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 northern Ontario First Nation that has lived under a boil-water advisory for nearly three decades has hired an outside consultant to find out once and for all what ails the community's water system. Neskantaga First Nation, roughly 450 kilometres north of Thunder Bay, Ont., is marking a grim milestone this month — 28 years under a boil water advisory, longer than any other First Nation.
Alberta's ombudsman has found that the province's environment ministry did not follow legislation and policy after issuing an enforcement order against a northwest Edmonton composting facility. Cleanit Greenit Composting Systems stopped producing compost last year after losing its provincial registration. Residents had complained for years about an intermittent stench near the business and Alberta's environment ministry — then called Alberta Environment and Parks and now named Environment and Protected Areas — had found "ongoing and persistent issues related to air, land and water."
Or consider how climate change is also melting ice and glaciers in the Arctic. For Inuit, this means that the traditional way of life is being disrupted and destroyed. That same ice melt is also raising water levels, endangering coastal communities and island nations. Tuvalu, for example, is building a digital version of its country to preserve its history, culture and language. If things continue on this course, there is a good chance the nation will be submerged by the end of the century.
Using high-resolution satellite images and computer modelling, researchers from the University of Waterloo have documented the importance small wetlands play in water purification and conservation. “What our work showed is that they are actually really important,” said Nandita Basu, a professor at the University of Waterloo and Canada Research Chair in Global Water Sustainability and Ecohydrology.
Primo Water Corporation (NYSE: PRMW) (TSX: PRMW) (the "Company" or "Primo"), a leading provider of sustainable drinking water solutions in North America and Europe, today announced that Primo Water has acquired an additional spring water source adjacent to its current Mountain Valley spring in Garland County, Arkansas. "This acquisition provides an additional high-quality sustainable water source to supplement Primo's award-winning Mountain Valley Water portfolio. Mountain Valley is the #1 Premium Spring / Sparkling Single Serve brand in the Natural Channel with dollar growth of +53% vs. prior year according to SPINS. It is the oldest continuously bottled spring water in the United States and is nationally distributed in major retailers and foodservice operators," said Tom Harrington, CEO of Primo. "This additional water source supports our continued growth and strengthens Primo's commitment to offer sustainable water solutions to customers across our footprint."
The Pacific island country of Micronesia, one of the fiercest critics of a Japanese decision to release water from the destroyed Fukushima nuclear plant into the sea, said on Friday it was no longer concerned about the plan. Its president, David Panuelo, who said in a speech at the U.N. General Assembly last year he had the "gravest concern" about the dumping of the radioactive water, told reporters in Tokyo he was now comfortable with the release, due as soon as this spring.
A mechanical problem at the Town of Espanola's water treatment plant has created an exposure risk for cryptosporidium, an intestinal parasite that can cause gastrointestinal symptoms through a condition called cryptosporidiosis. The Ontario Clean Water Agency (OCWA), which operates the plant, said it was beginning a root-cause analysis of the entire facility to figure out why the mechanical error occurred.
As the financial costs of climate change climb, experts and governments are quickly coming to the consensus that man-made structures won't be enough to protect coastal communities. For biologist Dan Stewart, the answer is obvious, and on a recent overcast day, he was looking at it: from the edge of the Boundary Bay dike, a more than 200 metre-thick band of salt marsh reached out to the sea.
A new business innovation network is launching on the West Coast, aimed at helping British Columbia transition to a clean, net-zero economy. “A sustainable, clean economy for our future is a priority for all British Columbians, and developing and launching the necessary technology is essential for businesses, researchers and innovators,” said Adam Walker, Parliamentary Secretary for the Sustainable Economy. “To tackle this, Foresight’s Net Zero Innovation Network will help support the adoption and growth of clean tech in B.C. This will help to meet our greenhouse gas reduction targets, drive economic growth, and enhance industrial competitiveness, expanding B.C.’s position as a global leader in clean energy technology.”
H2O Innovation Inc. (“H2O Innovation” or the “Corporation”) is pleased to announce that its Water Technologies & Services (WTS) business line has recently been awarded five new water and wastewater treatment projects, including four industrial projects. These new contracts, with a total value of $5.5 M, increase the WTS backlog to $54.8 M. The first recent award is with a data center management customer that the Corporation is currently engaged with on existing projects. This repeat customer is located in the Northwest region of the US. The project includes a 2.0 MGD (7,500 m3/day) treatment system with two primary ultrafiltration (UF) trains and one secondary UF train for the treatment of backwash wastewater, which will allow for an exceptionally high recovery of greater than 98%. This new equipment is in line with the customer’s objective to reduce its water footprint and thus become more water positive (Source: IDA). This project is expected to be completed over the next 12 months.
Waves of torrential rainfall drenched California into the new year. Snowpacks in the Sierra Nevada Mountains have swelled to more than 200% their normal size, and snowfall across the rest of the Colorado River Basin is trending above average, too. While the much-needed water has improved conditions in the parched West, experts warn against claiming victory. About 60% of the region remains in some form of drought, continuing a decades-long spiral into water scarcity.
The Colorado River, which provides drinking water to 40 million people in seven U.S. states, is drying up, straining a water distribution pact amid the worst drought in 12 centuries, exacerbated by climate change. California split from the six states of Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming on Tuesday in the face of a U.S. government deadline to negotiate their own supply cuts or face possible mandatory cutbacks by the federal government.
Lithium in particular, she pointed out, leads to a significant amount of water extraction, and can lead to contamination of water supply, which can also impact ecosystems and the species that depend on them. Canada doesn't currently produce lithium, though it has about 2.5 per cent of the world's known lithium deposits. That's a tiny share compared to countries like Bolivia, Australia, Chile and Argentina, not to mention that China controls most of the world's processing capability.
Tuesday’s announcement marks only the 14th time in the roughly 50-year history of the federal Clean Water Act that the EPA has flexed its powers to bar or restrict activities over potential impacts to waters, including fisheries. EPA Administrator Michael Regan said his agency’s use of its so-called veto authority in this case “underscores the true irreplaceable and invaluable natural wonder that is Bristol Bay.”
Have questions or want to learn more about water stewardship in the Lower Columbia-Kootenay hydrologic region? Then mark Feb. 15 on your calendar as a day to have your voice heard in a community meeting focused on the life of local watersheds. Living Lakes Canada is hosting four public engagements around water concerns and priorities in the hydrologic region which, in the immediate area, encompasses Rossland and Trail to Castlegar, Salmo and Nelson.
A man who says he is the owner of the so-called abandoned sailboat Kraken is telling his story to CHCH News. The boat appeared in the Hamilton Harbour in the fall, becoming a curiosity of sorts. Adrian Monrad of Brant County says he is the owner of the Kraken. The father-of-four says he bought the boat from a young couple in Toronto last spring, before sailing it to the LaSalle Marina in Burlington where he stayed until October. Monrad says he moored it temporarily in Bayfront Park and says he had planned to have the boat taken out of the water at Hamilton’s Harbour West Marina in mid-November, but the plan didn’t work out.
Living Lakes says these meetings will be interactive sessions where participants can provide feedback on local water concerns and monitoring priorities and ask questions about the project. “Through this project we are collaborating with local groups to expand our water monitoring network so we can work with communities and all levels of government to protect our watersheds,” said co-ordinator Bill Coedy in a news release.
The Okanagan Basin Water Board (OBWB) is accepting applications for its 2023 Water Conservation and Quality Improvement (WCQI) grant program. With a funding pool of $350,000, eligible applicants, including local governments and First Nations, irrigation districts and non-profit organizations, can receive grants ranging from $3,000 to $30,000 for water projects within the Okanagan Basin.
The latest round of negotiations between Canada and the United States over the modernization of a decades-old water-management agreement have wrapped up following discussions in Vancouver this week. The two countries are working to update the Columbia River Treaty, a flood management and power generation accord involving the Columbia and Kootenay river systems in the Columbia Basin region of British Columbia and the United States pacific northwest.
The announcement comes a few months after the organization announced a $6.9-million campaign to save a 16.5-square-kilometre property called the Yarrow, which is also in southern Alberta but "a little farther north" from the latest project and just outside what's traditionally known as the Waterton Park Front. The Yarrow also features grasslands, wetlands, creeks, mixed forests and includes 27 wildlife species of provincial and national significance. There are two streams that provide fish habitat and transport water from Alberta's southern headwaters to rivers across the Prairies that flow to Lake Winnipeg and eventually Hudson Bay.
