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.
Green Party Leader Elizabeth May has tabled a petition calling on the federal government to take urgent action on Canada’s aging asbestos-cement pipes due to the potential dangers of drinking tap water containing the deadly fibre. “This is an understudied and unregulated problem,” May said Thursday in the House of Commons. “Believe it or not, many municipalities rely on old cement water pipe delivering water to millions of Canadians, and the pipes contain asbestos fibres.”
Nooks Lindell was sitting in his home, having tea with his cousin, two summers ago when he saw a group of people working out on the land outside his home. He later learned the people were surveyors looking at the land as the potential site of Arviat's new fuel tank farm. "I was shocked. I was pretty upset," Lindell said of finding out about the potential tank farm location. Lindell lives in the home where he grew up in Arviat. He and his partner are raising their two young children there. "I spent the last two years at home being a stay at home ataata (father) … so I've spent a lot of time looking out the window right where they're going to put that tank farm," he said.
Coquitlam Mayor Richard Stewart and the city's top bureaucrat have found themselves at the centre of the newest chapter of a multi-million dollar legal battle between Metro Vancouver and an international construction company. Metro Vancouver has filed a notice of application in the Supreme Court of British Columbia against Acciona — a company it fired from the building of a $500 million wastewater treatment plant.
The Government of Canada is being asked to take action to protect the Alliston aquifer, which is said to have the purest water known to science. Tiny Township resident Erik Schomann has initiated a House of Commons e-petition, with the help of Simcoe North MP Adam Chambers and former MP Bruce Stanton. This petition is urging the federal government to use the Canada Water Act and any other relevant legislation to protect the pristine waters of the Simcoe Uplands — also known as French’s Hill — so that research may proceed into how this purity is created and maintained.
A new petition is calling for federal intervention to protect the region’s “exceptional” groundwater. Spurred to action by companies using water for aggregate washing in Tiny Township and other Simcoe County locales, the petition was hand delivered to the House of Commons this week by Simcoe North MP Adam Chambers. “This water (Alliston Aquifer) is the gold standard for water worldwide, a national and global treasure,” noted the petition that had 23 signatures by mid-afternoon Thursday. The petition goes on to note that ancient deposits under the Simcoe Uplands in Tiny, Springwater, Oro-Medonte and Tay townships contain “pristine” groundwater. Tiny Township is the host to two aggregate wash water facilities: Teedon Pit owned by Dufferin Aggregates at 40 Darby Road, and Waverley Pit No. 2 owned by Sarjeant Company Ltd at 1379 Baseline Road South.
A group of concerned residents is hoping a newly-launched petition helps motivate the City of Regina to speed up its lead service connection replacement program. The program currently has a 15-year timeline for completion, while the petition’s organizers would like to see that reduced down to five. “Fifteen years is appalling,” said Regina resident and Get the Lead Out member Florence Stratton, adding the petition already has about 170 signatures.
A campaign that was launched in December has started to gain steam, and the aim is to make people “give a f*ck” about Indigenous communities that don’t have clean drinking water. The censored version of the campaign is called “It’s Effing Water,” and it was started by social impact agency Public. The campaign suggests that there are nearly 70 Indigenous communities that are still without clean drinking water, and a petition to try and elevate the issue at a national level has gained almost 50,000 signatures.
Federal environmental regulators have flagged Benton Harbor’s water system for a host of problems, from inadequate water treatment to a failure to adequately notify residents about high lead levels that have plagued the water system for at least three years. In an order Tuesday, officials with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency told Benton Harbor it must fix a range of Safe Drinking Water Act “violations and deficiencies” identified during a September inspection.
Canada's largest coal company is challenging a new Montana water quality standard that aims to limit concentrations of toxic runoff from the company's mines in British Columbia as it travels across the international border into the Kootenai River and Lake Koocanusa. Teck Resources Ltd. this month filed a petition with the state Board of Environmental Review, part of the Department of Environmental Quality, which last year adopted a stringent site-specific water quality standard for the trace element selenium, a byproduct of coal mining that's been found at high levels in fish tissue and egg samples on both sides of the border.
This past November marked 25 years since Neskantaga First Nation, located in Northwestern Ontario, was placed on a boil water advisory. In October 2020, over 250 Neskantaga residents were evacuated and transferred to a hotel in Thunder Bay after “an oily sheen was found in the Neskantaga water reservoir;” “high levels of hydrocarbons” were discovered in the water after testing. Residents were able to return after two months, but the boil water advisory remains. Chief Chris Moonias has called upon Ontario Premier Doug Ford to support Neskantaga First Nation in securing clean drinking water and properly trained water operators – Ford has yet to respond. Ending all boil-water advisories in Canada can no longer be delayed; Ford must act in accordance with the concerns of the Neskantaga First Nation immediately.
