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.
If you drive the Icefields Parkway through the Canadian Rockies, you'll pass multiple turquoise-coloured lakes that are popular with tourists for taking photos. The lakes get their iconic colour from rock flour, which is similar in appearance to baker's flour used for making bread. Rock flour is made from glaciers grinding rocks into powder, which can take thousands of years.
Every winter since the tailings pond breach at the Mount Polley mine in 2014, copper-laden sediment from the bottom of Quesnel Lake has been re-suspended in the water column and has flowed into the Quesnel River affecting aquatic life in the watershed, according to a new paper by UNBC researchers Phil Owens and Ellen Petticrew. The tailings facility at the Mount Polley copper and gold mine failed on Aug. 4, 2014, sending 25 million cubic metres of solids and water from the mine site into the local environment and researchers have spent the past eight years monitoring the environment after the breach.
