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.
The Katzie First Nation is suing B.C. Hydro and the province for allegedly breaching legal commitments to mitigate damage caused by the Alouette hydroelectric dam. In a news release, Chief Grace George said the Alouette watershed, about 50 kilometres east of Vancouver on the north side of the Fraser Valley, is an area that's been "significant to Katzie First Nation members ... since time immemorial."
As dry, unseasonably warm weather across B.C. persists well into October, the crystal blue water at Maple Ridge's Alouette Lake has retreated by at least 10 metres, leaving buoys sitting on dry land and would-be swimmers walking across bone-dry lakebed to access the shallows. Alouette Lake is a popular summer and boating spot, located about an hour's drive east of Vancouver in Golden Ears Provincial Park. The lake is also a B.C. Hydro reservoir, where water is regularly diverted to generate power and to ensure water levels are sufficient to sustain nearby salmon populations in the Alouette River.
In Canada's largest city, raw sewage flows into Lake Ontario so often, Toronto tells people they should never swim off the city's beaches for least two days after it rains. Across the country in Mission, B.C., a three-decade-old pipe that carries sewage under the Fraser River to a treatment plant in Abbotsford is so loaded operators can't even slip a camera inside it to look for damage. If that pipe bursts, it will dump 11 million litres of putrid water from area homes and businesses into a critical salmon habitat every day it isn't fixed.
