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.
As average levels of coronavirus found in Ottawa’s wastewater hit record highs and case numbers climb across the country, a wastewater surveillance project in Nova Scotia may soon see its funding renewed. Launched last January, the goal of the research project was to track the presence of COVID-19 in Nova Scotia wastewater to help researchers more quickly identify the SARS-CoV-2 virus before it can spread. That project is winding down.
The Manitoba Habitat Heritage Corporation (MHHC) Board of Directors recently approved $7.5 million in grants to 13 local watershed districts to support critical watershed conservation projects delivered under Manitoba’s Growing Outcomes in Watersheds (GROW) program. “This funding will help Manitoba’s watershed districts achieve local watershed management objectives, like reducing flooding and improving water quality. These projects will also benefit soil and wildlife conservation,” said Brent Pooles, chair of the Manitoba Habitat Heritage Corporation (MHHC). The revenue for these watershed investments is generated from Manitoba’s $204 million in contributions made to The Winnipeg Foundation between 2018 and 2020.
Newmarket is moving into the second phase of its mandatory water meter replacement program. The new digital infrastructure will provide residents and the town better access to data to allow for the future ability to track and monitor usage and identify leaks and losses before they become a larger issue, the town said in a statement. The first phase began in March 2021 and upgraded water meters for about 7,000 households. The second phase of the program will replace water meters for about 18,000 homes.
"Today, we celebrate World Health Day and the founding of the World Health Organization (WHO). This year's theme – 'Our planet, our health' – reminds us that our health and well-being is fundamentally connected to the health of our planet. The crises of climate change and rapid biodiversity loss are health crises too. "Taking real action to confront the climate crisis and protect our environment will deliver clean air and clean water for Canadians – as well as their associated health benefits – now and into the future.
Two Abbotsford mushroom farms owned by the same man have been ordered to pay $650,000 in fines for polluting local creeks. H.Q. Mushroom Farm received fines totalling $385,000 for two counts of depositing a deleterious substance in October 2015 and April 2016. Delfresh Mushroom Farm has been fined $265,000 for the same two counts in August and November 2018.
Nestled between jagged mountain peaks in Nahanni National Park Reserve, N.W.T., the Bologna Glacier stores water and serves as a smooth transportation corridor for animals like caribou, porcupines and wolverines. But, like ice all over the world, it's melting and shrinking in the warming climate, leaving the future uncertain for creatures that travel across it and ecosystems that exist below it — including the South Nahanni River, to which its melt water flows.
Fleming College has been awarded a two-year, $641,800 Applied Research and Technology Partnership (ARTP) grant from the federal College and Community Innovation program. The funding was announced Tuesday (April 5), by Innovation, Science and Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne and will see Fleming’s Centre for Advancement of Water and Wastewater Technologies (CAWT) located at Lindsay’s Frost Campus, work collaborative with Fleming’s Centre for Advancement in Mechatronics and Industrial Internet of Things (CAMIIT) and the Centre for Innovative Aquaculture Production (CIAP) on industry-led applied research projects to develop technologies focused on the detection, monitoring, or surveillance of contaminants, as well as other water quality parameters.
Clean, safe water is critical to human health, food production and more, yet access to this cherished resource remains a challenge for many Indigenous communities in Canada. Water advisories continue to be a common occurrence for these communities and an all-too-regular reminder of the different standards that exist in the country for public infrastructure. “More often than not, boil-water advisories are put on due to a lack of confidence in the system. Frequently, short-term ones are because there was a break in the line, the line depressurized and some contaminates may have been introduced into the distribution system,” explains Ryan Dunbar, president of SOAR Professional Services, a consulting firm focused on Indigenous employment and community development. The company was launched as a limited partnership with Dillon Consulting Limited.
Clean drinking water Another omission from the 2022-2023 budget is the projected $8 billion payout as part of a class-action suit regarding long-term, on-reserve boil water advisories. But according to the budget, the overall drinking water situation is improving – despite missing their initial 2021 target to lift all long-term boil-water advisories in communities across Canada. Indigenous Services Canada (ISC) data indicates 131 long-term drinking water advisories have been lifted since 2015, and “initiatives are underway” to resolve the remaining 34. To this effect, the government is allocated $398 million over two years to ISC to “support community infrastructure on-reserve.” At least $247 million of this amount will be directed toward water and wastewater infrastructure, according to the budget outline.
On today’s date in 1972, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau and U.S. President Richard Nixon began a two-day visit in Ottawa, where they would sign the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement. The agreement was inspired by recommendations from the International Joint Commission (IJC), which reported excessive levels of phosphorus in the Great Lakes before concluding pollution was happening on both sides of the border.
Approximately eight million people who live in the Great Lakes basin (on both sides of the border) rely on groundwater for clean drinking water, sanitation systems, farming and food production, industry and healthy ecosystems. ‘Groundwater: making the invisible visible’ was the theme for World Water Day 2022. For World Water Day on March 22, The Expositor took a deeper look at our own groundwater.
The Canada Infrastructure Bank (CIB), a federal government financial institution, opened its doors five years ago with great promise, vowing to deploy $35 billion of investments towards “the next generation of infrastructure Canadians need.” But rather than investing public money in public services, the CIB has instead privatized our water, transportation and electricity. For every dollar invested by the CIB, the hope was that $4 to $5 would be invested by the private sector.
Unprecedented flooding over the past decade that has devastated hundreds of millions of people across the globe and caused billion of dollars in damage—including last year’s massive floods in British Columbia and the 2013 flood that hit Calgary—underlines the pressing need for this research. Dr. Martyn Clark (PhD), professor in the Department of Geography and Planning in the College of Arts and Science, is the team lead for USask. He will be joined by departmental colleague and Distinguished Professor Dr. John Pomeroy (PhD), along with Prof. Dr. Alain Pietroniro (PhD) of UCalgary’s Schulich School of Engineering.
The province says it is preparing to activate the Red River Floodway to manage water levels within Winnipeg in the next 24 to 48 hours due to rising water levels that have been accelerated by this week's weather. The Red River's spring crest isn't expected in Winnipeg until sometime from April 9-16. However, the precipitation Manitoba has seen in the last two days, along with the gradual snowmelt occurring in the river basins, could raise levels above the riverbanks at some spots in the Red River Valley, the province said in a news release Wednesday.
Our world is composed of gradients in time and space and how we manage our gradients will determine our future. The transition from cropland to riparian vegetation, to macrophytes, and to open water at a prairie wetland near Saskatoon emphasizes the tenuous interface between production agriculture and water quality and quantity impacts on the Canadian Prairies.
Swirltex Inc. ("Swirltex"), is pleased to announce that they have been awarded a project to supply their proprietary "Buoyancy Enhanced Membrane Filtration" technology for produced water treatment with ARC Resources Ltd. ("ARC"), a leading Canadian energy producer in the Montney region. The project is valued at $3 million with potential upside for scale up at higher treatment volumes. The system is expected to be online by Q3 2022.
Some municipal staff and politicians in the Charlottetown area went back to school last week — to 'Water's Cool' Water School. The water conservation program for Grade 5 students was originally created by staff with the Town of Stratford in 2011. The program expanded to include students in Charlottetown in 2019, and to date, more than 3,000 students have attended.
Flood mitigation plans for the Willow Estates area east of Drumheller Valley Secondary School (DVSS) were revealed during a virtual information session hosted by the Drumheller Resiliency and Flood Mitigation Office (DRFMO) on Thursday, March 31. The community was affected by flooding in both 2005 and 2013 and, along with the risk to homes in the area, there is also risk to vital infrastructure-the town’s main water supply lift station.
Canadian investors own about two Sydney Harbour's worth of Aussie water. Super funds from Canada have a well known thirst for irrigation water where agriculture is concerned. The Canadian slice of Australian water has risen by 282 per cent in four years. The Canadians have stayed well out in front in terms of the top 10 overseas countries with the biggest stake in Australian water.
Lack of access to clean drinking water and low-quality health care have had a direct impact of Indigenous people’s vulnerability to COVID-19, according to a B.C. expert. Kimberly Huyser, an associate professor of sociology at the University of British Columbia, has been studying Indigenous people’s health in relation to the pandemic since it began. She said it wasn’t the specific virus that interested her, but rather the way it highlighted how health care often fails Indigenous people in North America.
