Better Farming - November 2016

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Better Farming November 2016 FarmNews First > 23
Little did Larry Van Severen know when he was
growing up on the family’s tobacco farm near
Langton, Norfolk County that his enjoyment of a
neighbour’s swamp would one day help inspire an ambi-
tious effort to protect a much larger body of water.
Back then, Van Severen enjoyed the swamp for its
unending supply of frogs and snakes and opportunities to
muck around.
The neighbour, however, didn’t share Van Severen’s
affection for the spot and in the 1960s filled in the area. A
municipal drain soon followed to serve about 600 acres; it
travelled through the back part of the Van Severen family
farm.
In the early 2000s, Van Severen applied for a grant
under a now-defunct water-supply enhancement program
to transform a two-acre area through which the drain ran
on his farm into wetland.
“We took a 24-inch underground drainage pipe,
brought it above ground and created — with motor
scrapers and draglines and stuff like that — a diverse
depth of water. We put a little island in the middle and
shallow areas and deep areas,” says the now-retired farmer
who is in his late 60s. The project cost more than $30,000
(two-thirds of which came from his own pocket, he says).
He and his wife, Dolores, planted bulrushes, lilies and
other native plants to filter the water.
Today, the frogs have returned.
So, too, have county drainage staff to occasionally grab
water samples from the municipal drain both up and
downstream.
The drainage staff discovered in the samples at Van
Severen’s wetland and at another restored wetland that
phosphorus and nitrate levels were lower downstream.
The findings could point to a way to employ such projects,
and perhaps even municipal drains themselves, to prevent
dissolved phosphorus in field runoff from reaching Lake
Erie.
The wetlands are among 30 projects of different scales
that the county has helped to introduce since the mid-
1980s, says Bill Mayes, Norfolk’s senior drainage superin-
tendent. (The projects started as a way to protect source
water in the municipality.)
“Within the wetland there is uptake of the phosphorus
and nitrate,” Mayes says. “How much, everybody argues.
‘Oh you’re not getting the sample at the right time.’ But
when you see two numbers side by side, and they’re
different, there’s obviously something happening.”
Provincial ministries tell the municipality that the
numbers are not overly significant. Nevertheless, Mayes
says the county is now seeking partnerships to explore
doing more in-depth study.
In the meantime, the county’s findings add fuel to a
one-of-a-kind partnership between two other organiza-
After the field and before the lake
Effort to recoup phosphorus runoff faces hurdles and unknowns but could deliver cost savings to
farmers while protecting open waters, say organizers.
by MARY BAXTER
RUNOFF CONTROL
Water is being pumped from a municipal drain into
a canal inWallaceburg that feeds into Lake St. Clair.