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.
Hydrogen uses water as a feedstock, so production requires a dependable supply. Water, obviously, is vital for life, from drinking, to crops, to creating and sustaining ecosystems. Given how important it is to the one million-plus people who live in the capital region, we can’t allow industrial use to trump municipal use, or the critical agricultural sector that feeds our communities.
Meanwhile, China has successfully landed a spacecraft on the far side of the moon, and samples brought back from its 2020 mission have revealed a new source of water that could be used in future explorations. “Water was embedded in tiny glass beads in the lunar dirt where meteorite impacts occur,” according to a recent Associated Press story. While mining these beads might be a challenge and their water content is minuscule, they do exist in vast numbers and could yield a substantial amount of H20.
Officials in Minnesota are monitoring the cleanup of a massive spill of radioactive water from a nuclear power plant just outside Minneapolis. About 1.5 million litres (400,000 gallons) of nuclear wastewater leaked from the plant back in late November, but the incident wasn’t made public until Thursday. Xcel Energy, the company that operates the affected nuclear power plant, promises that the spill poses no risk to public safety, as did the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency.
Ice isn’t generally a welcome sight for vehicles on the road, but a mission to put one on the moon is counting on it. Canada plans to launch its first rover as early as 2026. The Canadian Space Agency (CSA) describes the project as an opportunity to develop technologies for deep-space missions, and find a valuable resource to help make those happen.
Depending on who you talk to on the Port au Port Peninsula, the region is either on the brink of an economic transformation or walking an environmental tightrope. Forty-five per cent of residents in the area drew employment insurance in 2019. But a company formed just a few months ago, World Energy GH2, promises a revolutionary wind-hydrogen project it says will bring hundreds of jobs and millions in revenue. The hiccup? That plan depends on building 164 turbines, each 200 metres tall, in an area about the size of the City of St. John's.
Some three billion years ago, Mars was believed to have been a water world just like earth. It possessed great oceans and was most likely on its way to forming life in one form or another. Water is made up of hydrogen, the most common element in the universe, and oxygen, the third most common element. Water is extremely important to the development and sustaining of life as we know it.
A wind farm project on Newfoundland's west coast slated to produce green hydrogen energy in a plant in Stephenville already has interest from an overseas buyer. The project, proposed to be constructed on the Port au Port Peninsula, has yet to pass its environmental assessment but a decision from the provincial government is expected by Aug. 5. On Friday, federal Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson and the provincial Energy Minister Andrew Parsons attended an energy and mines conference in St. John's.
