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.
Halifax Regional Municipality is warning residents that Chocolate Lake beach is closed due to high levels of bacteria in the water. Officials say the beach is closed to swimming until further notice. Recent municipal testing shows levels of bacteria in the water exceeding Health Canada swimming guidelines. Officials say high bacteria levels can be caused by a variety of factors, including dogs, birds, other wildlife and high temperatures.
Penhorn Beach in Dartmouth, N.S., is closed to swimming until further notice due to high levels of bacteria in the water. Recent testing by city staff showed the bacteria levels exceed Health Canada swimming guidelines, according to a news release from the Halifax Regional Municipality on Friday. High bacteria levels can be caused by a number of factors, including dogs, birds, wildlife, and high temperatures.
Six days into the flood, Harman Kaur and her husband took a drive past their acreage and found thousands of their ruby-red blueberry bushes were still completely buried in the murky, brown floodwater. Leaking pesticides swirled around the field. Garbage and gas tanks floated past. The smell of fuel filled their noses. "There was a complete layer of oil on top [of the water], and we're talking what I could just see from the road," said Kaur, 29, whose family has owned their farm in the Arnold area of Abbotsford, B.C., for more than a decade.
It’s easy enough to shrug it off when a research paper that involved the study of nearly 400 temperate lakes worldwide identified Wascana Lake as among the leaders in water bodies that are losing oxygen the fastest, both at the surface level and at the lake bottom. While many people might regard the Regina lake as nothing more than a glorified slough unworthy of global consideration, the factors that contribute to its degradation also affect lakes elsewhere in Saskatchewan — particularly the shallow lakes across the southern part of the province — and indeed across much of Canada.
Most of southern Saskatchewan has the potential for a below to well below normal spring runoff, according to preliminary data released Friday by the Water Security Agency. The north, however, could experience a normal to above normal runoff. The WSA said it bases its estimates on a number of factors, including conditions at freeze-up and the snowpack. Most of the southern regions experienced very dry conditions last summer and into the fall, and the snowpack is near normal to below normal. The WSA says this projects to a below normal runoff for an area covering Prince Albert, Saskatoon and Melfort, dipping as far south as Maple Creek and Val Marie.
In October, more than 250 members of the Neskantaga First Nation were evacuated to Thunder Bay after an oily sheen was found on their reservoir. The discovery left the community, located in northern Ontario, without access to running water. The evacuation drew attention to the federal government’s 2015 commitment to end all on reserve long-term drinking water advisories (in place for more than one year) by March 31, 2021. Neskantaga has been living under a boil-water advisory for 26 years.
