The Rural Voice, 2003-05, Page 42ifil er source protection will_
become an Issue,irural areas in . --
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New York.
Protecting the water
Water source protection on a watershed -wide basis is new to Ontario,
introduced in the Walkerton Inquirg, but farmers in upstate New York have
been living with the issue for bears
By Keith Roulston
When Justice Dennis
O'Connor presented the
second part of his report
into the Walkerton water tragedy a
year ago, one of his
recommendations didn't get a lot of
attention: protection of water sources
under a watershed -wide basis.
Aside from proposals in the initial
regulations under the Nutrient
Management Act that would have put
restrictions on spreading of manure
or fertilizer within a restricted
distance of a private well and even
further from a municipal well, few
people have taken notice of the
O'Connor recommendations.
O'Connor wrote: "A strong
protection program offers a wide
variety of benefits. It lowers risk
cost-effectively because keeping
contaminants out of drinking water
sources is an efficient way of keeping
them out of drinking water. This is
38 THE RURAL VOICE
particularly so because some
contaminants are not effectively
removed by using standard treatment
methods. As a result, protecting
drinking water sources can in some
instance, be less expensive than
treating contaminated water.
Moreover, protecting sources is the
only type of protection available to
some consumers — at present many
rural residents drink untreated
groundwater from wells. The
protection of those groundwater
sources is the only barrier in their
drinking water systems."
Government officials have not
released any proposals for how this
recommendation will be
implemented but since farm and rural
land is the main source of drinking
water, farmers and rural residents
will be on the front line of issue.
While Ontario's plans aren't
developed yet, farmers in upstate
New York have been dealing with
the issue for years. Recently, Victor
Brunette, a native of Eastern Ontario
is who currently the Forestry
Program Manager for the Watershed
Agricultural Council in Walton, New
York, explained the situation for
farmers in the Catskill Mountains
area, source of the drinking water for
nine million New Yorkers. A series
of six reservoirs in the Catskill,
Delaware watersheds, plus another in
the Croton Watershed on the east
side of the Hudson River, delivers
1.4 billion gallons of high quality
drinking water to the city each day,
one of the world's largest surface
water drinking water storage and
supply systems. Concern over the
safety of that water has had a big
effect on the 350 dairy and livestock
farms in the region, though they are
in a relatively isolated and thinly
populated area 125 miles from New