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.
Delivery of safe and high-quality drinking water is an essential public service, but it’s not easy to monitor water quality in real-time close to customers’ homes. Thanks to a new research partnership with the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, TELUS and the Regional District of North Okanagan, researchers at UBC’s Okanagan campus will begin to address this gap by leveraging new sensors to wirelessly monitor water quality in the distribution system.
Aklavik has begun delivering water again after a software problem affecting a computer at the hamlet’s water plant was resolved. A system error earlier this week meant the hamlet could not monitor water quality and, as a result, trucks were told to stop delivering water to homes, acting senior administrator Tom Ng said on Wednesday. Initially, technicians in British Columbia had struggled to fix the error remotely.
Alberta is proposing two new plans to monitor water quality on the North Saskatchewan, Battle and Upper Athabasca rivers. Environment Minister Jason Nixon said Tuesday at a press conference in Edmonton the province will establish clear objectives to monitor and maintain water quality after public consultations. "This level of oversight helps us better understand the cumulative effects of various activities on the landscape which is essential to making informed decisions in the future about land and water management and resource development," Nixon said.
