The Manitoba government’s plan to reduce phosphorus levels in Lake Winnipeg by 50 percent is a noble goal but probably not realistic, says a University of Manitoba soil scientist.
Premier Greg Selinger released a highly anticipated plan June 2 to save Lake Winnipeg.
The lake is suffering from unsustainably high phosphorus levels, which are choking the oxygen and life out of the lake.
Don Flaten said the plan has merit, but he has reservations about the objectives.
“The province’s declaration that it would like to reduce phosphorus loading by 50 percent is an extremely ambitious target.”
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He said the critical flaw in the province’s scheme is that 50 percent of all phosphorus entering Lake Winnipeg originates outside of Manitoba. Water from Saskatchewan, Alberta, Ontario, Minnesota and North Dakota also flows into the world’s 10th largest lake.
However, he said the plan is reasonable.
“I was relieved, I guess, when I looked at the plan itself. It includes a lot of programs that are already underway.”
The plan focuses on three key elements:
• limiting the amount of hog manure that enters the lake by banning hog barn expansion that doesn’t use advanced manure treatment technology and enacting a permanent ban on winter manure spreading;
• investing in sewage treatment plants;
• protecting wetlands that keep nutrients out of the lake, including the Netley-Libau Marsh at the south end of Lake Winnipeg.
Flaten said the measures used in the plan aren’t radical and shouldn’t significantly affect most of Manitoba’s 600 hog producers.
“Most producers have already applied the practices that are going to become more rigidly enforced.”
Nonetheless, the Manitoba Pork Council issued a news release noting that once again the Manitoba government is playing up the theme that the hog industry is the villain in the Lake Winnipeg story.
The council said the industry is willing to do its part to clean up the lake, but Manitoba hog farmers contribute only a fraction of the phosphorus entering the lake.
“Lake Winnipeg Stewardship Board information indicates that all of agriculture in the watershed contributes just 15 percent of the phosphorus going into the lake, and pork production accounts for 1.5 percent of that,” it said.
The council released its own sustainability plan earlier this year, which includes multiple steps to reduce phosphorus contributions from hog manure.
Flaten said the government is pointing the finger directly at hog farmers.
“The rhetoric targets the hog industry in particular, with no mention of any other part of the agriculture sector,” he said.
“It isolates the hog industry, in the premier’s words, as the largest single contributor to Lake Winnipeg’s problems, which is probably not technically correct…. The rhetoric associated with the announcement is a lot more disconcerting than the program itself.”
