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.
Medicine Hat, Alta. will begin testing for asbestos due to "community concerns" following a W5 investigation that showed the presence of fibres in the tap water of two Canadian cities. About 32 per cent of Medicine Hat’s watermain network — roughly 140 kilometres — is made up of asbestos cement pipe and is among the 85 communities W5 revealed to have those pipes still in use underground.
Over 500 kilometres of asbestos cement pipes run through Regina’s water utility system, according to findings from a W5 investigation. Due to their supposed durability and low cost, over two million kilometres of asbestos cement pipes could be found around the world at one point, with Canada being no exception. Asbestos was once considered a miracle mineral, being used in thousands of products for its insulating and fireproofing properties.
Two years ago, researchers collected microplastics from pristine surface waters at three nearshore locations in Nova Scotia and Newfoundland, finding tiny and unrecognizable fragments, threads and fibres in every trawl. Chemical analysis has now identified the synthetic polymers that made up those miniscule pieces of plastic and confirmed what was expected: the microplastics were shed from easily recognized sources. "Fishing gear, fishing rope, fragments of nets and particles that would come from that kind of activity, that is a big source of microplastics," said Ariel Smith, the coastal and marine team lead for Coastal Action, the environmental group that is leading a three-year Atlantic Canadian microplastics research project.
