Nicole Hancock
Indigenous community hosts full moon ceremony ...

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.

Indigenous community hosts full moon ceremony to heal Chedoke Creek

new guidelines

Manitoba testing community's drinking water for lead

Manitoba testing community's drinking water for lead

The Manitoba Government is monitoring the drinking water in a number of communities to test for lead. On Tuesday, the province confirmed it is working with water systems to find any lead exposure in Manitoba’s drinking water. This comes after Health Canada created new guidelines for lead in drinking water in 2019, prompting the Manitoba government to adopt the guidelines as the standard. The province also created a lead in drinking water website and developed an operation guideline for water systems. When it comes to lead monitoring programs, the province is prioritizing older, larger water systems that have known or suspected lead services. Lead monitoring was brought into Winnipeg in 2019 and then Brandon in 2021.

Replace lead water pipes

Replace lead water pipes

On April 29, U.S. President Joe Biden gave his first address to Congress. Early in his speech he identified lead water pipes as a "clear and present danger" to American public health and announced a 100 per cent replacement of lead water pipes found in 10 million U.S. homes and 400,000 schools and child-care centres as a major part of the America’s Job Plan, so that every American has safe drinking water. Here in Canada, all levels of government need to get serious about lead levels in our drinking water.

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