HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2002-09-11, Page 13THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 11. 2002. PAGE 13
Full house for nutrient management hearing
By Keith Roulston
Citizen publisher
There was a full house at the
Clinton Legion, Friday, when the
second in a series of hearings was
held regarding the first two proposed
regulations under the Nutrient
Management Act.
Though the presenters included
everyone from a representative of
the Greater Grand Bend Community
Association to the vice-president of
the Ontario Federation of
Agriculture, the meeting had little
acrimony with most wanting
clarifications to the regulations, not
wholesale changes.
Helen Johns, Minister of
Agriculture and Food explained that
both OMAF and the Ministry of
Environment are taking part in . the
hearings. She explained that since it
took so long to get the Nutrient
Management Act passed, it had been
.decided to get a few of the
regulations published as soon as
possible so farmers could know
something was being done and they
could comment. The next set of
regulations will be issued in late
September or early October and the
final set in March in expectation of
implementing the regulations in
April, she said.
George Garland, an engineering
and technology specialist with
OMAF in Guelph explained that
OMAF will be in charge of issuing
certificates to farmers while MOE
will be in charge of enforcement.
There will be staff training for the
MOE officers to help them
understand agriculture better, he
assured.
The key measure in the new way
of nutrient management planning is
the "nutrient unit", Garland said. A
nutrient unit is the number of
animals housed or pastured at one
time that will provide fertility for
one acre of crop.
Farms will be categorized by the
number of nutrient units (NU).
Category one farms will produce I -
30 NU; category two, 31-150;
category three, 151-299 and
category four, 300 or more NU.
The largest farms, category four,
will have until 2004 to create and
implement a nutrient management
plan (NMP). Category three farms
will have until March 2005, category
two until March 2006 and category
one until March 2008. All new barns
must immediately comply.
While the act covers all forms of
nutrients, including chemical
fertilizers, sewage sludge and pulp
and paper wastes, the first
regulations apply primarily to
livestock manure, Garland said.
The next set of regulations will
define the categories of non-
livestock farm, municipal and
industrial generators of nutrients, he
said. It will start to layout the goal of
phasing out the application on land
of untreated septage from septic
tanks. It will encourage alternative
treatments.
The third set of regulations in the
spring will deal with the exclusion of
livestock from watercourses, and
deal with agricultural washwater and
on-farm biproducts such as scraps
from fruit and vegetable operations.
In commenting on the regulations,
Scott Tousaw, senior planner with.
the Huron County planning and
development department said he
found the nutrient unit explanation
confusing and in need of
clarification. The measurement of
nitrogen and phosphorus and their
build up in the soil could, over time,
affect the amount of land base
farmers might need, he warned.
Gary Haak of the Huron branch of
the Christian Farmers Federation of
Ontario worried that the nutrient unit
definition might encourage farmers
to grow crop after crop of corn,
because it uses up the most nitrogen.
This would be particularly tempting
for hog farmers, he said, but corn
after corn has been shown to be bad
for the soil.
Don McCabe of Lambton County,
representing the 21,000-member
Ontario Corn Producers Association,
said he supported the ministry's plan
to conduct an economic impact
study for the new regulations but he
called for a stakeholder advisory
group to help draft what questions
should be asked.
McCabe also called for the
ministry's I n Man nutrient
management computer program to
be adapted to work with precision
agriculture systems. "We want to
make sure that crop technology is
not held back by regulations," he
said.
Alex Westerhout, a Clinton-area
broiler chicken producer said he was
not comfortable with the underlying
sense in the regulations that large
farms are more of an environmental
risk than small farms. As well, "I
don't want to see manure change
from a valuable, resource to
something I have to pay to rid of."
That theme was picked up by Ron
Bonnett, vice-president of the
Ontario Federation of Agriculture.
"Manure is a resource," he said.
"Don't start looking at it as if it were
a contaminant."
That view of manure as pollutant
seemed to bother Karl Chittka,
president of the Grey County
Federation of Agriculture. "I always
felt in the past I was a steward of the
land," he said. "With pressure from
non-farmers I'm sometimes marked
as a polluter of the land."
That outlook was illustrated by
Betty Duffield of the Greater Grand
Bend Community Association who
said the government should have
imposed a moratorium on the
construction of large intensive
livestock facilities until the
regulations were in place. She found
it "perplexing" that sewage
treatment was required for human
sewage but not livestock.
But _Ripley-area corn producer
Doug Eadie saw just the opposite
side of that question, wondering why
a farmer who had a manure spill into
a creek would be prosecuted but
municipal waste treatment plants are
allowed to by-pass treatment in
cases of heavy rains and discharge
untreated sewage into waterways.
"Is that going to be addressed?" he
asked.
Stan Eby representing the Bruce
County Cattlemen's Association said
the first two regulations make it
seem like the Manure Act not the
Nutrient Management Act.
"Hopefully these regulations will
improve water quality," he said.
Perhalps Jayne Dietrich, president
of the Bruce County Federation of
Agriculture summed up the hopes of
most of the farmers present. "Please
make the paperwork as painless as
possible."
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environment
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