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.
The Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador Offshore Petroleum Board (C-NLOPB) announced Wednesday that Hiberia will pay $400,000 in fines as the result of a 2019 oil spill on the Hibernia platform. The spill happened on July 17, 2019, when approximately 12,000 litres of crude oil mixed with water was released from the platform into the Atlantic Ocean. Hibernia Management and Development Company Ltd. said at the time the discharge was likely caused by a sensor issue and called it an isolated incident.
The Canadian Coast Guard says it is working to contain and assess an oil spill from a container ship in Vancouver's English Bay. According to the coast guard, a pilot notified them of pollution from a ship around 11:40 a.m PT Saturday. Officials say the spill originated from the container vessel MV Europe, with a slick visible from the air on the water close to Spanish Banks beach.
Contractors have been deployed to Sudbury's Ramsey Lake to clean up a residential oil spill that migrated to the shoreline on Jan. 17. The Ontario Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks estimates around 812 litres of home heating fuel spilled onto the ground from a storage tank at a property on Gennings Street, near the lake. While Ramsey Lake is the main source of the city's drinking water, ministry spokesperson Gary Wheeler said there is only a low risk to the thousands of people who get their municipal drinking water from the lake.
An oil spill that started at a home along Ramsey Lake in Sudbury, Ont., has since reached the shoreline, said Public Health Sudbury and Districts. The health unit said in a news release that the spill Jan. 14 started from the fuel oil tank of a home on Gennings Street near the lake. Public health said it immediately alerted the Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks, as well as people who lived nearby.
Officials from the city and province are investigating an oil spill into the Humber River in northwest Toronto this week and say efforts to clean up the spill by the company responsible are expected to begin on Thursday. Toronto Water, the Ontario Ministry of Environment, Conservation and Parks and its Spill Action Centre are investigating the spill into the river southwest of Finch Avenue West and Weston Road. There's no word yet on the amount that was spilled, but the ministry said it is machine oil.
Lifelong Cleveland resident Steve Gove recalls when the Cuyahoga River symbolized shame — fetid, lifeless, notorious for catching fire when sparks from overhead rail cars ignited the oil-slicked surface. “It was pretty grungy,” said the 73-year-old, an avid canoeist in his youth who sometimes braved the filthy stretch through the steelmaking city. “When you went under those bridges where the trains were hauling coke from the blast furnaces, you had to watch for cinders and debris falling off.” It wasn’t the only polluted U.S. river. But outrage over a 1969 Cuyahoga fire — the latest in a series of environmental disasters including a 3-million-gallon oil spill off California’s Santa Barbara months earlier — is widely credited with inspiring the Clean Water Act of 1972.
Crews are assessing the waters off San Juan Island in the Salish Sea near Vancouver Island after a fishing boat sank and leaked fuel on Saturday. The Aleutian Isle had nearly 9,840 litres of oil and diesel on board when it went down off the west coast of San Juan Island in Washington state. Gerald Graham, a Victoria-based consultant who specializes in marine oil spill response and prevention, said the diesel fuel flowing from the boat is very light, which means crews can't use booms or skimmers to clean it up.
Algoma Public Health lifted its water advisory for everyone who draws water from the St. Mary's River, following an oil spill from Algoma Steel on June 9. "The Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks (MECP) has confirmed that all remediation activities have concluded, with no visible sheen being present on the river," the health unit said in a press release. "Sampling does not indicate any current risk resulting from the oil spill."
One of the municipalities most affected by an oil spill from Algoma Steel on the St. Mary's River does not yet know when it will be able to reopen its water treatment plant. Lynn Watson, mayor of the Township of Macdonald, Meredith and Aberdeen Additional, which includes the village of Echo Bay, said they shut down the water treatment plant's intake last Thursday, as soon as Algoma Steel alerted them of the oil spill.
Algoma Public Health is warning people who draw water directly from the St. Mary's River or who have a well near the shore not to drink the water due to an oil spill. The spill does not affect the Sault Ste. Marie municipal drinking water system. The health unit says if your drinking water intake is located east (or downstream) of the Algoma steel mill and the Great Lakes Power plant, there is a risk of contamination.
A weekly news show produced with photos, videos and personal accounts from FRANCE 24 Observers around the world – all checked by our staff here in Paris. This week on The Observers, we go to Ecuador, where more than a million litres of oil spilled in the Amazon rainforest after a pipeline ruptured on January 28. The company that manages the pipeline said it was damaged by falling rocks, brought down by erosion and heavy rain, claiming that the incident "could not have been foreseen", but our Observer says that's not the whole story.
Cleanup crews from Hydro One are continuing their work at the Don River on Saturday after an oil spill from one of its transmission sites leaked into the river a day earlier. Nancy Clark, a spokesperson for Hydro One, said one of the company's transformers at the Bathurst Transmission Station in North York failed early Friday, resulting in insulating mineral oil being released.
The proposed reroute is expected to cross nearly 200 bodies of water and temporarily affect 55 hectares of wetlands. Enbridge says the nearly 70-year-old pipeline is a vital link to fuel across the region. Wisconsin Public Radio reports that the Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission, which represents 11 Ojibwe tribes, told the DNR in a Dec. 10 letter that the state’s review has significant gaps in information. The commission says it doesn’t have enough data on the effects an oil spill would have on downstream waters, including Lake Superior. They also say it doesn’t assess compliance with the Bad River tribe’s water quality standards or combined impacts of other projects.
Toronto Fire is investigating an oil leak in Lake Ontario at Sugar Beach near Queens Quay. Emergency crews received the call at around 2:05 p.m., and were alerted about the incident by a caller who reached out to CP24. A fire boat was sent out to investigate. Toronto Fire confirmed there is oil on the water but added it was trying to determine the source of the spill.
The underwater pipeline that leaked more than 550,000 litres of oil into the water off Southern California was split open and apparently dragged more than 30 metres along the ocean floor, possibly by a ship's anchor, officials said Tuesday. The segment of the pipe that was dragged was 1.2 kilometres long, and had a gash that was more than 30 centimetres wide, the U.S. Coast Guard said.
The province's environment ministry was alerted after firefighters responded to reports of a petroleum spill Sunday evening in the Rideau River. Ottawa Fire Services received a call at approximately 7 p.m. from a passerby who reported what they believed to be petroleum under the Adàwe Crossing connecting Overbrook and Sandy Hill. Firefighters went to the area to investigate and saw some material in the water. Crews were unable to determine what the floating material was or the source of the potential spill, the fire department said, but reported it to the Ministry of the Environment.
Clean-up crews and the US Coast Guard are trying to locate the source of an oil spill spotted in the Gulf of Mexico after deadly Hurricane Ida. Recent satellite photos by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) showed the slick about two miles (3km) off Port Fourchon, Louisiana. It appears to be coming from a source underwater at an offshore drilling site, the Associated Press reports.
An undetermined amount of heating oil has ended up in the Ottawa River after a spill in downtown Gatineau, Que., near the offices of the provincial environment ministry. The spill happened at 170 rue de l'Hôtel de Ville during a delivery Friday, according to an email from ministry spokesperson Alexandre Ouellet, the regional director of the Outaouais Environmental Control Center.
