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 water temperatures are getting colder, and for sea turtles, this could be bad news. If a sea turtle ends up in water that's 10 C or below, it could become cold-stunned, which is similar to hypothermia but for turtles, according to April Nason, the education and outreach co-ordinator for the Canadian Sea Turtle Network in Nova Scotia.
Pulling a large truck tire from the water, volunteer Derek Evans says he is not sure how long it has been at the bottom of Lake Ontario. It’s filled with zebra mussels and mud, but the rubber has the potential to be a serious issue. "This is at least 50 pounds," Evans says. "It definitely would be a lot of damage to the fish and the wildlife in the water." Getting this tire, and other garbage, is part of a massive project called, 'Kingston Waters Clean Up.' More than 70 divers, kayakers and shorelines volunteers are bagging up garbage to keep it out of the water and drawing awareness to the issue, explains organizer Guillaume Courcy.
Nooks Lindell was sitting in his home, having tea with his cousin, two summers ago when he saw a group of people working out on the land outside his home. He later learned the people were surveyors looking at the land as the potential site of Arviat's new fuel tank farm. "I was shocked. I was pretty upset," Lindell said of finding out about the potential tank farm location. Lindell lives in the home where he grew up in Arviat. He and his partner are raising their two young children there. "I spent the last two years at home being a stay at home ataata (father) … so I've spent a lot of time looking out the window right where they're going to put that tank farm," he said.
Montreal is on alert and ready to help people prepare for flooding as water levels upriver begin to rise. The city activated its alert mode as part of its special flood response plan on Sunday and city workers erected temporary dikes along the shoreline in some areas where the river was already swelling above its banks. Neighbourhoods bordering Rivière-des-Prairies, Lake of Two Mountains and Lac St-Louis are particularly at risk of spring flooding, with water levels expected to increase over the next two days.
“Theory of Water” takes its inspiration from the works of interdisciplinary Anishinaabekwe artist Rebecca Belmore and Canadian poet Dionne Brand. Belmore famously created a giant wooden megaphone (more than 6 feet across at the bell) as an art installation that was displayed in various locations in Canada and the U.S. That work, called “Ayum-ee-aawach Oomama-mowan: Speaking To Their Mother,” allowed speakers’ voices to echo up to nine times as they addressed their native land. A second project called “Wave Sound” flipped the concept, turning a megaphone into a kind of listening horn to amplify the sound of water and shoreline.
Contractors have been deployed to Sudbury's Ramsey Lake to clean up a residential oil spill that migrated to the shoreline on Jan. 17. The Ontario Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks estimates around 812 litres of home heating fuel spilled onto the ground from a storage tank at a property on Gennings Street, near the lake. While Ramsey Lake is the main source of the city's drinking water, ministry spokesperson Gary Wheeler said there is only a low risk to the thousands of people who get their municipal drinking water from the lake.
An oil spill that started at a home along Ramsey Lake in Sudbury, Ont., has since reached the shoreline, said Public Health Sudbury and Districts. The health unit said in a news release that the spill Jan. 14 started from the fuel oil tank of a home on Gennings Street near the lake. Public health said it immediately alerted the Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks, as well as people who lived nearby.
In the wake of erosion, efforts are underway to protect a section of shoreline on the Detroit River in Windsor. The work is happening at the foot of Mill Street near HMCS Hunter and Queens Dock Park. Windsor's harbourmaster, Peter Berry, explained that exceptionally high water levels in some recent years caused flooding near the shore and there was an "incredible amount" of erosion.
The Junction Creek Stewardship committee is working with landowners along the waterway to help restore shoreline habitat. The effort is part of the Watersheds Canada Natural Edge Program. "When the soil and the sediment erodes into the creek, we have a lot of sediment build up which raises water levels it degrades the quality of there water," said Jessica Damaren, an environmental biologist with the committee.
Large amounts of "unsightly" and smelly vegetation has been washing up on Toronto's Cherry Beach shoreline recently, but the director of water programs at Swim Drink Fish Canada says there's no need for alarm. Gregary Ford says the mixture of "submerged aquatic vegetation and a form of algae" is harmless to humans and animals. "We get photos like this all the time; people are often concerned when they see something green washing up on their shorelines," Ford told CBC Toronto.
Sandy Roman calls her work "the best job in the whole world," but lately, she's been facing a world of frustration. Roman owns Sandy's Chipstand, a snack shack in Patricia Beach Provincial Park, along the east side of Lake Winnipeg, which is seeing its worst flooding since Manitoba Hydro started regulating levels in 1976. "It's a little difficult. It's a little difficult for sure. You just don't know when you wake up in the morning, am I going to work today? Are people are going to get fries?" she told CBC Information Radio host Marcy Markusa on Friday.
Sandy and Doug Hall have been watching their shoreline along the Belleisle Bay slowly disappear over time. The couple was quick to volunteer for a project aiming to mitigate erosion by planting 1,500 native trees and shrubs on private property throughout the Belleisle watershed in southern New Brunswick. "Because of the flooding that happens every spring, our beach is being taken away, so we were quite interested in what we could do to help preserve it," Sandy said.
Rain in the forecast could increase the water level on Lake of the Woods again in the next few days, just as flood conditions were beginning to improve. As of Friday, the lake was 324.1 metres (1,063.3 feet) above sea level, just a few centimetres below its record crest of 324.31 metres (1,064 feet) above sea level reached during the flood of 1950, according to the Lake of the Woods Control Board. However, rainfall is expected to rise between five and 11 centimetres (two to four inches) over the next week, with most of the rise occurring over the weekend, says the board's most recent notice.
In mid-February, Escarpment Biosphere Conservancy (EBC) received an additional $3 million from the government to spend by the end of March. The organization met the challenge by purchasing seven additional nature preserves, including four on Manitoulin Island. Two of those are going to be very good for hiking, said EBC executive director Bob Barnett. One is the Lewis Twin Peaks property, which has long been a hiking trail. “The owner agreed to sell it to us at a reduced price because she loved the fact that we were going to keep it open as a hiking trail,” said Mr. Barnett.
A riverfront property owner says he's been left with thousands of dollars in cement blocks with nowhere to put them. That's after P.E.I.'s Environment Department denied his proposal to have shoreline protection installed, citing concerns it would have a "detrimental effect" on a salt marsh at the corner of his property. "All I'm doing is trying to protect my property," said Mark Keizer, who lives with his wife along the Hillsborough River in Mermaid, with a view toward Charlottetown Harbour.
It's the little bucket that could — a small contraption floating along the Ottawa River shoreline cleans the waterway one plastic wrapper at a time. "This is the first trash-trapping device in Ottawa and it gives us an opportunity to see what's happening in our water," said Melanie Abdelnour, a Grade 1 teacher with the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board, who helped bring the Seabin to Ottawa.
An associate professor of biology at the University of New Brunswick is warning residents about blue-green algae popping up along the St. John River this summer. Janice Lawrence says mats of cyanobacteria will probably start lifting off the river bottom and washing ashore any day now. "That's when they become dangerous," said Lawrence, who has been studying blue-green algae along the St. John River for the past three years.
Halifax’s vanishing Williams Lake could fill up again with a little help from the city, according to nearby residents. The water level had dropped by about 1.3 metres since late May when The Chronicle Herald featured one of the city’s favourite swimming lakes literally drying up on its front page in early September. But now a potential fix is being investigated for a dam that’s allowing water to flow too quickly to the sea.
