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.
For decades, starting in the 1950s and ’60s the City of Winnipeg laid hundreds of kilometres of asbestos cement pipes across the city. Now those pipes and the asbestos fibres within them are causing concerns. A recent W5 investigation has found there are 721 kilometres of asbestos cement pipes in Winnipeg, and 25 per cent of the water main networks is also made of the material.
Leona Peterson doesn’t drink the water from her tap anymore. The single mother says she was warned about lead in the water by a neighbour as soon as she moved into the subsidized Indigenous housing complex where she lives in Prince Rupert, a city of almost 12,000 people in northwestern B.C. “She said, ‘There is lead in our water,’” Peterson said. “‘Don’t doubt it, just start flushing.’”
