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.
A plan is now in place to create the kind of detailed flood plain maps that some of Nova Scotia's emergency managers have said they lacked when torrential flooding occurred in July. Byron Rafuse, deputy minister of the Department of Municipal Affairs and Housing, told a legislature committee Wednesday it's expected the mapping will be conducted over the next three fiscal years and be completed by 2026.
From green roofs in Toronto to Vancouver’s rain city strategy, Canadian cities are looking to become sponges in order to help mitigate some of the effects of extreme rainfalls. In Montreal, Mayor Valerie Plante announced last week that the city plans to develop some 30 additional sponge parks designed to catch and absorb rainwater and keep it from flowing into overburdened sewers during extreme rain.
The Province is investing almost $2 million in water and wastewater infrastructure upgrades that will help the Town of Antigonish and the Municipality of the County of Antigonish prepare for future growth. Our municipalities depend on modern infrastructure to be competitive and attract new residents to their communities,” said Municipal Affairs and Housing Minister John Lohr. “By making these investments, we will improve the efficiency of the water and wastewater systems, ensuring residents and businesses have the services they expect and depend on every day and laying the foundation for continued growth for years to come.”
A $13.2 million investment in clean water infrastructure was announced by three levels of government today for the northern communities of Tracadie and Rivière-du-Nord. “Investments in this critical infrastructure will benefit residents and support growth in these communities,” said Réjean Savoie, minister responsible for the Regional Development Corporation. “We are pleased to work with the municipalities of Tracadie and Rivière-du-Nord to help fund these projects.”
Some of the world’s biggest mining companies are working with South Africa’s government on a 27 billion rand ($1.5 billion) water project to supply major platinum and chrome operations and several hundred thousand people with drinking water. Glencore Plc and Anglo American Platinum Ltd. are among the companies attempting to secure half of that amount in financing by the end of the year with the rest of the funds to be sourced by municipalities and the government.
British Columbia has ordered the oil and gas industry to temporarily stop diverting water to operations in one northeast district, and is now considering banning water use by other industries in other parts of the province, as it tries to conserve resources for its fight against the twin crises of drought and wildfires. At a news conference in Vancouver on Thursday, government officials explained that B.C.’s government is also working with municipalities, regional districts and First Nations to escalate restrictions on personal water usage.
The Province is investing a total of $3.9 million in infrastructure upgrades in Mahone Bay, Yarmouth, Digby and Clare that will help prepare the municipalities for future growth. “Our municipalities depend on modern infrastructure to be competitive and attract new residents to their communities,” said Municipal Affairs and Housing Minister John Lohr. “By making these investments, we will improve the efficiency of the water and wastewater systems, ensuring residents and businesses have the services they expect and depend on every day and laying the foundation for continued growth for years to come.”
Quebec will give $2.4 billion over 10 years to help municipalities work on their water and wastewater infrastructure. "We want to repair our water system in Quebec. It's expensive. Our drinking water, we must be careful," said Municipal Affairs Minister Andrée Laforest in an interview with The Canadian Press. This assistance is part of a municipal water infrastructure program called PRIMEAU. Previous PRIMEAU programs had a total envelope of $826.7 million.
The City of Charlottetown is offering financial help to residents looking to protect their homes from flooding. It was one of 10 municipal governments across Canada to receive a climate resiliency grant in 2022 from the Intact Foundation, which is connected to Intact Public Entities, a large insurance company that works with municipalities. "The issue of flooding has been something that we've been aware of for certain communities across Charlottetown," said Alistair Ozon, the city's water co-ordinator.
Booming growth in Cochrane, Alta., is putting pressure on the town as it edges closer to maxing out its water licence capacity. Like other municipalities in the region, the town relies on a licence to draw the water it needs from the Bow River. But with no new water licences being granted by the provincial government and a growing population, the community needs solutions.
Kush Sharma, director of municipal modernization and partnerships for the Municipal Information Security Association of Ontario, reported that 92 per cent of respondents to a recent poll of members said municipalities should first focus on critical infrastructure — such as the water system, public transit, solid waste and the voting system — before what they called traditional IT. “What you don’t want is the water system to be breached. If Microsoft Office 365 and your documents go down, or maybe you can’t process some financial statements, that can be fixed. But if your water system goes down there are life-safety issues. If we can try to balance the resources we have as municipalities and focus on the critical infrastructure components …. that would be a good start.”
"Medium and larger municipalities are starting to realize how important cybersecurity is to protecting the data of citizens, critical infrastructure, political systems, and so on," said Kush Sharma, MISA's director of municipal modernization and partnerships. He says a cyber attack can compromise everything from water and waste distribution systems to transportation technology.
Extreme rainfall caused by climate change could cost municipalities in Ontario an additional $700 million a year to maintain stormwater and wastewater infrastructure, the province's financial watchdog warns. In a new report released on Tuesday, the Financial Accountability Office of Ontario (FAO) says severe weather will cost municipalities millions more in the coming decades if local governments do not spend the money now to keep aging infrastructure in a state of good repair.
Inside the Pine Creek wastewater treatment plant in the south of Calgary, a lab run by the University of Calgary is busy processing wastewater samples from municipalities across the province. This lab, along with one operated by the University of Alberta, started tracing levels of the SARS-CoV-2 virus in wastewater in early 2020 — providing Alberta Health Services with infection trends in different communities. Now the project has expanded to check for influenza A and B, as well as RSV — respiratory viruses that are all currently putting a strain on Alberta's health care system.
A new environmental scorecard says Canada's biggest cities have lower scores than most small and medium-sized municipalities, but a closer look at the data reveals some surprises. The study, published Tuesday in the journal Environment International, rates 30 of the country's largest cities and towns on nine indicators related to health, including air quality, heat and cold waves, ultraviolet radiation, and access to green spaces. The results are compiled in the new Canadian Environmental Quality Index, produced by Dalhousie University in Halifax.
The adaptation measures, he says, include looking at “building codes, where we build, how we build,” as well as efforts “to develop a national flood insurance program” to better inform planning decisions. Better flood mapping is also part of the government’s strategy. One community that is showing the way in that respect is Peterborough, Ont., about two hours east of Toronto. Nearly twenty years ago, it was severely impacted by floods of epic proportions that any resident old enough to have lived through them can hardly forget.
Environmental advocates are raising the alarm that Ontario's latest housing legislation could prevent conservation authorities from helping municipalities review construction projects and see some wetlands re-mapped for development. The Ford government has also asked the province's three dozen conservation authorities to look at the swaths of land they own to see what could be turned over for housing.
A study measuring the quality of water in the Grand River found the majority of pollutants are coming from municipalities upstream and are concentrated around Fairchild Creek. Pesticides, e-coli, and human waste by-products are all present in the Grand River but the state of the art treatment plant in Ohsweken is filtering most of that out, according to one of the study authors, Marsha Serville-Tertullien, from Trent University. She recommended Six Nations tell municipalities up stream to clean up their act in order to reduce potential contaminants in Six Nations’ drinking water.
Newfoundland and Labrador municipalities can't stop the impact of climate change, but two climate action consultants say more can be done prepare for extreme weather events. St. John's city crews scrambled this week to repair flood and erosion damage after three days of record-breaking rainfall from post-tropical storm Earl. As of Wednesday, four roads were still closed for repairs. Jess Puddister, a scientist and climate action consultant, said watching the damage play out was "frustrating."
A coalition on climate adaptation and disaster resilience says air conditioning should become a human right on par with winter heating because climate change is increasing the risks of extreme heat waves across Canada. The recommendation is among a list of hard targets and goals Climate Proof says the federal government needs to include this fall in its national adaptation strategy.
