RIDGEVILLE, Man. – Les Felsch knows what happens when no one controls water.
“It all ends up down here,” said Felsch, who farms beside a drainage channel that often overflows onto his fields. “We have only a narrow timeframe to seed and sometimes we seed too early just to avoid the chance that it’ll flood,” said Felsch, who farms just north of the U.S. border in the Red River Valley.
“You don’t like seeing a plugged drain delaying your seeding.”
Felsch is like thousands of farmers in Manitoba who deal with drainage, supply and quality of water. He needs his fields drained and dry. Hog farmers need a consistent supply of clean water to keep their animals alive and healthy. Potato farmers can produce little without the irrigation water on which their industry is built.
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Water is a big issue across Manitoba, and the government is bringing in legislation to protect the province’s water supply and rationalize the laws that control access to and impact on water.
The legislation, called the Water Protection Act, will commit the government to develop watershed-based control of the water that flows through the province. Its goal is to ensure adequate supplies of good quality water for everyone. That’s something most people and most farmers agree with.
Felsch is pleased with the focus on watershed-based management, which could stop every rural municipality from dumping its water downstream regardless of the impact on others.
But many worry that the Water Protection Act, however well intentioned, will create more rules to follow.
“Will guys still be allowed to broadcast phosphate on perennials in the fall,” wondered Felsch. Winter manure spreading has already been banned for all medium- and large-sized hog barns and fall fertilizing could face the same sorts of restrictions.
The problem for farmers, Felsch said, is that this legislation, which will probably be passed in the legislature in December, does not contain the regulations that will determine what farmers can and cannot do. Those will be developed after the act becomes law.
What worries Felsch, who is chair of a committee for Keystone Agricultural Producers that has looked at the legislation, is that the law does not require the new water board to have a farmer member.
Without a farmer at the table, rules could be made that cripple farming operations. KAP wants the legislation amended to ensure that a farmer representative is always involved in writing and interpreting the regulations.
“We are the ones most affected and they might have no idea what the effect of (their rules) is,” said Felsch.
Already there are signs that farmers will face more scrutiny than other industries. Of all the polluting nutrients, only nitrogen and phosphorus are specifically named in the legislation.
“Agriculture seems to be the main target,” said Felsch.
And even if government regulators treat farmers fairly, others might exploit the new law to harass and intimidate farmers, Felsch said.
“It might give (opponents of agricultural operations) tools they maybe shouldn’t have,” said Felsch.
