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.
Parks Canada says staff will clean-up the plastic, garbage and debris spotted floating in the Rideau Canal after water levels were lowered this fall. An e-scooter, bicycles, pylons, election signs and other debris can be spotted on the bottom of the historic waterway after the spring and summer navigation season. Parks Canada lowered water levels along the Rideau Canal through Ottawa to their "lowest level" two weeks ago following the end of the boating season.
As the globe’s “do or die” UN climate conference gets underway next week, Canada must scale up efforts to meet its ambitious ocean conservation targets to simultaneously prevent the wholesale collapse of marine biodiversity and tackle climate change, experts say. As the largest ecosystem on Earth, the ocean is critical to regulating the climate and helping produce oxygen, rain, drinking water, and food, as well as sustaining livelihoods for three billion people.
Iqaluit's city council voted unanimously Tuesday to provide a water rebate for residents. Nearly 8,000 residents were ordered not to drink the tap water when fuel was discovered in one of the city's two water tanks at its water treatment plant earlier this month. The 100 per cent rebate was proposed by Mayor Kenny Bell. It will cost the city over $965,000 in revenue for the month of October.
A non-profit organization called Water First that helps to address water challenges in Indigenous communities in Canada through training has received a $20,000 boost from Sudbury benefactors. Rotary International District 7010, which includes the Rotary Club of Sudbury Sunrisers, has been working with Water First to facilitate donations. At the same time, the Doyle Dodge car dealership here in Sudbury has been running a charitable project, the Doyle 100 Community Campaign, as part of its 100th anniversary celebrations.
Living Lakes Canada is hosting a new webinar series to learn, share, and understand the traditional relationship that Indigenous Peoples have with and for water. The webinar, titled Indigenous Water Relations within the Columbia Basin, aims to recognize and appreciate the Indigenous Peoples’ Place-Based cultural practices, as well as the responsibility felt towards water. The three-series webinars will be held via Zoom, led by two presenters from each of the three Indigenous Peoples. Ktunaxa will lead the first on Oct. 26, followed by Secwepmec on Nov. 2 and concluded by Sylis-Okanagan/Sinixt on Nov. 9. For those unable to attend, recordings will be available afterwards on the Living Lakes Canada website.
A Leamington property owner is fighting with the province about who is responsible for cleaning up a water well that is leaking gas on one of his lots. "The situation is kind of at a stalemate," David Cockerham said. Cockerham is currently being ordered by the Ministry of Environment to plug a well that sits in the corner of a lot that he owns next to his primary residence — a job that could potentially cost upwards of $900,000.
Nunavut's capital city says it expects tests on its drinking water to show undetectable levels of fuel. Iqaluit is under a state of emergency and its roughly 8,000 residents haven't been able to consume tap water since Oct. 12 because of fuel contamination. The city says in a news release that it has finished work to remove hydrocarbons from the water treatment plant. It says it plans to continue flushing its water treatment plant until Thursday, and residents will need to flush their own pipes by running taps after that.
A heavy rainstorm is expected to hit the Fraser Valley, bringing 50 to 70 millimetres of rain, according to a warning from Environment Canada. Meteorologists call this type of rain pattern an “atmospheric river.” It’s caused by narrow regions in the atmosphere transporting water vapor outside the tropics. Once the vapor hits land, it releases in the form of rain or snow.
Halifax Water will start infrastructure upgrade work on Friday that may affect the supply and quality of water in Dartmouth and surrounding areas for up to five weeks. A news release from the utility said the work being done is part of a 10-year plan to adapt water supply plants to a "changing climate." Customers in Burnside, Commodore Park, Crichton Park, Dartmouth, Eastern Passage, Ellenvale, Grahams Corner, Micmac Village, Port Wallace, Southdale, Tufts Cove, Wallace Heights, Woodside and Wrights Cove areas may experience lower water pressure, discoloured water and a change in the taste and smell of their water.
Hajdu said she won’t presume to rank priorities for Canada’s Indigenous people without first seeking out their input. That said, ending all boil-water advisories is near the top of her to-do list. “This is a huge priority and it has been for our government for a long time. In fact, since we were elected we’ve lifted over 100 boil-water advisories. There are about 44 left to do. I’ve just finished meeting with my deputy minister for the first time and I’ve reiterated this is a top priority for the government of Canada,” Hajdu said. “I’m really looking forward to understanding those continued long-term boil-water advisories better and meeting with those individual communities to hear their perspective on how we can more quickly accelerate this work.”
But it's the wetlands and bird sanctuary, just a few metres away on the presidential estate, to which Reid and her husband, President Guðni Jóhannesson, draw the attention of a visiting CBC News crew. "We had ditches there," Jóhannesson said, pointing to a grassy area close to the shoreline. "They were dug in the 1930s to cultivate the land. Now, we are filling up those ditches [with water]. It's a case of wetland reclamation."
As the Columbia Basin continues to experience the impacts of climate change, there is a mounting need to share water knowledge. Water-related data is used by decision makers to understand watershed health and the sustainability of communities and natural ecosystems. “As we continue to experience climate change impacts, our water resources are put under stress, so we need to have the necessary knowledge to properly and efficiently adapt when water levels drop,” said Santiago Botero, applied innovation and technology manager for Living Lakes Canada.
If you've ever wondered about the health of your local river or lake, seven million open data points are now at your fingertips. Information ranging from lake temperatures to levels of nitrates in the water is available on Great Lakes DataStream, a new online platform for sharing water quality data from across Ontario and Quebec. It's going live during international Open Access Week, a global celebration of the power of open data – information that is free to look at and reuse – that runs until October 31.
The days of using plastic water bottles in municipal-related facilities in the Village of Sundridge will soon end. Town council is supporting a resolution banning the use of disposable one-time use bottles and is encouraging the use of reusable bottles. Coun. Fraser Williamson introduced the motion at council’s Oct. 13 meeting. Williamson was appointed to council over the summer to fill a vacancy, and it so happened his first meeting in July lasted nearly six hours and wrapped up at 11:52 p.m.
Water will be on every lunch and dinner menu at the upcoming international climate conference COP26 — but it won’t be on the agenda. That’s not for lack of effort at Copenhagen in 2009, Lima in 2010 or Paris in 2015, where a separate “Paris Pact” addressing water was not formally adopted. Even events hosted by the UN, which formally recognized water as a human right in 2010, tacitly treat water as a commodity. Between droughts, floods, and fires, it should be clear this is not enough. Not only should we measure the changing surface temperature of our planet in degrees, we must count every drop.
The water flowing from Joel Pickard's faucet looked clear at first. But after pouring a glass — he could tell something was wrong. "I could just smell the dirt, so I took a drink and it tasted like dirt," he said. The Bathurst resident noticed what appeared to be sediment in his drinking water, so he reported it to the city in June. They told him it was safe, so his family continued using it until the taste became too strong to swallow.
An Iqaluit city official told CBC News that an underground fuel spill found near the water treatment plant could explain why the city had to declare an emergency due to fuel-contaminated drinking water. "The team located an underground spill that showed signs of historic fuel adjacent to the water treatment plant in an inaccessible, below-ground void," Amy Elgersma, Iqaluit's chief administrative officer, told Mary Tatty, host of CBC's noon hour program, Nipivut.
A drinking water advisory is in place for a northern Ontario community until further notice after an issue with the water distribution system. The Township of Chapleau says residents shouldn’t consume the water coming from the taps in their homes but says safe drinking water is available for collection at the local water treatment plant. In a notice Tuesday, the township said an equipment issue at the plant caused a loss of pressure in the water distribution system that may have compromised the safety of the drinking water.
After more than a month of dealing with a boil water advisory, Campbellton Mayor Ian Comeau says the city still has no idea when it could be lifted. The advisory has been in place since Sept. 24 because of high turbidity in the drinking water, meaning the water is too cloudy to safely drink. Residents have been told to keep water at a rolling boil for at least one minute if it's being used for drinking, cooking, or brushing teeth. The city also advised residents to sponge wash young children to ensure they don't ingest the water.
