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.
Surrey city staff will begin removing derelict boats on the Nicomekl River in South Surrey, with help from Transport Canada. Derelict boats have been illegally mooring on a narrow section of the river and have been dumping raw sewage and garbage into the water, according to a city news release Wednesday. Surrey Mayor Brenda Locke says the river has many spots where boats can legally drop anchor, so there is no reason for any boater to illegally moor their vessel.
They pulled 15 tires, 13 shopping carts and five bikes out of Winnipeg's Seine River. That was just some of the trash a team from an environmental non-profit removed from the river as part of their annual summer cleanup. There was also a suitcase so heavy and full of water it tipped their canoe, three knives and children's toys. Plus, oil drums, a rollerblade, and an old projector.
Pulling a large truck tire from the water, volunteer Derek Evans says he is not sure how long it has been at the bottom of Lake Ontario. It’s filled with zebra mussels and mud, but the rubber has the potential to be a serious issue. "This is at least 50 pounds," Evans says. "It definitely would be a lot of damage to the fish and the wildlife in the water." Getting this tire, and other garbage, is part of a massive project called, 'Kingston Waters Clean Up.' More than 70 divers, kayakers and shorelines volunteers are bagging up garbage to keep it out of the water and drawing awareness to the issue, explains organizer Guillaume Courcy.
The City of Saskatoon has partnered with the University of Saskatchewan for a pilot project aimed at better understanding the debris and pollution that gets into the South Saskatchewan River. Litter and pollutants enter storm drains on city roads and streets, travelling underground and eventually ending up in the river. Saskatoon Water director Russ Munro said the project will use trash traps to apprehend the debris.
A scuba diver cleaning part of the sea floor in a Vancouver inlet came across an animal that an expert says is a long way from home. The unusual find has been identified as a horseshoe crab, native to the Atlantic Ocean along the North American coastline. “This is not a species that’s indigenous to our water here, but as soon as I saw it, I knew what it was,” diver Henry Wang said in an interview.
A group of Chilliwack volunteers braved chilly temperatures to haul away several truckloads of garbage Sunday. Tarps, bike parts, furniture and clothes were dragged up a steep incline from a homeless camp under the Vedder River bridge on Swetzer Creek. It was the second volunteer cleanup at the site conducted by stewards and nature lovers. The camp saw a fire break out last weekend in one of the tarped structures, which postponed the cleanup until Jan. 29.
For Vancouver's Yasmin Schepens, what started as a project to photograph her favourite spot of beach has blown into, at times, an overwhelming commitment to rid it of garbage like cigarette butts, food wrappers and other pieces of plastic. "I couldn't just leave it there, so I started picking it up," said the 30-year-old who moved to Canada from Belgium in 2016.
An environmental group is sounding the alarm about the city's main sewage and stormwater system after finding trash like condoms, sanitary wipes and tampons floating in Toronto harbour last month. Mark Mattson, an environmental lawyer and the founder of Swim Drink Fish — a volunteer group working to create swimmable, drinkable, and fishable water for everyone — told CBC Toronto he went to Ontario Place to check out the quality of the water the day after a large storm on July 24.
Caroline Blakely and 13 other volunteers found a fridge tangled about 300 metres deep in the woods, along with children's toys, fishing poles, roofs, water heaters and lumber on the west side of Grand Lake. The garbage was likely from floods in 2018 and 2019, where unprecedented water levels destroyed homes and displaced more than 1,100 residents along the St. John River and nearby lakes.
Unprecedented flooding in southwest British Columbia last month has left hard-hit communities dealing with the disposal of debris like drywall, insulation, silt-soaked mattresses, couches and kitchen cupboards damaged by water that gutted homes and businesses. Abbotsford Mayor Henry Braun said a second waste transfer station is expected to open for "mountains" of trash left outside homes after record rainfall killed thousands of livestock and devastated a prime agricultural area of the province.
Six days into the flood, Harman Kaur and her husband took a drive past their acreage and found thousands of their ruby-red blueberry bushes were still completely buried in the murky, brown floodwater. Leaking pesticides swirled around the field. Garbage and gas tanks floated past. The smell of fuel filled their noses. "There was a complete layer of oil on top [of the water], and we're talking what I could just see from the road," said Kaur, 29, whose family has owned their farm in the Arnold area of Abbotsford, B.C., for more than a decade.
A week-long water crisis that has left residents of Nunavut's capital city Iqaluit without drinking water is also exposing a chronic problem for many northern communities: It's almost impossible to safely get rid of garbage. Close to 750,000 plastic water bottles have flooded the city in recent days after city staff last week found fuel in Iqaluit's water supply. While a coalition of businesses has since teamed up to ship the empty bottles back, most of the city's trash never returns south.
The banks of Winnipeg's Assiniboine River are a little bit cleaner after dozens of people helped pick up litter near Assiniboine Park on Saturday afternoon. The effort was part of the Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup, a long-standing national conservation initiative that teaches people about the harmful effects of shoreline and riverbank litter and encourages them to get involved in stopping it. Marc Brandson, curator of animal care at the Assiniboine Park Zoo in Winnipeg, said the group focused on cleaning up any waste found along the banks of the Assiniboine that might eventually find its way into the river system.
Rebecca Zagozewski, executive director with the Saskatchewan First Nations Water Association, says cisterns can pose health risks to those who rely on them. She says the structures can have cracked lids, which allows all sorts of debris to get into them — including rats, mice, drowned puppies and garbage — and they’re often not cleaned properly. On top of that, she says the Saskatchewan First Nations Water Association is concerned that there is no certification program for water truck drivers. The group wants to create such a program where drivers would have to be trained in how to keep the water safe and be held accountable if things go wrong. “Because right now there’s no accountability,” she says.
The taps to Winnipeg's drinking water were first turned on in April 1919, but as the city celebrated its engineering feat and raised glasses of that clear liquid, another community's fortunes suddenly turned dark. Construction of a new aqueduct plunged Shoal Lake 40 into a forced isolation that it is only now emerging from, 100 years after Winnipeg's politicians locked their sights on the water that cradles the First Nation at the Manitoba–Ontario border. "The price that our community has paid for one community to benefit from that resource, it's just mind-boggling," said Shoal Lake 40 Chief Erwin Redsky.
A Vancouver Island MP is hoping the federal government will pass his private member's motion that would create legislation to keep plastic pollution out of Canadian waters. "People are counting on elected officials and their leaders to ... demonstrate their commitment to future generations [by] protecting our environment and ensuring that we don't leave them a pile of garbage for them to clean up," said Gord Johns, MP for Courtenay-Alberni.
An Ottawa diver who was filming his search for antiques at the bottom of the Rideau River found a surprising amount of trash below the surface. In the underwater video posted to André Constantineau’s YouTube channel there is everything from bottles, to packages, plastic gloves, lighters, tires, and even construction lights shown.
