Youtube Video about methylmercury in the Grand River after Muskrat Falls development.

The public must come to understand the urgent need to reduce the demand for energy and for non-essential industrial products. Although the arguments can be expressed less harshly, the reality itself is harsh, and it is essential that our societies grapple with it. Only with severely reduced demand can renewables or any of the other elements of a solution offer hope for a transition to some degree of sustainability. 

Grand River Keeper Labrador has been keeping a keen eye on the weather patterns and hydrology of the Artic regions for several years given our proximity in Canada’s north. This region, often considered as sub-arctic has several common characteristics pertaining to climate, ecological features, and proximity to oceans The Arctic Ocean flow into the Atlantic […]

Rivers act as reactive conduits connecting the continental and oceanic carbon (C) cycles, and all the available evidence suggests that river damming significantly changes the export of organic carbon (OC) to the ocean. Dam construction and closure modify the downstream transfer of OC and essential nutrients, and thus the trophic state of the river system and that of receiving water bodies, including lakes and nearshore marine environments.

n September 2000, a workshop was convened to identify several notable gaps in our current level of understanding of arctic hydrological systems. The primary goal of this workshop was to assess the current state of the art in arctic systems hydrology and identify the appropriate roles that NSF-ARCSS could play in supporting the relevant science.

Grand Riverkeeper Labrador, Inc. (GRL) was one of 340 organizations from 78 countries that called upon the UNFCCC to agree that “Climate mitigation efforts must reject so-called ‘sustainable hydropower”’ as a solution to combat climate change.”

No one in Mud Lake will ever forget May 17, 2017, when the unthinkable happened. Flood waters breached the banks of the channel, and there was no stopping the inundation.  Read some personal accounts.

North American and European countries built many large dams until 1975, after which both started to abandon a significant part of their installed hydropower because of the negative social and environmental impacts.

e. As the Arctic warms, ice (both terrestrial ice and snow, and sea ice) melts, amplifying warmth. And with the loss of terrestrial ice, sea level rises. Because the feedback processes responsible for the observed Arctic amplifica tion in the past remain active today, it is very likely that Arctic amplification will continue for the foreseeable future, With this amplification, sea ice will continue to contract, and glaciers and ice sheets will experience accelerated melting, with concomitant increases in the rate of sea level rise.

This latest chapter of the Muskrat Falls saga; replacement of air flow spoilers on the 161 spans, comes weeks after Hydro announced the vastly overbudget project's price tag had hit $13.5 billion and an independent report stated at least one of the power plant's four generating units must be fully dismantled. 

Hydropower dams degrade water quality along rivers. Water that flows downstream is depleted of oxygen, which harms many aquatic animals.

The arctic climate is defined by a low amount or absence of sunlight in winter and long days during summer, with significant spatial and temporal variation. The sensitivities of snow and ice regimes to small temperature increases and of cold oceans to small changes in salinity are processes that could contribute to unusually large and rapid climate change in the Arctic.

The take down of Gilbert Bennett by the Commission of Inquiry began in the opening days when he was no longer under the protection of either Danny Williams or Kathy Dunderdale.

If you have been keeping up to date on the crises of MF commissioning, you know that the synchronous condensers, essential to grid stability, won’t work; that the Labrador Island Link

After a decade of work and $13.4 billion — nearly double the price tag promised in 2012 — there are now serious doubts the project will ever perform as designed. Equipment is falling from overhead lines in locations so remote it takes days to reach them before repairs can even begin. Muskrat Falls power is so unreliable that an aging thermal plant the project was meant to replace will remain open for years to come.

New problems for Muskrat Falls. See the news article by CBC

A MUST Read from Halifax Examiner... Delays in Muskrat Falls project have cost Nova Scotia Power ratepayers $200 million