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.
In July, three years after Cowichan Valley farmer Katy Ehrlich applied to get her farm's well licensed, provincial officials visited her farm. "They had an order with them that said that we had to stop diverting groundwater for commercial purposes. And we were like shocked," said Ehrlich, who had thought everything was fine with her application for a non-domestic groundwater licence, a requirement under the B.C. Water Sustainability Act (WSA).
An N.W.T. diamond mine "misunderstood" its reporting requirements earlier this year when it failed to flag a massive groundwater spill, according to the territorial government. A broken pipeline leaked 450,000 cubic metres of groundwater — enough to fill 180 Olympic-sized swimming pools — and was first spotted at the Diavik mine on Feb. 7, the N.W.T.'s lands department (now the Department of Environment and Climate Change) said in March.
