Water protection plans will hammer agriculture warns expert

Sunday, February 28, 2010

by BETTER FARMING STAFF

A source water protection report on the Maitland River Valley in Huron County gives the heavily concentrated livestock producing area a relatively clean bill of health. But Ontario Cattlemen’s Association water quality specialist Chris Attema thinks farmers elsewhere in the province might not be as fortunate.

Seven reports from 36 source water protection zones have been completed and released so far. Attema expects the rest of the reports will be finished and released within a couple of months. Attema predicts farmers in areas north of Hwy 9 and east of Hwy 400 won’t fare as well when reports for their areas are released.
 
Attema says there will be issues where municipalities get drinking water from rivers and wells in fractured bedrock. He advises farmers to make an effort to look at the reports and maps when they are released. “It is in your interest” to see if the properties you own or manage are included, he says.

The 300-page report on the Maitland Valley rated only nine manure storage systems as “significant threats” to drinking water. Property owners will be notified by letter in the next few months. “Nobody is going to want to receive a letter like that," he says.  Still, “the scale and scope are much narrower than our fears,” when source water protection programs were first outlined.

Attema warns that some reports he has seen are “biased” against agriculture. "Agriculture drainage is treated much differently than urban drainage . . . Livestock pathogens are treated much differently than livestock or companion animal pathogens," he says.

Farmers need to look at source water protection as preventive maintenance he says, adding that those who benefit aren’t the ones who pay.

Attema says so far the province has invested more than $100 million in source water protection and he expects that the bill will reach $120 million before the source water plans are published.

But no one knows what it will cost to implement.
 
There's no budget, there's no provision for compensation to landowners in the legislation, and the province is carrying a deficit of more than $24 billion. "You can come to your own conclusions" as to who will pay, he says. BF