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.
A team of experts is working to better understand the spread of blue-green algae in Alberta lakes by combining satellite technology with near-simultaneous water sampling. The project, funded through Alberta Innovates, is a collaboration between several groups, including Alberta Lake Management Society (ALMS), the Alberta Biodiversity Monitoring Institute (ABMI), and researcher Rolf Vinebrooke from the University of Alberta.
Spot testing of creeks across South Langley and Surrey is the first step in reducing levels of bacteria that are affecting shellfish harvests downstream. On Monday, Feb. 6, Lisa Dreves of Langley Environmental Partners Society was out sampling from Langley and Abbotsford creeks that run south across the Canada-U.S. border into the Nooksack River. At a bridge in Otter Park off 248th Street, she flings an old plastic milk jug tied to the end of a rope into Bertrand Creek, hauling up about a litre of water. Smaller samples are poured into bottles for later testing. Meanwhile, another device dangled off the bridge checks the oxygen content and temperature of the stream, both important for fish.
Teassa MacMartin first came to study at the University of Manitoba as a mature student, with a one-year-old at home. Her son is now 10, and in just under a decade, she has obtained a bachelor of science in biological sciences, participated in UM’s Science Co-Op Program and is now pursuing doctoral studies in microbiology. MacMartin is also a Canada’s Most Powerful Women: Top 100 Award Winner in the Community Impact category.
It’s about the reaction to a photograph taken of Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) inspectors taking water samples near Pense — the workers said they thought they were working on public land next to the highway, while a landowner claimed the work was being done on private land. It should have stopped right there — as a misunderstanding about whether the land was public or private, with efforts to do better in the future. Instead, it became the latest federal/provincial football. Some people have got in touch with me after I wrote about this issue last week to point out that I haven’t lived here long enough to understand the way Saskatchewan residents feel about private land.
A binational team of scientists hits the offshore ice later this month to study the Great Lakes ecosystem in the winter, a first-of-its-kind data collection effort aimed at revealing new insights into one of North America’s most precious natural resources. Dubbed Winter Grab, the research project includes a University of Windsor duo and will see ice drilling, water sampling and the gathering of zooplankton (including algae) at as many as 30 different sites.
