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.
Canada should be exploiting its enormous water resources to be both a sustainable food powerhouse and a global water research superpower, says a new paper from the Canadian Agri-Food Policy Institute. Yet the country’s water policies, management and research efforts are underdeveloped and unco-ordinated, leaving water resources and challenges largely unaddressed. That’s something that a national plan should fix, says the report written by Tyler McCann, Angele Poirier and Nicolas Mesly.
We know the lakes and rivers in and around urban environments are contaminated by plastic debris, detergents, pesticides, heavy metals and other contaminants, but new research is showing that urban runoff toxicity is ill-defined and potentially underestimated globally. Researchers including Nathalie Tufenkji, Professor of Chemical Engineering at McGill University and Canada Research Chair in Biocolloids and Surfaces, are calling for cities to better manage and treat urban runoff to protect sources of drinking water and reduce the impacts on aquatic ecosystems.
A water crisis is looming because of climate change, a new report warns. Floods and droughts are increasingly on the rise, and the number of global citizens facing water scarcity is expected to soar. Meanwhile, management, forecasting, and financial solutions are thought to be gravely “insufficient”. The report, The State of Climate Services 2021: Water, has suggested that by 2050 more than five billion people will have inadequate access to water at least once monthly, up from 3.6 billion in 2018.
