You may have learned from our local media that the new water treatment plant costs have doubled to almost $121 million — suggesting massive increases in your water bill and likely your property taxes are coming. The flaccid media coverage of this outrage didn’t explore the consequences of the increase,
Continue readingTag: water
Things Are Good: This City Captures Drinkable Water from the Air
Aquifers feel there pressure of increasing populations and farms; as a result, cities around the world get drastically close to running out of water. The solution in some places may have been under our noses the entire time: fog. In Lima they already have a system in place to capture
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Patrick Wood and Mary Louise Kelly write that we still need to be managing COVID risk budgets to avoid contributing more to community transmission than necessary. Helen Branswell discusses some lessons learned through the pandemic so far. And Morgan Lowrie reports on
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Umair Haque reminds us that the COVID pandemic is far from over, while Julie Bosman, Amy Harmon and Albert Sun discuss the escalating U.S. death toll which now includes one of every hundred Americans over 65. Will Stone, Jesse Bloom and Sarah Cobey, and Carl
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Supriya Dwivedi writes about the Groundhog Day-style loop we’re trapped in due to a pandemic which is being allowed to continue and evolve. And while Daniel Wood and Geoff Brumfiel point out how the politicization of the pandemic is resulting in systematically higher
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On toxic preferences
From the standpoint of any reasonable observer, there’s reason for outrage that Saskatchewan is one of the provinces pushing to undermine federal standards for water pollution from coal mines – especially when the argument being made is that regulations should allow for a certain amount of selenium to be released
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Afternoon Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Sarah Zhang writes that the three factors which will determine the path of the COVID pandemic over the winter are our own immunity, the adaptation of the virus, and our own behaviour. And Phil Tank reports on the warning from Saskatchewan doctors that
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Afternoon Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Helen Ward et al. discuss the work that needs to be done to respond to long COVID on a global scale, while CBC News reports on Rachel Notley’s needed call for Alberta to begin taking the long-term effects seriously. And Reuters reports
Continue readingThings Are Good: Cities of the Future Act as Sponges
When it rains cities should hold all the water. In the 20th century that idea would have been laughed out of the room; today, we know better. Urban water management is vital to a healthy city, ecosystem, and flood mediation. The old idea of building giant channels of concrete to
Continue readingScripturient: Another Council Facepalm Moment
In a story on CollingwoodToday, this week council again discussed their job-growth-and revenue-killing interim control bylaw (ICBL) that has stopped the town from issuing new home building permits for the next four or more years, until a new water treatment plant is built. Of course, none of the developers or
Continue readingThings Are Good: Master Resilience Improves Gender Equality in Mexico City
Water scarcity is a real problem in Mexico City, and due to existing gender inequality women bare the brunt of the costs of a lack of water. This manifests itself in everything from laundry to buying potable water, both are time consuming endeavours in places with water scarcity. Mexico City
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Paul Krugman discusses the need for people who have been responsible about limiting the spread of COVID-19 to start speaking out and taking action to ensure that the reckless and nihilistic aren’t able to impose avoidable disease and death. Adia Benton, Maimuna Majumder
Continue readingThings Are Good: A Startup Wants to Help Predict Floods
For years engineers tried to prevent flooding, then they realized they can’t stop nature. Now instead of trying to stop it, we try to mitigate flooding by creating spaces that can absorb a lot of water (parks along rivers are an example of this). Still, these attempts don’t always work
Continue readingViews from the Beltline: “Why are we building houses if we don’t have enough water?”—A big lesson from a little town
Oakley, Utah, is small but appealing. Nestled in the mountains beside the Weber River less than an hour’s drive east of Salt Lake City, the town offers an attractive bargain for out-of-staters and weekenders. The river and mountain springs provided plentiful water that attracted early settlers. Water, however, is no
Continue readingThings Are Good: On the Spot Water Cleaning Better Than Current Approach
Access to clean water is essentially for good health, yet many around the world lack access to save, clean, drinkable water. Researchers have found a way to clean water more efficiently than previous systems by essentially cleaning water at the source using a new catalyst. The catalyst cleans the water
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Marlene Habib writes about the continued efforts of grocery workers to ensure we have access to food and supplies in the face of the pandemic (and now complete abandonment by governments and employers). Celine Castronuovo reports on the hospitalizations of children resulting from the
Continue readingScripturient: Are Cwood’s Symbolic Gestures Mere Platitudes?
I understand symbolic gestures: they’re what we do when we cannot change a situation, but want to express our anger, passion, compassion, outrage, sadness, support, angst, or other emotions. From bumper stickers to flags at half-mast, rainbow-painted crosswalks, and lawn signs with supportive messages for causes: we all make them,
Continue readingScripturient: More on the Harbourview Park Dump
Speaking to some long-time Collingwood residents, I’ve learned a bit more about the dump that lies under the soil at Harbourview Park and is now proposed as the site of a children’s splash pad. As far as I have been able to determine, this is being done without a proper
Continue readingCowichan Conversations: This Isn’t a Heatwave — It’s a Dying Planet
Our Civilisation is Boiling Alive in the Fumes of its Own Waste umair haque Follow Jun 30 · 7 min read Image Credit: ABC11 Screenshot It was my lovely doctor wife who Read more… The post This Isn’t a Heatwave — It’s a Dying Planet first appeared on richardhughes.ca.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – As Jason Kenney and Scott Moe rush to slash public health protections including mask mandates, Gavin Leech et al. study how important masking has been in slowing the spread of COVID-19. Sarah Bridge, Ioanna Roumeliotis and Joseph Loiero highlight how rules which
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