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.
Nearly six metres below a South Delta residential area, workers are making upgrades to a water storage reservoir that holds millions of litres of drinking water. Work at the Pebble Hill reservoir began in the fall of 2021 to prepare for natural disasters in the future. Metro Vancouver has been steadily upgrading its reservoirs since the '90s to ensure it can provide water to the region following the "Big One" — a megathrust earthquake expected to hit the B.C. coast someday.
A megathrust earthquake could shatter Metro Vancouver’s capacity to send water to its 21 municipalities, a new report says. The heavily redacted report, published internally by the regional body in February but recently obtained by Glacier Media, indicates a 9 magnitude earthquake could lead to 267 water main failures across the region. Some of the most worrying failures, confirmed Metro staff and independent experts, are forecast to occur where all of the region’s main trunk lines pass under bodies of water — from dammed mountain lakes on the North Shore, under the Burrard Inlet, and down the line, below the Fraser River.
