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.
The company behind a massive, multibillion-dollar green energy plan is asking Newfoundland and Labrador's top court to stop protestors from blocking access to its work sites on the Port au Port Peninsula. Lawyers for World Energy GH2 were in Supreme Court in Corner Brook on Thursday afternoon for a hastily called hearing. A group of protesters has been blocking an access road to one of World Energy's sites, on Newfoundland's west coast, for weeks.
On this day in 1914, the City of Edmonton was under a court order to clean up its act when it came to dumping sewage into the North Saskatchewan River. The injunction had been handed down by a justice that January and meant, according to the city’s lawyer, that Edmonton would have to halt building any new sewer connections that put additional waste into the river. It also gave the city two years “to construct a proper disposal plant,” according to a short item published in an Edmonton newspaper. The story indicates that both the province and the city tried to get the injunction softened, to no avail.
Two First Nations say they will appeal parts of a British Columbia Supreme Court ruling released last month that rejected their bid for an injunction to restore the natural flows of the Nechako River. The river in central B.C. has been diverted for 70 years to generate hydroelectricity for mining giant Rio Tinto's aluminum division and the province's power grid. The Saik'uz and Stellat'en First Nations announced Thursday they plan to bring a "limited appeal'' of the Jan. 7 ruling, asking the higher court to order the restoration of flows for the Nechako that would re-establish "the natural functions of the river.''
