Focus on the Environment: Stiff fine for manure spill a sign of things to come in Ontario
Friday, February 29, 2008
A $32,000 penalty for a Huron County farmer represents 'a sea change' in the way polluters are dealt with and another reason for farmers to ensure they are environmentally responsible
by DON STONEMAN
Huron County farmer Piet Peeters may or may not be the first farmer to run afoul of new and stiffer fines by spilling manure on a farm near Zurich in July, 2006. But he has certainly drawn the most attention since his guilty plea in a Goderich courtroom in late January.
The hog farmer was fined $32,000 for polluting a municipal drain and a Lake Huron beach with manure in July of 2005. Ministry of Environment prosecutor Laura
Webber describes higher minimum fines as "a sea change" in how the province deals with polluters and predicts that the trend will continue.
Webber says that, under the higher penalties for polluting waters, which came into place in June, 2005, an individual convicted of a first offense faces a mandatory fine of at least
$5,000 per day, doubling to $10,000 for the second offense. Peeters' offense was his first, but the judge counted four days between the time the spill occurred and when fish were found dead a few kilometres away at the edge of Lake Huron. The penalty was mitigated because Peeters willingly helped with the cleanup, pled guilty and showed remorse in court.
The farmer's lawyer, Valerie M'Garry, was unavailable for an interview. But some farmers, like Huron Federation of Agriculture president Steve Thompson, describe Peeters' fine, plus victim surcharges, as punitive.
"It will not play well in the farm community. It's sort of like a one two punch," Thompson told Better Farming. If a farmer makes an oversight he will be assessed "a substantial amount of his annual income."
The fines double again for a third offense and the way the law is written, Webber says, there doesn't even have to be a fish kill as an indication of an "adverse effect." The fact that hog farming is unprofitable is incidental. "We can't hide behind that," Thompson said.
"The size of the fine is all the more reason for farmers to be involved in making sure that agriculture is a responsible participant in the whole environmental scene," says Thompson, who started taking part in a local environmental working committee last fall in the Municipality of Bluewater, where the spill took place.
Also on the committee is local federation of agriculture director Joe Vermunt, who expects a lot of pressure on livestock farmers this summer from cottage owners and year-round home owners along the lake. He says that he's tired of the "finger pointing" at agriculture when there are beach closures. "They just keep talking about how agriculture is the problem," he says.
Along with the Bluewater Shoreline Ratepayers Association is a similar group from Bayfield. The Bayfield group wants the beaches to get Blue Flag status, an internationally conferred mark of approval which its proponents feel can be used as a marketing tool. Clean water is one of the prerequisites.
The Bayfield group blames pollution from the Bayfield River for beach closures and last year sought a moratorium on livestock barn building in the Bayfield River watershed, which stretches to the edge of Perth County east of Seaforth.
Thompson sees water quality as a growing policy concern on a watershed basis, rather than relating to individual farms, and wants funding for reliable studies to determine the sources of pollution. He says that it will be up to the Ontario Federation of Agriculture to determine where it should lobby to make it a priority and get funding for testing.
Thompson says that the committee is unique and agriculture has to have representatives there. Otherwise, ratepayers will "roll over a municipal council, which wouldn't be responsible."
Thompson says that the solution is going to take time. The ratepayers don't understand how government works, Thompson says. "It's not going to work as fast as they want. Government works slowly, especially when something hasn't been done before." BF
Sidebar: Manure spills cause most fish calls, says MOE lawyer
Ministry of Environment (MOE) lawyer Laura Webber says that some remarks she made at the courthouse in Goderich when Peeters was sentenced were misrepresented in a local newspaper. Her remarks referred to the number of spills that have been recorded in Ontario since 1999. However, she stands by her assertions that, while manure-related incidents are a small percentage of the total number of spills reported in a year, they cause a majority of fish kills caused by pollution.
She attributes this to the MOE's Spills Action Centre, which collects reports about spills of all types in the province, and gets her information from a website maintained by the Upper Thames River Conservation Authority - http://www.thamesriver.on.ca
/Landowner_Programs/P3.htm
The site says: "Across Ontario an average of 5,025 spills are reported each year, and one-fifth of these spills pollute a watercourse. While oils and fuels account for the majority of spilled materials, manure spills have been the leading cause of fish kills in the province since 1988. This is followed by chemical, oil/fuel/gas, and sediment spills. Fourteen per cent of all reported manure spills resulted in fish kills."
The site has a link to a chart showing manure spills between 1988 and 1998. Webber says that, since the web page appears to have been updated recently, she believes the information is still accurate.
A chart on the MOE's website (http://www.ene.gov.on.ca/programs/6039e.pdf) indicates the sources of spills in 2005. There are 37 categories of spill sources and three of those categories relate to manure and nutrient land applications, manure storage tanks, and handling equipment.
The document concludes that the second largest category of spills, with 23 per cent, was related to motor vehicles. The largest number of spills fit in the category of "not determined/not anticipated," which relates to spills to storm sewers where the source of the spill couldn't be determined. BF
Sidebar: Fines stiffer still against farm corporations
According to court documents, on July 10, 2006, Piet Peeters used a 15,000-litre spreader tank with a vacuum hose to bypass a plugged line and move manure between leased finishing barns and an adjacent storage pit. While he was unloading the first of three loads, the unsecured unloading pipe came out of the manure tank and an unknown amount of liquid ran across a soybean field and into a field tile.
The spill didn't appear to hurt the crop. However, two days later a 5.5-inch rainfall carried the spill through tiles and municipal drains and a ravine to a nearby Lake Huron beach north of St. Joseph. Conservation authority staff who saw dead fish and smelled the manure reported the spill. Peeters had not done so.
The fines could have been worse, since Peeters answered only to charges of polluting waters against himself. Charges against Piet and Coby Peeters Family Farm Inc. were withdrawn. And that was good for the farm.
Fines are tougher when the offender is a legal entity such as a corporation, and that includes incorporated farms, MOE lawyer Laura Webber confirms. (She adds that a farming partnership is not a legal entity.)
For a corporation facing a first offense for causing an adverse effect, the fine starts at $25,000 a day. For a second offense the fine is double that, and the minimum fine is $100,000 for a company with two previous offenses.
"Maximums are very significant and you can go to jail," Webber told Better Farming. Jail time goes to a maximum of five years less a day. "I can't imagine a pig farm attracting that kind of penalty," Webber says.
The fines are higher for corporations "because of the perceived shield which a corporation may or may not provide," Huron Federation of Agriculture president Stephen Thompson says. "My understanding is that (liability) goes right through the corporation to the directors and officers anyway."
He says that farms are usually incorporated for tax purposes, not as a shield against liability.
Victims of the spill could include operators of a bed and breakfast, a nearby home owner, and people who couldn't use the beach while it was closed, says Webber says. She adds that, while dead fish are a clear indication that something is wrong, the Water Resources Act is written in such a way that a spill doesn't have to kill fish for a farmer to run afoul of the law. BF