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.
Yukon mine inspectors found a series of problems at the Hecla Mining Company's Keno Hill property, according to a recent report. Inspectors raised a number of concerns, including sediment runoff from tailings facilities, poor storage of hazardous materials, hydrocarbon stains on the ground, and discharged water that was toxic to fish.
It’s about the reaction to a photograph taken of Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) inspectors taking water samples near Pense — the workers said they thought they were working on public land next to the highway, while a landowner claimed the work was being done on private land. It should have stopped right there — as a misunderstanding about whether the land was public or private, with efforts to do better in the future. Instead, it became the latest federal/provincial football. Some people have got in touch with me after I wrote about this issue last week to point out that I haven’t lived here long enough to understand the way Saskatchewan residents feel about private land.
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.
