Controls around Walkerton area wells are too restrictive say farmers
Friday, May 16, 2014
By JIM ALGIE
Diminishing nitrate levels in groundwater systems serving Walkerton-area wells justify reducing proposed controls on agricultural use of adjacent land, Bruce County Federation of Agriculture President Pat Jilesen says.
Members of the region’s source protection committee are to meet May 30 in Formosa to consider lifting a proposed designation affecting more than 100, mainly rural, properties south of Walkerton, project manager David Ellingwood said in an interview, Friday. Representatives of the Bruce County Federation of Agriculture have lobbied the committee in favour of the change.
Current source protection planning began in Ontario seven years ago following a deadly outbreak of illness from contaminated drinking water in Walkerton in May of 2000. E. coli contamination of the town’s drinking water system killed seven people and sickened hundreds more after failures in municipal water purification.
Provincial Ministry of Environment officials have approved assessment reports for the region. The proposed regional plan submitted in 2012 for watersheds in Grey, Bruce and adjacent parts of Huron and Wellington counties has yet to receive final approval.
The federation’s Jilesen has urged the source protection committee to consider new information about lower nitrate levels near Walkerton when adopting final control measures.
“It should not be an issue,” Jilesen said Friday in an interview about declining nitrates in Walkerton-area, groundwater monitoring wells. The federation has lobbied committee members hoping to avoid “some restriction on normal farming practice that would put those farms at a disadvantage compared to everybody else in Ontario,” Jilesen said.
As it stands in the proposed plan, land owners in the Walkerton well-head region could face policies restricting nitrogen applications beyond those in existing provincial nutrient management law. The affected area includes a large section of southern Bruce County south and west of Walkerton to the Huron County border.
Primary research during the first phase of source water planning showed elevated nitrate levels in some Walkerton-area monitoring wells, Ellingwood said. Researchers identified “a few occasions when there were elevated numbers and a couple showed an increasing trend in nitrates,” including some readings in excess of provincial drinking water standards.
Continued testing, however, both by Environment Ministry and protection area staff, has shown a declining trend for nitrates and no conflict with drinking water standards, Ellingwood said.
“In more recent data, the trends are all down,” he said.
Some lab testing of problem samples indicated a possible historic source in either anhydrous ammonia fertilizer or pig manure. Farmers on the source water committee and the Bruce federation say anhydrous ammonia has not been used in the area “for quite a while,” Ellingwood said.
Among source water protection plans in development in Ontario, only three have received provincial approval to date: one in Niagara region and two in northern Ontario: Lakehead near Thunder Bay and the Mattagami area near Timmins. Ellingwood expects final plan recommendations for the Grey-Bruce region to be ready for public comment this fall for final Environment Ministry approval “sometime in 2015.”
The source protection committee’s May 30 meeting in Formosa is to consider the impact of new findings as well as staff research about what Ellingwood described as “nitrate bubbles.”
“Wells showing the trends for nitrate are decreasing which is good,” Ellingwood said. “The committee can decide whether this is still an issue,” he said.
“Based on what the committee decides, if it’s to decide it’s no longer an issue that concerns then, as staff, we have to process that back through the ministry,” Ellingwood said. BF