Editors Note: The magazine report in August accurately reflects the public record on sewage bypasses and spills as compiled by the provincial government.

Editors Note: Ralph Winfield says he will need more details to solve your specific problems. We are passing your letter along to him.

     Your "Sewage Double Standard" article is one of the most powerful environmental commentaries that I have read. It has "award" written all over it. Unfortunately, few of the 98 per cent of our population who are not farmers will have the opportunity to read it. Is it not time for a comprehensive environmental audit to be conducted by the provincial and federal governments?
This magnificent country that is Canada is being negatively impacted each day by every one of us as we work, live travel and relax. It serves no one merely to point an accusing finger at everyone else or at a particular municipality or industry, including agriculture. As a nation, we can only start to stabilize our environment when every Canadian understands his or her individual contribution to the problem and sincerely seeks and implements individual solutions.
Carl Moore, Past Chair
Ontario Pork
Embro

     Better Farming is a great magazine, especially your last two issues. I circulated copies of "The Sewage Double Standard" in lunchrooms at major industries in the Windsor area. That's the only way non-farmers will ever get the real story. Urban-based media are heavily biased against farmers and do their best to slant stories against the food producers who are working to feed them. I've seen several city reporters flatly refuse to print facts or photograph evidence reflecting badly on urbanites actions with farmland.
I was unaware of plans to change the law regarding endangered species until I read your October issue. In our area, farmers are facing interference with their operations not dissimilar to the shutdown of the hay field over a bird which you described. The only difference is we are dealing with wetland legislation. Under existing regulations, nearly every farm in Essex County could potentially be declared a wetland, effectively halting any farming. Yet farmers are sitting back saying 'it isn't going to happen to me.'
They're wrong.
William Borland
Harrow

     Everyone in the agricultural community knows there is a problem with sewage sludge. Finally someone has put all the information together from the whole province to show how big the problem is.
We had a nutrient management plan (NMP) meeting in Oxford and your magazine was noted. We have been trying to get the county to look at this issue, but so far they have only been interested in the NMP plans for farmers and how this would improve water quality. For your information, the city of Woodstock separates its solids at the plant and then delivers them to the landfill site near here because they are too high in some element to apply to land. The guys at the dump try and put it on the top of the pile as cover and say it grows great tomatoes.
Definitely a good edition with timely articles. Keep up the good work.
John de Bruyn
Salford

     I sincerely hope that farmers will be fined for pollution by manure -- and municipalities for discharges of sewage.
Contrary to your article, with the exception of recent federal infrastructure dollars, municipalities generally did not get provincial funding to upgrade their sewage and water systems. Because the money had to come from property taxes or increased water rates, municipal councils tended to have a lack of political nerve, and the necessary investments were never made. The threat of fines would give those councillors finally an excuse to hike the water rates (and Mike Harris might even net a few kudos from environmentalists). Even the City of Toronto, which is spending hundreds of millions of dollars on containing overflows of downtown's 120-year old combined sanitary/storm sewers, should be driven by the threat of fines to go faster. It's roughly $400/year household water rate could surely bear more increases!
As to the many medieval-style rural septic systems, while upgrades obviously cost money, the fund-starved CURB (Clean Up Rural Beaches) program clearly showed that intelligence in the form of better management practices is just as important. Intelligence is free. The threat of fines would wonderfully sharpen it.
Cities or farmers, we've fouled our nests for too long and too many of us are still thinking the mess will go away. Let's lobby the province for fines which will motivate us to clean up Ontario's water in a hurry, so we can run a tap and our animals can drink safely, everywhere in the province.
Ila Bossons, City Councillor
Toronto

     Would it be possible to have your permission to reprint several copies of the sewage story and chart (with credit) from your website to give to our county councillors? They seem to have the idea that if they ban liquid manure all their problems will be solved.
Dale Ketcheson

Farming deserves better
     You can hardly imagine my chagrin upon reading the article "Don't wait for the financial crunch before seeing your bank manager." (Better Farming, October, 2000) That article ended with the less than encouraging words: "Farmers have an opportunity to pick up off-farm work to tide things over."
No other group of working people, or no other industry, would tolerate being told that it needs to pick up an additional job to offset low returns. However, that's what farmers receiving $40 a tonne for wheat are advised to do.
The farming industry is innovative, productive and responsible. It deserves better.
Bob Bedggood
President, CHristian Farmers Federation of Ontario