Natural resources

Please review each article prior to use: grade-level applicability and curricular alignment might not be obvious from the headline alone.

Cat Gauthier photo Katharina Stieffenhofer’s new documentary looks at environmental issues and its defenders.
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Manitoba documentary focuses lens on environmental defenders, beauty of prairies

Conrad Sweatman 5 minute read Preview
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Manitoba documentary focuses lens on environmental defenders, beauty of prairies

Conrad Sweatman 5 minute read Thursday, Jul. 16, 2026

Everything We Need Is Here is the latest sumptuously shot Manitoba film rooted in the Prairie landscape.

Though totally unrelated in subject matter, the documentary recalls the 2024 Daughters of the Sun with its saturated and slow-mo sweeps across boreal forests and limestone tinted lakes.

But while Daughters has much murmured narration and arthouse flair, Everything is a plucky film, a can-do sort of doc about the land and its grassroots defenders.

Their voices resonate strong and clear across storylines that weave together the joys of foraging and local environmental protests.

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Thursday, Jul. 16, 2026
RUTH BONNEVILLE / FREE PRESS FILES Manitoba Hydro has more than 20 power outages planned across the province to allow crews to work safely on or around electrical equipment and that customers will be advised several days in advance if they will be affected.

Hydro’s planned outages turn out the lights for thousands across province

Nicole Buffie 4 minute read Preview

Hydro’s planned outages turn out the lights for thousands across province

Nicole Buffie 4 minute read Wednesday, Jul. 15, 2026

Business owners in the East Beaches area of Lake Winnipeg hauled out generators Wednesday after a planned Manitoba Hydro outage left thousands of residents and cottagers without power.

Lise Bourassa, who runs several stores in Grand Beach, had to rent generators to accommodate the eight-hour blackout, which affected the area from Beaconia to Victoria Beach as well as Sagkeeng First Nation, while Hydro crews fixed a pole that was damaged by fire in May .

Despite the spare power source, she was only able to open one of her stores during the outage and said it came at a bad time.

“I understand the importance of what Manitoba Hydro is doing, the problem all the businesses in this area are having is that our season is very short and to be shut down for a full day has a fairly big impact, plus they added cost of getting generators,” she wrote in a message to the Free Press. “We also had less than one week to make arrangements, find electricians and generators to be able to keep all the food safe.”

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Wednesday, Jul. 15, 2026
Assembly of First Nations National Chief Cindy Woodhouse Nepinak speaks at the annual First Nations Major Projects Coalition conference in Toronto on Thursday, April 30, 2026. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sammy Kogan

Chief says assembly will tackle effect of major projects push on First Nations rights

Alessia Passafiume, The Canadian Press 3 minute read Preview

Chief says assembly will tackle effect of major projects push on First Nations rights

Alessia Passafiume, The Canadian Press 3 minute read Tuesday, Jul. 14, 2026

OTTAWA - Major projects and a coming meeting with Prime Minister Mark Carney and the premiers will be the main focus of the Assembly of First Nations annual general assembly this week, National Chief Cindy Woodhouse Nepinak said Monday.

The AFN gathering begins Tuesday and runs for three days.

Speaking alongside a handful of regional chiefs and First Nations representatives at a news conference, Woodhouse Nepinak blasted the federal government over its approach to major projects development and said it could threaten the rights of First Nations.

She said First Nations are not opposed to economic growth and are simply asking for a seat at the table as the federal government attempts to shore up the economy.

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Tuesday, Jul. 14, 2026
Matt Goerzen/The Brandon Sun files Manitoba Hydro is still betting on natural gas generating stations — like this one in Brandon — instead of considering battery storage solutions for peak energy needs.

If it works in Ontario, why not in Manitoba?

James Wilt 5 minute read Preview

If it works in Ontario, why not in Manitoba?

James Wilt 5 minute read Monday, Jul. 13, 2026

Grid-scale battery storage has fundamentally changed the global energy landscape — and Manitoba needs to get on board.

Battery systems store large amounts of excess electricity for when it’s most needed. While they can be charged from any generation source, they are especially beneficial for integrating wind and solar power, which vary with weather and time of day. Batteries allow electrical grids to meet the need for firm, dispatchable and affordable capacity using renewable energy, rather than relying on coal, nuclear and fossil gas. They also provide numerous other benefits, including reducing overloading of transmission infrastructure and helping to regulate the grid’s frequency and voltage.

Average costs for grid-scale batteries plummeted by more than half between 2023 and 2025 and installations have skyrocketed in China, the U.S., Australia and Europe. Texas now has 16,500 megawatts (MW) of battery storage, while California has 15,200 MW. Closer to home, Ontario recently awarded 640 MW of contracts to three battery storage projects in a competitive auction, with batteries beating out fossil gas-fired power plants on cost every time. One of these projects will be built near Dryden, only four hours east of Winnipeg.

Each battery system will provide eight hours of capacity but will cost considerably less than Ontario’s previous battery procurements, which provide only four hours of capacity. With this latest auction, Ontario has now secured 3,600 MW of battery storage capacity, including the operational Oneida (250 MW), Hagersville (300 MW) and Napanee (250 MW) projects. Almost all have significant Indigenous participation, with the latest procurements boasting 50 per cent First Nations ownership.

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Monday, Jul. 13, 2026
TIM SMITH / THE BRANDON SUN FILES Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew

Pipeline could be Kinew’s legacy or a slick disappointment

Dan Lett 5 minute read Preview

Pipeline could be Kinew’s legacy or a slick disappointment

Dan Lett 5 minute read Friday, Jul. 10, 2026

Is Wab Kinew poised to become Manitoba’s Pipeline King?

Developments on several fronts are giving Manitoba’s premier the opportunity to make oil and gas pipelines not only the cornerstone of his current economic policy, but also the lasting legacy from his time governing the province.

On the one hand, Prime Minister Mark Carney has promised significant sums of federal money to develop the Port of Churchill into the major shipping hub it has always aspired to be. The catch is that Manitoba must come up with a firm plan to ship liquefied natural gas (LNG) through the port by 2030, a goal that almost certainly requires a pipeline.

At the same time, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe and, most recently, Ontario Premier Doug Ford are signing deals to build LNG pipelines that connect western oil fields to major shipping hubs in eastern Canada.

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Friday, Jul. 10, 2026
MIKAELA MACKENZIE / FREE PRESS Wind turbines in southern Manitoba.

Westman residents fear power project’s wind turbines will sully their idyllic landscape

Julia-Simone Rutgers 17 minute read Preview

Westman residents fear power project’s wind turbines will sully their idyllic landscape

Julia-Simone Rutgers 17 minute read Friday, Jul. 10, 2026

POLONIA — Leonard Kaspick can list just about every household in the valley.

“There’s someone living right across the northeast, someone living behind here, about a quarter mile there’s a house there, then a half mile there’s another house there, I’m here, and then on top of the hill there’s someone else there,” he says, standing in the heart of the hamlet — a community hall just off the main drag.

Besides the hall and the smattering of homes, there’s a historic (though out-of-commission) church next door and a single general store further down the road.

“There’s less people here now than there was in 1885,” Kaspick, 83, jokes as he wraps up a condensed history of the western-Manitoba community.

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Friday, Jul. 10, 2026

Manitoba needs clean, publicly owned data centres

Hersh Seth 5 minute read Friday, Jul. 10, 2026

Some might disagree, but I believe Winnipeg needs an AI data centre.

Meta, the tech giant behind Facebook and Instagram, says it's building a new AI date centre in Sturgeon County, Alta. The facility, shown in this rendered image, will be a one-gigawatt, nearly 270,000-square-metre data centre powered by a natural gas-fired plant. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Handout - Sturgeon Data Centre (Mandatory Credit)

Keeping cool: How Meta plans to cut down on water use at its Alberta data centre

Lauren Krugel, The Canadian Press 5 minute read Preview

Keeping cool: How Meta plans to cut down on water use at its Alberta data centre

Lauren Krugel, The Canadian Press 5 minute read Friday, Jul. 10, 2026

CALGARY - A Meta Platforms Inc. executive garnered applause at a news conference this week after he boasted that a gargantuan data centre planned for north of Edmonton would use less water annually than a typical Alberta golf course.

The tech behemoth was announcing a $13-billion-plus investment in a complex the size of 33 Canadian Football League fields. It will be powered by a new natural gas plant that could eventually produce more electricity than what the City of Edmonton uses.

The data centre in Sturgeon County, like other hyperscale proposals in Canada, is to use what's known as a closed-loop cooling system to keep servers from overheating. That differs from an evaporative cooling system, which requires enormous amounts of cool water that is not reused.

Gary Demasi, vice-president of data centre strategy and development at Meta, told a news conference Wednesday that no water will be needed for regular cooling operations.

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Friday, Jul. 10, 2026
A Meta logo is shown on a video screen at LlamaCon 2025, an AI developer conference, in Menlo Park, Calif., Tuesday, April 29, 2025. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

Meta to build $13B data centre north of Edmonton, its first in Canada

Lauren Krugel, The Canadian Press 6 minute read Preview

Meta to build $13B data centre north of Edmonton, its first in Canada

Lauren Krugel, The Canadian Press 6 minute read Thursday, Jul. 9, 2026

CALGARY - The tech behemoth behind Facebook and Instagram says it plans to make Alberta home to its first artificial intelligence data centre in Canada and its largest outside the United States.

Meta announced Wednesday that the $13-billion-plus project is to be built in Sturgeon County, in the Industrial Heartland region north of Edmonton.

The one-gigawatt, nearly 270,000-square-metre data centre would be powered by a natural gas-fired plant to be built by a consortium that includes Calgary-based Pembina Pipeline Ltd.

It takes about 1.4 gigawatts to power Edmonton, and the proposed data centre campus could fit 33 Canadian Football League fields.

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Thursday, Jul. 9, 2026
The area of Olds, Alta., where Synapse Real Estate Corp. is planning a data centre complex with 1.4 gigawatts of natural gas-fired power generation is shown on Thursday, June 4, 2026. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Lauren Krugel

Data centre capacity could soar to 20 GW in planned projects: government document

Anja Karadeglija, The Canadian Press 6 minute read Preview

Data centre capacity could soar to 20 GW in planned projects: government document

Anja Karadeglija, The Canadian Press 6 minute read Thursday, Jul. 9, 2026

OTTAWA - A document prepared for the federal artificial intelligence minister to use when pitching international investors on Canada’s AI ecosystem identifies a massive proposed increase in Canada’s data centre capacity.

But spokespeople for the government pushed back strongly on the figure, saying it is not a projection of the capacity Canada expects to build, and the total capacity will be much less.

It says Canada currently has about 337 megawatts of AI data centre capacity, and there are more than 20 gigawatts — or 20,000 megawatts — in projects that are "under planning or development."

The number was included in a presentation prepared by a government department for Artificial Intelligence Minister Evan Solomon to use with international investors. It was obtained by The Canadian Press through access-to-information.

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Thursday, Jul. 9, 2026
Deep Sky / Facebook A rendering of what Deep Sky’s proposed Westman carbon capture site may look like.

What can you do with $200 million?

Ed Lohrenz 5 minute read Preview

What can you do with $200 million?

Ed Lohrenz 5 minute read Wednesday, Jul. 8, 2026

Let’s see if I’ve got this right. In the article Carbon capture project gains support (June 30), Julia-Simone Rutgers writes that the direct carbon capture facility proposed by Deep Sky for construction in southwestern Manitoba will cost $200 million to build.

The company claims the facility will scrub 30,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere each year and inject it 1,000 metres into the ground. To do this, it will need to draw up to 15 megawatts of power from the Manitoba Hydro grid for the first stage of the project. The project will be financed by selling carbon credits.

To put this into perspective, the Canadian industrial carbon price is set at $130 per tonne. At that price, Deep Sky will have to sell more than 1.5 million tonnes of carbon just to cover the upfront cost of building the plant. That’s over 51 years’ worth of carbon credits. And that doesn’t even cover the everyday operating costs, such as the electricity needed to run the plant.

Some studies suggest it requires about 2,000-2,500 kilowatt hours to electricity to capture one tonne of CO2 and inject it into the ground. To capture 30,000 tonnes, that’s about 60 million kWh. Even if Manitoba Hydro sells it to the facility for only $0.035/kWh, that’s an additional $70 per tonne.

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Wednesday, Jul. 8, 2026
Teck Mining Company's zinc and lead smelting and refining complex is pictured in Trail, B.C., on November 26, 2012. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck

Ottawa to invest up to $400 million in Teck critical minerals smelter in B.C.

Lauren Krugel, The Canadian Press 5 minute read Preview

Ottawa to invest up to $400 million in Teck critical minerals smelter in B.C.

Lauren Krugel, The Canadian Press 5 minute read Wednesday, Jul. 8, 2026

The federal government says it will invest up to $400 million into Teck Resources Ltd.'s critical minerals processing operations in southern B.C. as Ottawa looks to shore up supplies of metals used in the defence and green energy sectors.

"We are facing a trade war we did not ask for. We're facing the most volatile geopolitics since the end of World War II, which has led to the biggest energy crisis in modern history. We face technological change at a pace not seen in decades, mainly due to the advent of AI. And we face an accelerating clean energy transition that needs critical minerals," Tim Hodgson, the federal natural resources minister, said in Trail, B.C., on Tuesday.

"Anyone who tells you facing these challenges as a government, or as a nation, is not daunting is not telling the truth."

But Hodgson said the crises are creating an opportunity for Canada.

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Wednesday, Jul. 8, 2026
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, left, and Ontario Premier Doug Ford pose with a map of the Northern Shield pipeline proposal in Calgary, Monday, July 6, 2026. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jeff McIntosh

A look at defunct past pipeline pitches and their recent revivals

Lauren Krugel, The Canadian Press 6 minute read Preview

A look at defunct past pipeline pitches and their recent revivals

Lauren Krugel, The Canadian Press 6 minute read Tuesday, Jul. 7, 2026

CALGARY - Pipeline proposals long considered dead and buried are coming back from the grave — sort of.

Past plans to send oilsands crude east, west and south are being revived with different branding, proponents and routes. And, at least in the first two cases, the efforts are being driven by politicians rather than the private sector.

Here is a look at defunct projects of yore and their resurrected versions:

East

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Tuesday, Jul. 7, 2026
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, and Ontario Premier Doug Ford cook pancakes at the annual Stampede breakfast in Calgary, Monday, July 7, 2025. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jeff McIntosh

Premiers Smith, Ford unveil proposed west-east oil pipeline route

The Canadian Press 5 minute read Preview

Premiers Smith, Ford unveil proposed west-east oil pipeline route

The Canadian Press 5 minute read Tuesday, Jul. 7, 2026

CALGARY - Alberta Premier Danielle Smith and Ontario Premier Doug Ford unveiled Monday a route for a proposed west-east oil pipeline.

The two premiers say it would stretch 3,300 kilometres from Hardisty, Alta., to refineries in Sarnia, Ont., without crossing the U.S. border.

They made the announcement at the Calgary Stampede after the two leaders were up bright and early flipping pancakes at Smith's annual premier's breakfast.

An Ontario government brochure says the line, referred to as the Northern Shield Energy Corridor, would move 500,000 barrels of crude per day and help reduce Canada's need to import refined oil. It could be expanded to handle 800,000 barrels per day, the brochure says.

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Tuesday, Jul. 7, 2026
Cameco employees walk down a tunnel to a Jet Boring System (JBS) machine during a media tour of Cameco's Cigar Lake uranium mine in Cigar Lake, Sask., Monday, June 15, 2026. THE CANADIAN PRESSLiam Richards

Inside Saskatchewan’s Cigar Lake mine, a ’boutique’ operation with abundant uranium

Jeremy Simes, The Canadian Press 6 minute read Preview

Inside Saskatchewan’s Cigar Lake mine, a ’boutique’ operation with abundant uranium

Jeremy Simes, The Canadian Press 6 minute read Monday, Jul. 6, 2026

CIGAR LAKE, SASK. - Cessa Fern's day begins with being squished into a metal cage with 19 others, and dropped to a depth greater than the height of New York’s Empire State Building into a dark world of rock walls, pipes and wires.

It's where uranium is mined and fears are faced.

The radiation student technician had reservations about the job before taking her first trip down the elevator.

"I was like, 'No way am I going to work in the mine,'" Fern recalled in an interview.

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Monday, Jul. 6, 2026
THE CANADIAN PRESS FILES Prime Minister Mark Carney’s climate action strategy for Canada is less ambitious, more realistic.

‘Forward guidance’ on Canadian climate targets

David McLaughlin 5 minute read Preview

‘Forward guidance’ on Canadian climate targets

David McLaughlin 5 minute read Saturday, Jul. 4, 2026

At last, some honesty in Canadian climate policy

Prime Minister Mark Carney spoke the truth last week about where greenhouse gas emissions were going in Canada: up, not down. This is the first time any prime minister has stated the reality of the country’s emissions trajectory. Until now, it’s all been about putting a positive gloss on far-off reduction goals and unrealistic ambitions.

The prime minister’s second instalment of “forward guidance”, as he calls it, focused on what’s ahead on energy and climate. It was a refreshing and overdue pivot in crafting a more realistic and durable climate policy for the country.

Here’s what he said: “I want to be clear on this point. The changes we have made will mean that our emissions will be higher in the next few years than they were projected to be under the previous government’s plan. But in my judgment, that plan was not sustainable over the long term.”

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Saturday, Jul. 4, 2026
MIKE DEAL / FREE PRESS FILES Zebra mussles are considered an aquatic invasive species in Manitoba.

Zebra mussels found in Lake of the Prairies

Morgan Modjeski 3 minute read Preview

Zebra mussels found in Lake of the Prairies

Morgan Modjeski 3 minute read Friday, Jul. 3, 2026

Lake lovers in Manitoba are worried the detection of zebra mussels in Lake of the Prairies could result in restrictions that give the local economy a rough ride.

Environmental officials have found samples of zebra mussels in the larval stage in Lake of the Prairies, a manmade reservoir on the Assiniboine River that straddles the Manitoba-Saskatchewan border.

Multiple zebra mussel veligers were detected in the lake as part of Manitoba’s routine monitoring program, and corroborated by followup sampling, said the provincial environment department on Friday.

All boats and any water-related equipment of any kind used on the Lake of the Prairies, also known as the Shellmouth Reservoir, must be decontaminated before being used on another body of water, officials said.

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Friday, Jul. 3, 2026
Prime Minister Mark Carney and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith announce a proposed pipeline from Alberta to the B.C. coast in Calgary on Thursday, July 02, 2026. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Todd Korol

Environmental groups wanted to see clear decarbonization commitment in pipeline plan

David Baxter, The Canadian Press 5 minute read Preview

Environmental groups wanted to see clear decarbonization commitment in pipeline plan

David Baxter, The Canadian Press 5 minute read Sunday, Jul. 5, 2026

OTTAWA - Environmental groups say they wanted to see a more concrete commitment to decarbonization in the proposal put forward for a pipeline to the B.C. coast backed by the Alberta and federal governments.

Representatives from both the Pembina Institute and Clean Prosperity said Friday the proposal should have included a solid commitment to finalizing the Pathways carbon capture project.

"I think it's time to completely discount the notion that the Pathways project is an actual real project that's going to contribute to emission reductions," Chris Severson-Baker, the Pembina Institute's executive director, said in an interview from Calgary.

"I actually think that the prime minister putting as much stock in it without putting any conditions on proponents to actually do it will finally expose it for what it is."

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Sunday, Jul. 5, 2026
Alberta country music artist and rancher Corb Lund formally submits his
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Anti-coal mining petition led by musician Corb Lund fails in Alberta

Lisa Johnson, The Canadian Press 4 minute read Preview
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Anti-coal mining petition led by musician Corb Lund fails in Alberta

Lisa Johnson, The Canadian Press 4 minute read Sunday, Jul. 5, 2026

EDMONTON - A petition led by country musician Corb Lund to ban new coal mining on the eastern slopes of the Rockies has failed.

Alberta's election agency announced Friday that Lund's petition didn't gain enough verified signatures to move it forward.

Lund, in a statement, said it appears roughly 35,000 signatures were rejected by Elections Alberta, and he has "grave concerns" about the fairness of the process.

"We are simultaneously shocked by this outcome, yet, unfortunately, not surprised, given the continual government rule changes and roadblocks we have faced throughout this campaign," he said.

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Sunday, Jul. 5, 2026
The corporate logo of Pembina Pipeline Corp. is shown in this undated handout photo. THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO, Pembina Pipeline Corp. *MANDATORY CREDIT*

Green light for Greenlight: Pembina, partners go ahead with gas plant for data centre

Lauren Krugel, The Canadian Press 4 minute read Preview

Green light for Greenlight: Pembina, partners go ahead with gas plant for data centre

Lauren Krugel, The Canadian Press 4 minute read Friday, Jul. 3, 2026

CALGARY - Pembina Pipeline Corp. and two partners have given the go-ahead to the Greenlight Electricity Centre, a natural gas plant serving a data centre customer.

Pembina, Morgan Stanley Infrastructure Partners and Kineticor Asset Management expect the cost of the project to come in at $4.6 billion. The 932-megawatt plant would be built in Sturgeon County, part of Alberta's Industrial Heartland region north of Edmonton, with startup targeted for the second half of 2030. The companies have permits that would allow them to double capacity down the line.

Data centres house the computer hardware required to power various tech applications, and their scale has ballooned with the boom in artificial intelligence and cloud computing. The province and companies did not identify the data centre customer they're serving.

Alberta has been actively trying to court so-called hyperscale developers, like Meta and Google, to set up shop in the province, but its electricity grid currently does not have enough capacity to accommodate several such projects. So Alberta is prioritizing projects that build or contract their own power generation.

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Friday, Jul. 3, 2026

Waywayseecappo First Nation sets sights on building battery energy storage systems, renewable projects via new venture

Gabrielle Piché 5 minute read Thursday, Jul. 2, 2026

A Manitoba First Nation and former national chief are throwing their weight behind new-to-Manitoba energy storage methods amid projections of squeezed energy availability.

The province doesn’t have any utility scale battery energy storage systems. Through these, electricity is kept in electrochemical batteries until needed.

Volterra Technology creates the battery technology. It’s part of a new venture: Waywayseecappo Energy Alliance.

Other members include Waywayseecappo First Nation and Ishkonigan Inc., a consulting company founded by former Assembly of First Nations national chief Phil Fontaine. (Fontaine is a member of Sagkeeng First Nation in Manitoba.)

ASSOCIATED PRESS FILES Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel addresses Cuban Communist Party delegates in 2022 after his installation as party leader and national president.

Canada being side-swiped by Trump’s Cuba policy

Peter McKenna 5 minute read Preview

Canada being side-swiped by Trump’s Cuba policy

Peter McKenna 5 minute read Saturday, Jun. 27, 2026

Canada’s decades-long relationship with revolutionary Cuba has always been a three-country affair — with the United States frequently settling for the spurned third-wheel.

Since the early 1960s, successive U.S. governments have strenuously objected to Canadian trade and commercial engagement with the island. Officials in Washington have always believed that the Canadians were trying to make a “quick buck” at America’s expense, while simultaneously seeking to undermine the U.S. blockade of Cuba.

For almost 70 years now, Canada has had to negotiate the thorny issue of the U.S. trade embargo. Added to that was the anti-Cuba Cuban Democracy Act of 1992 and the still active 1996 Helms-Burton Law. Complicating matters further for Ottawa have been the various additions and subtractions to the unrelenting U.S. efforts to strangle the Cuban economy — particularly during the presidency of Barack Obama.

In January, U.S. President Donald Trump imposed a near-ironclad (some Russian oil is getting through), illegal fuel embargo against Cuba, using American naval vessels and U.S. Coast Guard ships. Additionally, he signed an executive order in early May to expand U.S. economic warfare, or what some call “secondary sanctions,” against those materially assisting the Cuban government.

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Saturday, Jun. 27, 2026
FILE - The Big Hole river is seen July 2011, in Twin Bridges, Mont. (AP Photo/Desmond Butler, File)

Montana DEQ works toward impairment designation for Big Hole River

Amanda Eggert/montana Free Press, The Associated Press 6 minute read Preview

Montana DEQ works toward impairment designation for Big Hole River

Amanda Eggert/montana Free Press, The Associated Press 6 minute read Thursday, Jun. 25, 2026

The Big Hole River, a blue-ribbon fishery that’s become a focal point in a years-long debate over nuisance algae growth, is poised to receive an impairment designation.

At an open-house meeting in Divide on Tuesday, the Montana Department of Environmental Quality announced that the Big Hole, a mellow freestone river critical to southwest Montana’s outdoor recreation and agriculture economies, is struggling as a result of ecologically detrimental nutrient loading.

The term DEQ is using in its discussion of the Big Hole is eutrophication, which describes the link between algae growth and excess nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus. When there’s too much algae in a river or lake, dissolved oxygen falls, imperiling fish and the aquatic life they feed on.

Algal growth is also unpopular with members of the recreating public because it can make wade-fishing a slipperier — and therefore more perilous — endeavor. And it drives down biodiversity in the macroinvertebrate population, which has repercussions for fish and other species higher up the aquatic food web. Andy Ulven, who leads DEQ’s water quality division, told Montana Free Press on Tuesday that a eutrophication listing would “formalize that there is an issue on the mainstem” of the Big Hole. He added that the agency proposal is still in draft stage and he doesn’t anticipate a final designation for the Big Hole until 2027 at the earliest.

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Thursday, Jun. 25, 2026
Hydro Ottawa’s offices on Hunt Club Road in Ottawa are shown on Tuesday, May 24, 2022. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Justin Tang

Data centres top Ottawa’s big power requests, placing pressure on local utility

Jordan Omstead, The Canadian Press 2 minute read Preview

Data centres top Ottawa’s big power requests, placing pressure on local utility

Jordan Omstead, The Canadian Press 2 minute read Thursday, Jun. 25, 2026

Hydro Ottawa's CEO says the utility is under "extraordinary pressures" as energy-hungry data centres lead a historic surge in large-scale customers seeking to connect to the power grid.

Bryce Conrad says he expects by the end of the year total grid connection requests from large-scale projects in Ottawa will exceed the average power use of the entire city's homes and businesses.

As it stands, he says 34 large projects in the connection queue have cumulative demands equivalent to about 86 per cent of the utility's average load, or just over 1,000 MW.

About 60 per cent of that comes from data centres, the infrastructure backbone of the artificial intelligence boom.

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Thursday, Jun. 25, 2026