Ministry water enforcement variable says OFVGA

Wednesday, May 26, 2010

by SUSAN MANN

Farmers in the Innisfil Creek area of Simcoe County have banded together and developed innovative water-taking practices so they can continue using creek water for irrigation.

“We realized in 2009 if we didn’t do something they (the Environment Ministry) were just going to take the permits right away altogether,” says Ralph MacKenzie, chair of the Innisfil Creek Water Users Association. “Then we can’t irrigate even though we have more than $200,000 worth of equipment sitting in the field.”

There are slightly more than 40 users who tap into the Innisfil Creek for irrigation and they’re located in the Environment Ministry’s Central Region, which covers Halton, Peel, York and Durham regions plus Simcoe County. Innisfil Creek is a major supplier of water to the Nottawasaga River in Simcoe County.

The nine-member committee is made up of market gardening, sod and potato farmers plus government officials, says MacKenzie, who grows cash crops on his 500-acre farm south of Alliston.  It was formed in response to the government’s increased emphasis to develop more environmentally friendly practices.

In the water irrigation area, MacKenzie says there’s push from the ministry to try other practices rather than “putting pipes in rivers to draw water.” They include digging ponds or deep wells, or farmers sharing water-taking sites. But many of those practices don’t work or are very expensive to implement, he explains.

MacKenzie says it can cost more than $100,000 just to drill a 200 to 300-foot well, which is needed to get adequate water volumes for crop irrigation. “You have to get into an aquifer that has a recovery time in the well equal to what you pump out of there.” There are also costs for pumps and generators to run the well. 

Some of the innovative irrigation practices Innisfil Creek-area farmers have developed include switching to crops requiring less water, irrigating at night so there’s less evaporation and working in cooperation with each other to coordinate usage. For example, MacKenzie says if he wants to begin irrigating he’ll phone an upstream user to find out when they’re shutting off so he can start. That way creek users aren’t irrigating at the same time.

Environment Ministry spokesperson Kate Jordan says government water taking regulations require all people taking more than 50,000 litres of water a day to get a permit.  Farmers are exempt from the permit application fee. They also don’t have to pay for the water they take. But they do have to pay for any studies or impact assessments required by the ministry as part of the permit application. High consumption industrial and commercial users pay $3.71 per million litres for the water they take.

MacKenzie says he’s concerned the ministry might start charging farmers for irrigation water but Jordan says they don’t have any plans to do that.

On the Ontario Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association web site it says there are differences in how the regulations on water taking permits are being interpreted in Central Region compared to other ministry regions in Ontario. And those differences are causing difficulties for growers applying for permits.

George Shearer, who’s on leave from his position as surface water specialist with the Environment Ministry to be the Association’s surface water specialist, says Central Region has a very stringent approach to the water taking permit program compared to other regions. “There is no consistency between the regions associated with administering the permit to take water program.”

Permit applications are reviewed on a case-by-case basis, Jordan explains. 

When ministry officials review an application they look at the type, size and location of the water taking equipment plus the condition of the water and the demand. “All that information is basically to make a risk-based approach to classifying and evaluating the applications that come in,” she says.

The ministry uses the risk-based approach to ensure water taking can be done so it doesn’t pose any risk to the environment, she says.

Jordan says it isn’t that there are differences in how the regulations are being interrupted but “definitely there’s variances in how each of the applications are reviewed and assessed because each application will be different.”

Asked to comment on the Association’s concern that differences in regulation interpretation are causing difficulties for growers, Jordan says all regions “are aware that there are challenges the farmers may face in trying to meet our requirements.”

In Central Region, the ministry is working in partnership in Simcoe County with the farm community, ministry of agriculture and the Nottawasaga Valley Conservation Authority to develop a water management strategy for the watershed. “The goal of the study is to establish environmental requirements and look at solutions for overcoming any water shortage problems encountered by farmers or irrigators,” she says. The study began in 2008 and will be completed later this year with preliminary results out in the summer, 2011.

Meanwhile the Innisfil Creek water users committee is setting up a tour, scheduled for July 7, for government officials involved in reviewing water permit applications to show them the benefits of irrigation to crops and what farmers are doing to help control water levels and help the environment. 

MacKenzie says some government officials who review water permit applications have never seen farmers’ irrigation equipment. BF