The Rural Voice, 1999-05, Page 20un. sand, cool water —S
the combination adds up
to a growing industry in
Huron County as more and
more people seek to escape
the city heat by coming to the
county's beaches. So when
many of those beaches were
closed weekend after weekend
because of high bacterial
levels, concern was bound to
surface.
When the closed beaches
coincided with a change in
livestock farming that featured
lager and larger units. fingers
were pointed at the most
visible source. There is even a
threat of a $I billion lawsuit
against the pork industry and
the provincial government.
But a study by Dr. Douglas
Joy of the University of
Guelph, released earlier this
year, provided more questions
than answers. Working on
behalf of the Huron
Environmental Farm Coalition, Joy
and his research assistant Shelley
Bonte Gelok pulled together
available data gathered over the past
25 years. The Maitland Valley
Conservation Authority, Ausable
Bayfield Conservation Authority,
OMAFRA, Huron and Lambton
health units and municipal staff all
co-operated in helping to provide
necessary information.
Funded through the National Soil
and Water Conservation Program, the
researchers gathered and analysed
information collected by the
conservation authorities; records of
waste water treatment plants in the
county (and outside the county if the
plants emptied into waterways that
flowed through the county);
OMAFRA data on agricultural soils
and health unit records of beach
closures.
Those records showed there is
indeed a problem with beach water
quality along the Lakeshore,
particularly in the north end of the
county. Every beach in the county
was over the pollution standards at
least some time during each season.
For instance in the nine-year span for
which water test records were
studied, the beaches at Amberley and
Goderich exceeded provincial
standards for bacteria 45 per cent of
16 THE RURAL VOICE
Don't go near
the water
There's plenty of evidence water at
Huron County's beaches is polluted, but
a study to find out why discovers more
questions than answers
40106
the time. In 1996, the main beach at
Goderich exceeded standards in 69
per cern of the tests.
The worst sites for water pollution
were at Goderich, Amberley and Port
Albert, all fed by the Maitland River
or Nine Mile River watersheds. Since
these rivers flow through the area of
highest livestock density in the
county, suspicion might fall on
livestock operations as the culprit,
yet the contradictions beg more
questions. For instance, when all
watersheds in the county were
compared, fecal coliform (bacteria)
concentration was heaviest in the
south, moderate in the central area
and the north in Howick Township,
and best in the mid -north and east,
precisely the areas with the highest
livestock density.
But those figures too can be
deceptive, Joy pointed out when he
released the report. The figures deal
with the concentration of coliform in
the water, not the total number of
coliform. The streams in the southern
part of the county, where the land is
flatter, move slowly with less water
flow and so the concentration is
higher. The northern rivers have
higher water flows and so the river
systems are flushed more frequently,
diluting the concentration of bacteria
by sweeping it out into the lake.
While the southern rivers had the
highest concentration of bacteria,
there was the least bacteria at the
beaches in the south end of the
county.
For livestock in general, Joy
found little correlation between
water quality and. livestock
density. The Little and North and
Middle tributaries of the
Maitland that have the highest
concentration of livestock were
not the highest concentrations of
pollutants. There was a weak
correlation between swine
density and water quality with
the areas with the first, third,
fourth and fifth highest density
were four of the five areas with
the highest pollution counts.
Strangely, the highest correlation
between livestock density and
water quality was found where
the density of poultry operations
was greatest. Poultry isn't
usually one of the areas where
fingers are pointed most readily.
But if questions could arise
because of these figures, the data also
showed areas of highest
concentrations of pollutants were in
the areas of highest amounts of
improved farmland. But Joy notes
that areas that are flat are easiest to
develop for both human and
livestock habitation. "Therefore it is
not surprising that it was not possible
to determine whether human
influence or livestock was the
primary cause of the degradation of
surface water quality. However, it is
possible to predict that as human and
livestock densities increase, there
will be an adverse affect on water
quality."
In analyzing the information
available, Joy said there was a
correlation between the density of
human population and water quality,
at least in streams. The three river
basins with the highest human
population densities, the Ausable
River, Gullies and Bayfield River
Basins, also consistently had the
highest concentrations of total
phosphorus, fecal coliform and
nitrate.
Again the study overturned some
perceptions about human and
livestock population trends. For
instance, while the human population
increased from 51,000 in 1971 to