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 International Joint Commission, a body that manages water rights along the US-Canada border, has confirmed its IT security was targeted, after a ransomware gang claimed it stole 80 GB of data from the organization. "The International Joint Commission has experienced a cybersecurity incident, and we are working with relevant organizations to investigate and resolve the situation," a spokesperson for the org told The Register.
A man has died after he fell at the Ashbridges Bay Water Treatment Plant in Leslieville this morning.
Reports indicate the man fell about 100 feet or several storeys. Emergency crews attended the scene around 11:30 a.m. and pronounced the man dead. Police labelled the incident an industrial accident.
Residents are concerned about the large number of dead fish found floating in the Ausable River in Port Franks, Ont., and are questioning the safety of the waterway used by boaters and swimmers. The municipality of Lambton Shores said it was alerted to issue on Saturday, with reports that hundreds of fish of various species were turning up in the marina and along the banks of the river, which flows into Lake Huron.
Venetian authorities are investigating after a patch of fluorescent green water appeared in the famed Grand Canal on Sunday morning. “This morning a patch of phosphorescent green liquid appeared in the Grand Canal of Venice, reported by some residents near the Rialto Bridge. The prefect has called an urgent meeting with the police to investigate the origin of the liquid,” Veneto regional president Luca Zaia wrote on Twitter.
Saint John has been temporarily removed from the national COVID-19 wastewater surveillance dashboard over concerns about the accuracy of its data. Public Health Agency of Canada officials believe "the sampling point and treatment of the sample prior to testing was the origin of the test variance," said spokesperson Anna Maddison. This suggests "the reported values are not reflective of the community burden," said spokesperson Nicholas Janveau.
Federal environmental authorities have launched a formal investigation into a tailings leak at Imperial Oil's Kearl oilsands mine in northern Alberta. Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) announced Thursday it is investigating a suspected contravention of the Fisheries Act, which prohibits the "deposit of a deleterious substance into water frequented by fish," or any place where such substances could enter fish-bearing water.
Charlottetown is one of many towns, districts and municipalities in Canada where drinking water is still flowing through asbestos cement pipes, an investigative report by a national broadcaster has found. W5 said it checked with more than 100 towns, districts and municipalities in the country and 90 per cent of them do have asbestos pipes. The pipes were installed decades ago, and all are nearing end-of-life but are still delivering tap water.
The B.C. Energy Regulator (BCER) is investigating after Coastal GasLink (CGL) reported two spills of clay lubricant while it was tunnelling under the Morice River to build a natural gas pipeline through northern British Columbia. The area around the Morice River has for years been the site of conflict between Wet'suwet'en hereditary chiefs and supporters, and CGL, its workers and the RCMP.
Another round of negotiations over the Columbia River Treaty have wrapped up in Washington, D.C., as delegations with Canada and the U.S. met for the 16th time to discuss modernizing the water sharing agreement. The latest talks focused on strengthening co-operation to support aquatic life and biodiversity in the Columbia River Basin, ongoing studies regarding salmon reintroduction, flood-risk management and greater flexibility for how treaty dams are operated, according to an update from the province.
For decades, starting in the 1950s and ’60s the City of Winnipeg laid hundreds of kilometres of asbestos cement pipes across the city. Now those pipes and the asbestos fibres within them are causing concerns. A recent W5 investigation has found there are 721 kilometres of asbestos cement pipes in Winnipeg, and 25 per cent of the water main networks is also made of the material.
A northern Ontario First Nation that has lived under a boil-water advisory for nearly three decades has hired an outside consultant to find out once and for all what ails the community's water system. Neskantaga First Nation, roughly 450 kilometres north of Thunder Bay, Ont., is marking a grim milestone this month — 28 years under a boil water advisory, longer than any other First Nation.
Alberta's ombudsman has found that the province's environment ministry did not follow legislation and policy after issuing an enforcement order against a northwest Edmonton composting facility. Cleanit Greenit Composting Systems stopped producing compost last year after losing its provincial registration. Residents had complained for years about an intermittent stench near the business and Alberta's environment ministry — then called Alberta Environment and Parks and now named Environment and Protected Areas — had found "ongoing and persistent issues related to air, land and water."
Alberta Environment is investigating how a family's water well near a gravel mine became so contaminated by lead it's no longer drinkable. The investigation comes as Red Deer County considers expanding mine operations that Jody Young suspects are the source of the lead she and her family may have been drinking for months. "We have it in our blood," said Young. "My son's levels are actually higher than mine."
Officials from the city and province are investigating an oil spill into the Humber River in northwest Toronto this week and say efforts to clean up the spill by the company responsible are expected to begin on Thursday. Toronto Water, the Ontario Ministry of Environment, Conservation and Parks and its Spill Action Centre are investigating the spill into the river southwest of Finch Avenue West and Weston Road. There's no word yet on the amount that was spilled, but the ministry said it is machine oil.
The City of Hamilton says it has just discovered sewage has been leaking into the Hamilton Harbour for 26 years because of a hole in a combined sewage pipe in the industrial sector. It's unclear how much sewage has spilled into the harbour. But Nick Winters, director of Hamilton Water, told reporters on Tuesday afternoon "it's going to be a big number," adding the city will publicly release the number as soon as they have it.
The water supplied to 18 Garden Bay area homes is under a “do not use” warning from Vancouver Coastal Health (VCH) as of Nov. 4. Dream Valley Estates residents were notified by VCH that slightly elevated arsenic levels were detected in Sept. 28 water supply samples. Health Canada’s maximum acceptable concentration (MAC) for arsenic in drinking water is 10 parts per billion (ppb). Two of three Dream Valley samples tested at 11.3 and 11.6 ppb. One of those samples tested raw water and one was on treated water.
Venturing into an unfamiliar section where he did not typically work, Keays saw an illegal device known in the industry as a “magic pipe.” From his marine studies in Glasgow, Scotland, Keays knew exactly what he was looking at. Several feet long, the pipe stretched from a nozzle on a carbon filter pump to a water tank. Its magic trick? Making the ship’s used oil and other nasty liquids disappear. Rather than storing the highly toxic effluent and unloading it at port, as the ship was legally required to do, the pipe was secretly flushing the waste into the ocean, saving the ship’s owner, Carnival Corporation, millions of dollars in disposal fees and port delays. Keays used his cellphone to take shaky video and pictures of the pipe, as well as photographs of the engine-room computer screen that showed how discharges were being manipulated.
First Nations and environmentalists say they are angry the federal and British Columbia governments continue to stonewall American requests for a joint investigation of cross-border contamination from coal mining as meetings of the panel that mediates such issues wrap up. "They can sit on every fence they want, but at the end of the day, we're going to do what's right," said Heidi Gravelle, chief of the Tobacco Plains First Nation, one of several bands upset over selenium contamination in southeastern B.C.'s Elk Valley from coal mines.
Ontario’s labour ministry is investing a workplace injury that occurred Tuesday at the Lou Romano Water Reclamation Plant in Windsor. A ministry inspector has been assigned, but few other details about the injury or who was involved have been released by the ministry regarding the incident that occurred at the city’s sewage treatment plant on the city’s west end off Ojibway Parkway. “It was reported that one worker sustained an injury while operating machinery,” said a ministry official who indicated the investigation remains ongoing.
University of Waterloo is leading an interdisciplinary team to identify and treat per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) - better known as forever chemicals – in water systems affecting more than 2.5 million Canadians. The Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) is providing the funding to detect, identify and treat PFAS-contaminated water, the university said in a media release.
