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.
Prince Edward Island's Andrew Murray will be part of the birthday celebrations for King Charles III, which include the launch of a new book featuring the monarch's vision for his reign and related stories from around the Commonwealth. It amounts to a very public debut for a project that has been in development for three years in Murray's home province of P.E.I., breathing new life into former dams to generate green energy.
Two New Brunswick cities are considering opposite approaches when it comes to residential water meters. Bathurst in the northeast has meters but is considering switching to a flat-rate model based on the cost to update its system. Dieppe in the southeast charges a flat rate but will test meters in several hundred homes next year. Meters measure water usage, billing customers at a rate set by the community.
Residents of New Glasgow, N.S., can now apply for free home assessments and upgrades to protect against overland flooding, through a new project by Clean Foundation. The Dartmouth-based environmental charity is partnering with Nova Scotia's Department of Environment and Climate Change, the Town of New Glasgow and the Halifax Regional Municipality to kick start the resilient home retrofit pilot project. In May, the province spent $400,000 on this initiative.
A watershed group on P.E.I. hopes it will be smoother swimming for salmon returning to spawn this fall, thanks to a new pilot project run in partnership with the Canadian Wildlife and the Atlantic Salmon federations. The Souris and Area Branch of the P.E.I. Wildlife Federation is leading the project, which builds on work that's already been done in Western Canada while adapting it to the unique conditions in the province.
A watershed group in eastern P.E.I. is experimenting with a new mini-wetland that will filter pollutants, fertilizer and pesticides from water trickling out of the neighbouring farm field. The new vegetated ditch will also absorb carbon and create wildlife habitat. "The idea is that it'll hold water, and encourage it to stagnate, and any of the nutrients contained in the water will help feed what should turn into, hopefully, a blossoming wetland site. "It should help to filter any kind of runoff coming off the agricultural field nearby, as well as creating a lot of habitat for birds and vertebrates, and amphibians."
"The challenge is not necessarily our water sources, but rather our ability to produce and deliver it, " said Marie-Josée Asselin, vice-president of the city's executive committee. "When everyone consumes water at the same time, this is when we put ourselves at risk in terms of distribution and production." Quebec City found that watering lawns has put the most pressure on its drinking water tanks in dry weather.
Lethbridge could become a ‘living city.’ Environment Lethbridge has partnered with Green Communities Canada to become one of its five Living Cities Canada pilot projects. Kathleen Sheppard, Executive Director of Environment Lethbridge, explains that a living city is one that has large amounts of green spaces and green resources. “That can be things like trees, green roofs, rain gardens, community gardens, all of those pieces that really bring some green into the city,” says Sheppard.
The pressure was on for Rhonda Skye. Firstly, she was representing an innovative Indigenous-driven pilot program proposing a short-term solution to ongoing water quality issues on Canadian reservations, partnering the Dreamcatcher Foundation, Healthy First Nations and the Autumn Peltier Project. Well beyond that, the filter installation Skye was overseeing this morning was on her brother Scott General’s tap. “I’ll give her a shot,” Rhonda’s younger sibling laughed. “If she lies to me, I’m telling mom.”
A new Halifax-based organization has developed a cost-effective water purification system and will be launching a pilot project in the Gambia and Kenya. Founded by 20-year-old Rachel Brouwer, The Purification Project will bring water purification systems to vulnerable Kenyan and Gambian communities living without access to safe water. When Brouwer was 11 years old, she realized not everyone in the world had access to clean drinking water after reading a sign on a hiking trip that read, “Caution, do not drink. The water source is contaminated.”
Residents are worried about a potential increase of E. coli because the City of Ottawa won't install wires to prevent birds at Britannia and Mooney's Bay beaches this season. The wires were installed three metres above sections of those beaches a number of years ago to help prevent the congregation of gulls, which are linked to driving up E. coli counts in nearby water. The city said the wires will not go up this summer as it searches for other ways to manage seagulls and other birds.
The province of Manitoba says it hopes to improve access to timely testing of water quality samples in northern Manitoba through a pilot program announced Thursday. A bacteriological water testing in site in Thompson is expected to reduce delays and uncertainties associated with shipping water samples from the northern Indigenous communities of Pikwitonei, Thicket Portage and Nelson House, according to a provincial news release.
Toronto is hoping wastewater will be used as an additional tool to track the spread of COVID-19 in the community. Earlier this week, the city’s top doctor said staff would be collaborating with academic partners to launch a pilot project to understand more about this method of surveillance. “What we have figured out thus far is that it does correlate with clinical data,” Dr. Eileen de Villa said Monday at the city’s board of health meeting.
A pilot project is looking at the possibility of growing kelp in Nova Scotia — part of a shift that industry representatives and researchers say could improve the health of the ocean and provide a more sustainable form of food production. The Aquaculture Association of Nova Scotia is in the second year of a multi-year study looking into cultivating sugar kelp on shellfish leases in Cape Breton. The practice is sometimes referred to as restorative or regenerative aquaculture.
A pilot project currently underway in Collingwood is putting the contents of the town’s gutters under intense scrutiny. Five women spent a day last week meticulously sorting through the contents several buckets of garbage caught in waste traps installed in eight Collingwood storm drains. They were staff working for Georgian Bay Forever, which is the non-profit organization that brought Gutter Bins to Collingwood, along with a few other plastic/waste diversion initiatives aimed at keeping garbage and microplastics out of Georgian Bay.
One man's waste is another man's treasure. In this case, the waste is the kind produced by people and researchers at the University of Calgary say a pilot project testing the city's water is providing a valuable tool in the fight against COVID-19. "It's similar to how detectives look for DNA evidence at a crime scene. We're looking for the RNA signal that the virus that causes COVID leaves behind in the wastewater," said Kevin Frankowski, co-leader of the COVID-19 wastewater monitoring project at the university's Cumming School of Medicine.
WSP won for its work in developing an innovative solution for safe water in remote communities. Like many remote communities, the people of the Tl’azt’en Nation in northern B.C. had no access to clean drinking water. Because conventional water treatment technology was unfeasible, WSP Canada and the RES’EAU-WaterNET partnered to develop a treatment system for organic material. The project delivered a full-scale plant that allowed a 14-year boil water advisory to be lifted. The system uses natural biological processes, is low in consumables, reduces chemical requirements, produces little waste and is simple for operators to use.
City administrators have developed a pilot project to help the poorest Calgarians with their water bills. But a city council committee has plenty of questions and defeated the proposal, at least for now. According to the city, 2,300 people who are more than 90 days in arrears on their bills currently owe the city nearly $1 million.
