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.
When water temperatures get too hot, fish can become stressed or even die. In rivers, Atlantic salmon and other cold-water species sometimes escape the heat by flocking to cooler areas, which often arise near groundwater springs or relatively cool tributaries. Lots of work has been done to preserve and augment these naturally occurring refuges, said Smith, of Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada, “but there hasn’t really been an emphasis or focus on if we can create cold-water habitat.”
Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri told a news conference Monday that someone remotely accessed a computer for the City of Oldsmar water treatment system on Friday and briefly increased the amount of sodium hydroxide, also known as lye, by a factor of more than 100. The Tampa Bay Times said the chemical is used in small amounts to control the acidity of water, but it’s also a corrosive compound commonly found in household cleaning supplies such as liquid drain cleaners.
