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.
A years-long effort to address chronic flooding in Tantramar is a step closer to completion. The southeastern New Brunswick town, which includes Sackville, started work on a multi-phase flood mitigation project in 2017. It involves upgraded drainage systems, a series of holding ponds and an upgraded aboiteau that discharges the water into the tidal Tantramar River. The aboiteau allows water to go out, but not flow back in.
The governments of Canada and Saskatchewan have announced a new beneficial management practice for cow-calf producers under the Farm Stewardship Program. Eligible beef cow-calf producers can now access cost-shared funding of up to 75 per cent of project costs, to a maximum payment of $15,000, for the development of preventative run-off control measures. Eligible projects include; holding or retention ponds for collecting run-off, ditches, berms or dykes and earthwork or pen re-grading to achieve proper run-off.
P.E.I.'s Environment Minister Steven Myers says the province has all the data it needs to end the province's 19-year moratorium on high capacity irrigation wells, and says the moratorium won't be needed once the province's Water Act comes into effect June 16. That comes after 19 years of successive P.E.I. governments — including that of current Premier Dennis King — saying they needed more research in order to decide what to do with the moratorium.
The P.E.I. Federation of Agriculture is asking the province to create an Island-wide irrigation strategy to help protect farmers at risk of losing crops or having crop damage due to drought. "Last summer is an example of a growing season where it's simply not sustainable for us to grow crops of any kind without water," said executive director Robert Godfrey.
A Travellers Rest business has taken responsibility for a recent wastewater spill and is working to make sure it never happens again. The spill was noticed on Dec. 27, when Chris Wall, who lives in the adjacent community of New Annan, saw that the stream on his property was filled with smelly, grey water. “Seventy-five feet from the brook, I could smell the potato leachate,” said Wall, whose property is more than a kilometre from P.E.I. Potato Solutions, which has offered washing and sorting services to farmers across the Island since 2014. Wall snapped photos showing what he described as an unusual, thick, grey cloud of material in the stream, a tributary to the Barbara Weit River. He immediately suspected the wash plant and went directly to the culvert that exits the property, where he photographed dirty water flowing off-site. Wall reported what he saw to the Department of Environment.
The Water Act, passed in the P.E.I. Legislature but not yet proclaimed, was one of the more divisive issues of the first leaders debate of the provincial election campaign.
More than 250 people packed into an auditorium at UPEI to listen to the leaders discuss environmental issues, at a forum organized by Island environmental groups.
Topics ranged from protecting soil quality, to watershed group funding, to increasing the number of protected areas on P.E.I., to promoting the Island's natural history.
