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.
"It's a huge problem," Robinson, founder of Norton Engineering, said in an interview on CBC Kitchener-Waterloo's The Morning Edition. "We get blockages in sewers, we get fatbergs, pump stations shut down and all that material ends up at the sewage treatment plant." Robinson, who used to work for the City of Kitchener, said people have been known to flush things down the toilet because of a lack of immediate access to a trash can.
