.
Cheekbone Beauty is using lipgloss to call out lip service paid by federal governments when it comes to providing safe drinking water to Indigenous communities. The fact that reserves, First Nations and Indigenous communities have struggled for access to clean drinking water has been known for years, and fixing the issue has been a focal point of major party platforms in the last three federal elections.
Federal, provincial and municipal governments have come together in eastern P.E.I. for a major expansion of the water and sewer system. The $4.7-million project will extend the system about 2.5 kilometres from the old border of Montague into the old community of Brudenell up to MacDonald Road. The amalgamation of a group of communities to create Three Rivers in 2018 was key to getting the project off the ground, said Mayor Ed MacAulay.
Five times over the past 16 years, the Fisher River has spilled its banks at Peguis First Nation. The river channel is so small and the terrain in Manitoba's northern Interlake is so flat, it doesn't take much for floodwaters to spread far and wide across the Anishinaabe and Cree community. Every time there's a flood, the provincial and federal governments respond with some form of help. Depending on the severity of the flood in question, that assistance has included sandbags, pumps, billeting in hotels and even the replacement of dozens of flood-damaged homes.
The Great Lakes Ecoregion Network (GLEN) is a new initiative to engage members of the basin-wide Great Lakes environmental community on issues related to the binational Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement (GLWQA). As the 50th anniversary of the signing of the GLWQA is celebrated later this week, we call on the US and Canadian federal governments to renew and strengthen their commitment to water quality and ecosystem health in the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River Basin.
Snaking beneath Regina's streets are 600 kilometres of water mains built with asbestos-cement. That's about 60 per cent of some 1,000 kilometres of the mains that deliver water to homes around the city. Increasingly, some scientists and communities are questioning the wisdom in having drinking water flowing through pipes constructed from asbestos fibres.
