Helping communities through repeat evacuations
Grand Chief Garrison Settee discusses the emotional and logistical challenges facing evacuees going through displacement for the second time.
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CBC
27 minutes ago
- CBC
Southeastern Manitoba public well taps turned off after chlorination order
Two public sources of water in southeast Manitoba that residents rely on for drinking water, fire protection, and watering farm crops and gardens were closed after decades of use, following a change in a provincial policy dating back to 2021. Residents and cottagers in Woodridge, a Sandilands Provincial Forest community about 100 kilometres southeast of Winnipeg, were left without access to their local water pumping station after it closed last year. There is no municipal water system in Woodridge. "We have a lot of cottages being built here. They don't have a well — it's a water source," said Ken Lachnit, a board member with the Woodridge Community Club. The community club made the decision to close the pumphouse, built on its land 40 years ago, to the public in July 2024, after the province's Office of Drinking Water directed the club to add a chlorination system. The original April 2024 order to install the system was extended to two years, but the club's volunteer board decided there was no way it would be able to cover the cost and closed the water station to the public. While the pumphouse can still be used by firefighters to fill tankers if necessary, residents were without easy access to water as a wildfire approached their community this past spring, forcing a temporary evacuation of Woodridge in May. "I had several phone calls [from] people wanting to fill their totes, and I couldn't let them," said Lachnit. A 2021 change in provincial policy placed more stringent rules around chlorination for bulk water fill stations like Woodridge's. A series of meetings between the community club and the Office of Drinking Water last year tried to find ways to keep the station open. "What we saw and what was implied at our meeting back in May [2024] is that this is not going to be the first and only pumphouse that was going to be in the same position that we were," said retired Woodridge Community Club board member Cory Jackson. Environment and Climate Change Minister Mike Moyes said he plans to meet with local officials to discuss the water access issue. "There's no move to close any of these wells. We want to work with communities," he said in an interview with CBC earlier this week. He also said the NDP government did not direct the community club to close the Woodridge water station. "The community centre decided on their own that they were going to close it. That was not directed by our government," said Moyes. "We were working with them to ensure their water was safe, and they decided independently that they were going to close it." Groundwater 'safe drinking source': official Under the province's Drinking Water Safety Act, chlorination is not required for public or semi-public groundwater sources, unless they are for places like hospitals, schools, daycares, personal care homes or restaurants. Woodridge was a self-serve station. The law does give the province discretion to go beyond the minimum enforcement requirements. "Groundwater generally is a safe drinking source. It's what happens when people handle it," said Elliott Brown, an assistant deputy minister for water stewardship. Water tests have not found any harmful levels of contaminants in the water at the Woodridge station. Brown said the purpose of the 2021 policy is to stop bacteria from growing in the water after people put it in their tanks and jugs. The department is still catching up with licensing all the semi-public water sources that have been around for decades, like the one in Woodridge, said Brown. The 40-year-old pumphouse did not receive its semi-public water supplier licence until 2019 and had its first bacterial inspection in 2020. There are 93 bulk fill water stations like the one in Woodridge across Manitoba, but fewer than five licensed bulk fill water stations do not yet have chlorination systems, said Brown. The policy is not being enforced at the 41 public access wells the province calls pail-fill sites. Piney well reopened The provincial Conservation office down the road in the community of Piney has an artesian well in its front yard that sources the same Sandilands aquifer that Woodridge and multiple water bottling plants do. A pump to draw water out quicker is the difference between the pail-fill wells like one in Piney and the Woodridge bulk fill groundwater station. Water samples from the Piney well are sent in regularly for testing. The 60-year-old Piney well — an artesian well system, with a hose and a spigot connected to a hole in the ground, from which water flows constantly — was reopened Aug. 1 after it was closed for two weeks to the public. During an Aug. 5 meeting at the artesian well site, local Progressive Conservative MLA Konrad Narth told the crowd Manitoba Conservation closed the Piney well because the department believed the Office of Drinking Water was also requiring a chlorination system there. About 60 Piney area residents — many of whom lined up to fill their jugs — gathered at the meeting, organized by Narth, to discuss the closure and future of the artesian well. Minister Moyes insists chlorination was not the issue. "With the Piney one, it was just a miscommunication, and I do apologize," said Moyes. The Conservation officer on the provincial property, who is about to retire, is "trying to do the right thing, but there was some miscommunication between his office and ours," the minister said. Assistant deputy minister Brown said he understands there is also a risk of bacteria growth in containers people fill at slower-flowing artesian wells, like the one in Piney, but confirmed the policy for chlorination does not apply at these 41 public access wells across Manitoba. "That is sort of the risk. And you'll see all kinds of advice of making sure that your containers are clean, of making sure if you're putting your water in a cistern that you're getting it tested regularly — the province has support for that — same as you would get your well tested," said Brown. Dale Edbom, a councillor with the rural municipality of Piney, told those gathered at the artesian well on Aug. 5 that he received a call from Manitoba Conservation that day. Conservation wants to pass responsibility for the management of the well on to the RM of Piney, which the RM would take on as a last resort, according to Edbom. "But I told him it's very unfair to pass the buck on to the RM, for us to pay for water samples for a perfectly clean well," said Edbom. MLA Narth said there is no dispute about the purity of the water in Piney or Woodridge, but there is concern from some that Manitoba's other public wells could also be closed if they do not install chlorination systems. He wants to see Woodridge's groundwater station opened back up. "Water is life, right?" said Narth. "They feel helpless when they don't know if they have a reliable source of water. This has given them a reliable source of water for generations now, and they're passionate about protecting that."
CBC
an hour ago
- CBC
Yukon First Nation holds first-ever Women on Wildfires training program
The course gives women and gender-diverse people a chance to try out the training and equipment involved in wildland firefighting. The CBC's Isabella Calissi went down to a pump training session just outside of Whitehorse earlier this week.
CBC
an hour ago
- CBC
Do you speak Yukon English? These researchers want to hear it
As research projects go, it sounds pretty skookum. Derek Denis, an associate professor of linguistics at the University of Toronto, is in the Yukon this week listening to how people talk. It's part of an ongoing research project to better understand and document regional dialects of Canadian English. "Right now, the most ... 'accurate' map, dialect map of Canada, it has cut off the territories," he said. "I'd like to change that." His research team is in Whitehorse looking for volunteers to, essentially, shoot the breeze a bit. "We just wanna talk to them, hear their stories, and then later, down the road, do some linguistics with those recordings," he explained. "And we also get people to read a short story, and a list of words as well." Denis says he's long been fascinated by how languages evolve over time, in different geographical areas and among different cultures. "The idea that multiple languages could be related to some long-gone language blew my mind and sparked a lifelong interest in language change," he writes on his website. Now, he teaches about the different ways the English language is used and heard in different parts of the world, from Europe to Africa to Asia. He said the dialects in many regions have been well-studied, but it's a different story in North America. "It turns out linguists know very, very little about what's going on with Englishes in the Canadian North," he said. Denis is not just interested in the quirks of local vocabulary — for example, the way Yukoners might use "outside" to refer to areas beyond the territory — but also things like pronunciation. He cites the linguistic phenomenon of "Canadian raising," which refers to a distinct, supposedly signature Canadian way of saying some vowel sounds (often mocked as "oot and aboot"). "I'm really curious about that, if that's happening up here as well," he said. He admits that a lot of research over the years has involved that most famous Canadianism — "eh" — but after a couple of days in the Yukon, he said he hasn't heard it used much. "Not saying it's not here. I'm gonna be listening out for it," he said. For Denis, the notion of a distinct sort of "Yukon English" intrigues him because of the territory's unique history of settlement. "The migration history here is very different from elsewhere in western Canada, and so those influences are coming together in different ways," he said. He's also aiming to continue his research beyond the Yukon, by studying the varieties of English usage in the N.W.T. and Nunavut as well. In the meantime, he's hoping to hear from as many Yukoners who might be interested in speaking to his team over the next few days. He said people can contact him through his website — but that right now, they're only looking for people who were raised in the territory.
