Nicole Hancock
Indigenous community hosts full moon ceremony ...

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.

Indigenous community hosts full moon ceremony to heal Chedoke Creek

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Fire chief, water operator detail response to Hillsburgh boil water advisory

Fire chief, water operator detail response to Hillsburgh boil water advisory

Before a boil water advisory for Hillsburgh residents was lifted last week, Erin fire chief Jim Sawkins was already praising the town’s response during a July 13 council meeting. “Our first priority last night was to get the message out, to get them to stop drinking their water,” the chief said of department’s July 12 response to the advisory. “Before I left last night, after buying them seven pizzas, I said, ‘You know what, you should be proud, the town is proud. You guys came together very quickly and did this,’” Sawkins told council of a conversation he had with the 25 volunteer firefighters who hand-delivered notices to affected residents.

Parks Canada monitoring for zebra mussels

Parks Canada monitoring for zebra mussels

Parks Canada says genetic traces of zebra mussels found in a recent water sample taken from Clear Lake aren’t cause for undue concern. Although tests for environmental DNA for the invasive species came back positive last month, it could have come to the lake on a boat, water toy or other source, without the transfer of any living mussels. Living organisms like zebra mussels, which originated from the lakes of southern Russia and Ukraine and were introduced to many countries worldwide in the 1980s, shed DNA all the time, says Borden Smid, resource conservation manager with Parks Canada.

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