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 Ottawa's vast rural boundary, you can clear cut privately owned woods on entire lots, even through floodplains and shorelines, without a permit. You can also dump clean fill, significantly altering the grade of a lot and how water drains from it, before having to submit a building application and a grading and drainage plan.
Climate change has brought higher temperatures in Texas that has accelerated reservoir evaporation and created arid conditions. That has reduced water volumes flowing into rivers and streams. State data indicates reservoir storage was only about 67 per cent of capacity last October from a year earlier. The 30 million people living in Texas cannot survive without water. The state’s rapid economic and population growth has put strain on existing water infrastructure. Even before taking that growth into account, time has taken its toll on water infrastructure, particularly in rural areas. About 132 billion gallons of water were lost in 2021 through breaks, leakage and other causes, according to data submitted by public water suppliers to the Texas Water Development Board (TWDB). Old leaky pipes not only waste water but can increase health risks due to contaminants like arsenic.
Lately, business is up. Amid two decades of drought, cloud seeding — using airplanes or ground equipment to waft rain-and-snow-making particles into clouds — is on the rise in the Rockies. Colorado has added three new programs in the last five years. Wyoming, which began seeding in 2014, added an aerial program in 2018. Utah has steadily increased its fleet of cloud seeding equipment, and the state legislature just approved record funding to further expand programs and research.
The Parkland College, Yorkton Tribal Council and Indigenous Services Canada have teamed together to bring a water and wastewater operators course to Indigenous communities. The 19-week course is called, Intro to Water Operators. The course is aimed to provide foundational training in the field of water treatment. It’s a hybrid of both in-person math classes and online classes taught by ATAP Infrastructure Management Ltd., which specializes in water treatment courses.
Rural communities near Prince Albert want to turn the taps on a $45 million water project. The Town of Shellbrook and the RM of Shellbrook have struck a steering committee with the Prince Albert Rural Water Utility (PARWU), spending $60,000 on studying a new water treatment plant with connecting pipelines to the communities, according to its terms of reference. “I really believe that building a water treatment plant will open the door to other communities to get good water,” noted Brent Miller, who is the steering committee chair and a Town of Shellbrook councillor.
