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.
Researchers studying the presence of the virus causing COVID-19 in local wastewater say the amount of Omicron variant detected in the water has increased rapidly over the past few weeks. Mark Servos, the Canada Research Chair in Water Quality Protection, said Omicron spread appeared in wastewater far faster than any other variant to date. "It just went up so dramatically, so quickly," he said at Waterloo Region's weekly COVID-19 update on Friday. "It was stunning."
A research team at Dalhousie University started detecting Omicron in Nova Scotia wastewater weeks before the COVID-19 variant was officially confirmed in the province. "It was surprising to us to see a viral signal in early November. Only in retrospect were we able to see that it was a variant and not the original," said Prof. Graham Gagnon, director of the Dalhousie University Centre for Water Resource Studies.
