When David Suzuki speaks, people listen. That’s why an upcoming episode ofThe Nature of Things,focusing on the decaying health of Lake Winnipeg, could bring attention to agricultural practices in Western Canada.
An independent filmmaker is producing the show for the CBC, with Suzuki serving as the narrator for the episode that will run early in 2011.
“The goal, essentially, is to piece together as a puzzle the different components that are affecting (Lake Winnipeg),” said Paul Kemp, president and executive producer of Stornoway Productions in Toronto. “To basically present it as a mystery that is occurring on the lake.”
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Kemp, who was raised in Manitoba, pitched the story idea to producers at The Nature of Thingspartly because his family has a cottage at Victoria Beach on Lake Winnipeg.
Over the last 15 years, Kemp and many other cottage owners have witnessed larger and more frequent algal plumes during the summer months.
“This is the lake that science forgot…. No one was looking at this lake until the mid ’90s when the beaches started getting eroded and there was more and more of these green plumes coming up,” said Kemp.
One question he’s trying to answer is who and what produces the excessive amount of phosphorus that has accumulated in Lake Winnipeg.
“If a cattle farmer in Alberta is letting his cow defecate into a stream, it might take a number of years to get through the system, but that phosphorus load will eventually work its way through the system,” he said. “The question is, how much is it affecting it?”
Kemp has learned that hog producers have shouldered an excessive amount of blame for the eutrophication of Lake Winnipeg. Eutrophication refers to excessive nutrients that cause dense plant life, which kills animal life from a lack of oxygen.
“The science suggests that the regulations (on hog operations) actually work fairly well,” Kemp said. ” A lot of the hog farmers I spoke to… were quite concerned that the cattle industry hasn’t been regulated to the same extent as the hog industry has been.”
Kemp also learned that wetlands are a major piece of the puzzle.
“Water specialists are saying keep it (water) on (the land) longer, because it’s the flush and the speed at which things are getting into the river systems that are the issue,” he said. “We talked to some farmers who (also) told us that.”
It never hurts to focus national attention on a provincial issue, said William Barlow, chair of the Lake Winnipeg Stewardship Board.
“It is a national issue. It’s an international issue, given the nature of the watershed … four provinces and four lakes. It’s one of the world’s great lakes, the 10th largest freshwater lake in the world,” he said.
