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 major leak in Whitehorse's sewage system was repaired mid last week, but the extent of the procedure's environmental impacts are still unknown. The Marwell Lift Station, which acts as a conduit for the majority of the city's wastewater and sewage, was recently closed for a week to allow crews to investigate and fix the leaking pipe. During that time, the city opted to temporarily include bypass valves to dump a large volume of raw sewage into the Yukon River.
Graphs released last week that show what has contaminated Iqaluit’s drinking water don’t include enough information to be useful, say two University of Toronto professors. Nunavut’s chief medical health officer, Dr. Michael Patterson, presented and interpreted the graphs at an Oct. 22 news conference. They are missing key information, including labelling and actual concentrations for each compound detected, said Miriam Diamond, a professor of earth sciences at the University of Toronto. Diamond is one of two experts Nunatsiaq News asked to help interpret how the data were presented in the graphs.
