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.
Every morning, Sherri Anderson, checks the tapwater in her Botwood home to see if it's clear. More often than not, she says, it isn't. "When it's not, my husband runs the hose outside and lets the water run for hours, sometimes more than a day, until the water is clear," she told CBC News in a recent interview. Those were the instructions she received from the town council.
The Greater Sudbury Watershed Alliance wants the northern Ontario city to stop building major roads near the city's watershed. The group says because arterial roads are legislated to be clear of snow between three to eight hours after a snowfall, the city has to use salt to reach that target. Smaller, less busy roads, though, don't have the same requirements in place, and the city can use sand for traction instead.
Some residents of Regina's Lakeview neighbourhood woke up to the sound of car alarms and a flooded street. A water main broke at Hill Avenue and Argyle Road around 4:30 a.m. CST Monday. Ted Deller, a former CBC Saskatchewan newsreader who lives in the neighbourhood, found about 10 vehicles that were flooded. "Flooding started at 4:30 a.m. and was flowing by our house. I tried walking toward the end of the street but the water was up to the top of my firefighter boots threatening to go in," he said. "Car alarms were going off. Their electrical systems had shorted out, headlights were on, the windshield wipers were running and the trunk popped open."
Wastewater from oilsands mining operations have long been a challenge for Canada's energy industry, much of it ending up in industrial tailings ponds. But scientists and engineers at the University of Calgary are taking aim at eliminating watery tailings from the oilsands production process with the help of specialized liquid salt. Hot water is used in oilsands mining operations to extract the oily bitumen from the sand, with the resulting wastewater ending up in tailings ponds to settle and later be reused. Alberta has an estimated 1.3 trillion litres of fluid tailings sitting in tailings ponds.
