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 grain farmer near Fort St. John says he and other growers are struggling as drought conditions continue to impact northeastern B.C., resulting in some of their poorest yields in years. "There was very little crop because everything got dried out," Malcolm Odermatt, a farmer and president of the B.C. Grain Producers Association, told CBC's Betsy Trumpener. "The plants went into survival mode … we're not going to do a big yield. We're just going to get a few seeds. We had absolutely no rain."
Starting this month, over 2,500 Detroit residents will see lower water rates as a new affordability plan takes effect, the Detroit Free Press reports. The plan offers low-income residents a fixed monthly water rate, calculated based on a resident’s income and water usage. Four thousand more households are on the program’s waiting list. This month also sees a new rate structure in Detroit, which lowered most water bills by $2. The city’s moratorium on water shutoffs, enacted more than two years ago, is set to expire at the end of 2022, though officials say that households enrolled in the affordability program will not be affected.
