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.
The Chilkat Indian Village of Klukwan is requesting the state of Alaska launch an adjudicatory hearing over a wastewater permit for a large exploration project. The Vancouver-owned Palmer project is located roughly 56 kilometres northwest of Haines. Constantine Metal Resources wants to search for a mix of copper, silver, gold and zinc in an area measuring roughly 33,000 hectares. The Tlingit take serious issue with the project.
The project to eradicate invasive smallmouth bass from Miramichi Lake by using rotenone is now underway, according to people who oppose the plan. On Thursday, Indigenous opponents of the project were again canoeing on the lake to prevent workers from pouring the toxin into the water. This is what prevented the project from going ahead last year, because the chemical can't be applied when there are people on the water. There are also unconfirmed reports of an arrest. According to multiple sources, including opponent and cottage-owner Barb Hildebrand, one of the people camping on the beach in the hopes of waylaying the project was arrested by provincial peace officers Thursday and accused of theft.
Leaders of small Newfoundland and Labrador towns say water in their communities is so unreliable that in some cases, it has made residents ill. While government says it's slowly working on fixes, there's no clear end for boil advisories in sight. Black Tickle, a community on Labrador's south coast, has been under a chronic boil order for years, says Todd Russell, president of the NunatuKavut community council. The unpotable water has meant widespread disease among the locals, he said.
Sometimes there’s too much water; sometimes not enough. A major challenge with global heating is that it doesn’t necessarily cause more or less of something in a specific geographic area (hotter, colder; wetter, dryer); it just makes everything less predictable and often more extreme. Consider some late-summer headlines. Pakistan “faces ‘monsoon on steroids’ as more flood warnings issued”. In Spain, “Historic monuments resurface as severe drought shrinks reservoirs.” Melting Greenland ice is “set to raise sea levels by nearly a foot”. In Jackson, Also, in the U.S., “As Colorado River dries, the U.S. teeters on the brink of larger water crisis”.Mississippi, the “water system is failing, city will be with no or little drinking water indefinitely”.
The world is in desperate need of water. Drought and increasing temperatures have threatened to impact nearly every major sector of the economy, from energy to agriculture to shipping. Markets are taking note. The S&P Global Water Index, which tracks 50 companies from around the world that are involved in water utilities, infrastructure, equipment and materials, has outperformed the S&P Global Broad Market Index by more than 3 percentage points per year since its beginning in late 2001. So far this year, the Global Water Index return has been nearly 5 percentage points higher than the S&P Global BMI.
In 2018, faced with a rise in toxic algal blooms that threatened the health of Lake Erie, Ottawa and Queen’s Park released the Canada-Ontario Lake Erie Action Plan, pledging to reduce levels of phosphorus in the lake by 40 per cent within seven years. Since then, says Michelle Woodhouse, water program manager with Environmental Defence, little has happened. “We were supposed to receive an update from the province in 2020 about how we were doing so far. We never received one,” Woodhouse said, noting a new “interim update” on efforts to slow nutrient runoff into the lake has been promised for next year.
With the dramatic temperature increases and climate change over the past years, water consumption has risen dramatically across the globe. Despite being a critical asset, water is undervalued across many parts of the world, and its use is largely unsustainable. The rise in water demand coupled with limited supply and uneven distribution are leading to water stress across the various region around the globe. Water losses are often caused by inadequate maintenance of the distribution network. With a 75- to 100-year lifespan, much of America's underground pipes are due for replacement. Based on an analysis by the American Water Works Association, approximately one-third of water mains nationwide will require replacement by 2040.
The latest in a series of annual reports on challenges facing children and youth in Canada is identifying climate change as a top threat for the first time. Released on Wednesday (Sept. 7), the fifth annual Raising Canada report says the mental and physical impacts of the world’s rapidly changing climate, as well as the disproportionate effect it has on marginalized and racialized kids, now deserves greater attention. Air quality is worsening, leading to an uptick in bronchitis and asthma among children and youth, while an increase in the occurrence and intensity of extreme weather events also puts them at risk, report authors found in their literature review. The impacts are particularly harsh for children with intersecting inequities.
Western’s campus is surrounded by natural beauty and through it flows one of the most biodiverse rivers in Canada. This month, the community will have a chance to celebrate the Deshkan Ziibiing (Antler/Thames River) with Riverfest 2022, Western’s first-ever river festival hosted by the Office of Sustainability. The series of events encourage people to reconnect with the river, one of 10 “big moves” outlined in Western’s Open Space Strategy.
It was a warm, sunny Aug. 25 morning when we departed from the public slip at Gagetown in a flat-bottomed, aluminum boat. Our guides were three Ducks Unlimited employees: outreach specialist Samantha Brewster and conservation specialist Frank Merrill, both based in Fredericton, and Adam Campbell of the Sackville area, the group's manager of Atlantic operations.
ProStar Holdings Inc. (“ProStar®” or “the Company”) (TSXV: MAPS) (OTCQX: MAPPF) (FSE: 5D00), a world leader in Precision Mapping Solutions®, is pleased to announce that Water Works Engineers has adopted ProStar’s solution, PointMan® to improve the mapping of water system infrastructure. “We are using PointMan to accurately map water system valves,” stated Colleen Boak, P.E., Senior Project Engineer at Water Works Engineers. “It is important for the management of water system infrastructure that there are accurate records that include the type, condition, and precise location of the valves. We are using PointMan in combination with GPS equipment to provide that information in a way that it can be easily relocated in the field with an easy to use and affordable solution.”
Starting this month, over 2,500 Detroit residents will see lower water rates as a new affordability plan takes effect, the Detroit Free Press reports. The plan offers low-income residents a fixed monthly water rate, calculated based on a resident’s income and water usage. Four thousand more households are on the program’s waiting list. This month also sees a new rate structure in Detroit, which lowered most water bills by $2. The city’s moratorium on water shutoffs, enacted more than two years ago, is set to expire at the end of 2022, though officials say that households enrolled in the affordability program will not be affected.
The Township of Spallumcheen has received a downpour of government funds to help with its water in one district. Spallumcheen will receive more than $3.3 million to build a new well and reservoir for the Larkin Water System, and improve the system through the installation of monitoring equipment. The federal government will contribute $1,850,000 to the project, Victoria is chipping in $1,480,000 and a total of $370,000 will come from the township.
In partnership with Watersheds Canada, the Shawnigan Basin Society is offering a new program that will see the society work with waterfront property owners in the South Cowichan watershed to restore their shoreline by planting native trees, shrubs, and wildflowers. With shorelines facing the likelihood of increasing high flood levels and erosion rates, the SBS said it is proud to be engaged in Watersheds Canada’s Natural Edge Program by becoming the first program partner in British Columbia last year.
Water licences are required for most mining operations and typically come with a number of conditions, which may include a requirement to provide a security cash deposit so funds are available for clean-up and remediation efforts should anything go wrong. Every two years, mining companies are required to submit reclamation and closure plans, to ensure sufficient security. Buchan said Victoria Gold hasn't been in compliance with that process, pointing to a lack of information on adjustments to its heap leach pad involving certain recontouring work, and apparent snow removal obligations from that site.
Once a week, municipal workers in the town of Saint-Lazare, west of Montreal, adjust the arrow on signs indicating the level of water consumption. For most of this summer, it's been pointed at "elevated." The goal of the signs posted around the municipality is to encourage residents to use less water. "In the last few years, we had to go into a full watering ban mainly caused by the droughts that we've had and also because of the COVID, where a lot of people were home and using more water than usual," said Mayor Geneviève Lachance.
The status of Lake Huron is good and unchanging — and it needs constant monitoring to make sure it stays that way, says a scientist with a local environmental association. In late July, the United States Environmental Protection Agency and Environment and Climate Change Canada released its State of the Great Lakes 2022 Report. The report, typically produced every two years, is part of the 1972 Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement between Canada and the United States and based on nine indicators of ecosystem health, such as drinking water, fish consumption, and beach closures.
Bathtub water enveloping Newfoundland? Hardly, but it's extreme relative to what waters you typically find sloshing around the shores of Atlantic Canada. You're probably familiar with temperature anomalies on land. Often meteorologists reference how much the thermometer deviates from climate normals. Land temperature anomalies can reach 20°C above, like this week across portions of Coastal California.
Nunavut's capital was able to avert a water-shortage crisis last week, but the member of Parliament for the territory says infrastructure in the North is an issue of Arctic security. Lori Idlout says federal investments in the North have often been inadequate to meet all of the infrastructure needs of communities and Ottawa tends to respond to emergencies rather than invest in long-term prevention.
Volunteers and scientists are in the midst of a six-day "bio blitz" in Vancouver's False Creek, collecting water samples as an initial step toward cleaning up the inlet between Science World and English Bay. The project, running until Wednesday, is a collaboration between local non-profit False Creek Friends, scientists from the Hakai Institute coastal research centre, and the City of Vancouver.
