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Nitrates demand action by Gary Schneider, Co-chair, Environmental Coalition of Prince Edward Island

The recent federal-provincial report on the high levels of nitrates in provincial groundwater and surface water should come as no surprise. As a member of the provincial Round Table on Resource Land Use and Stewardship, I regularly heard the issue raised at public presentations. Nitrates were seen as a threat to the quality of Prince Edward Island's water and received attention in our 1997 report. Ten years later, the problem continues to get worse.

Section of an Island Stream.

The Round Table report stated that "Excess nitrate-nitrogen can make groundwater unsafe to drink, especially for infants, elderly people and young animals. Canadian Water Quality Guidelines set the maximum acceptable concentration at 10 milligrams of nitrate-nitrogen per litre of water (mg/l). According to the Department of Fisheries and Environment, studies here have shown that, in some intensively farmed areas, 20 per cent of wells have levels exceeding 8 mg/l, and an additional 6-7 per cent exceed the 10 mg/l standard for safe drinking water."

The recent nitrate study found that 20% of the wells in some watersheds exceed the 10mg/l standard. So what are we as a province going to do about this? Striking a task force is only a useful exercise if it will be allowed to deal objectively with the hard issues and put science ahead of politics.

This winter, excessive levels of nitrates and soil erosion brought the province another round of bad publicity both nationally and internationally. The practices that caused this environmental degradation effect the health of our land and our population and continues to have a negative impact on how we are viewed around the world. This can't help but be detrimental to our tourist operators and to those attempting to brand Island crops with an "organic" or even "natural" marketing strategy. We have been giving out carrots for ten years, now it is time for solid regulations.

The Round Table recommended that "the Island standard for maximum nitrate concentration in drinking water be set at 10 mg/l, consistent with the Canadian Water Quality Guidelines" and hoped that the mandatory three-year crop rotation and restrictions on plowing slopes over 9% would help alleviate the problem. Clearly, it has not.

If the new task force is to have any effect, it will have to make strong recommendations. Given the lack of progress resulting through education and voluntary codes, there are three areas of legislation that need to be quickly put into place.

• 1. Legislate science-based limits on the annual amounts of nitrogen that can be spread on any given field, directly linked to the crops that will be grown.
• 2. Ban fall plowing. The new study found that large amounts of nitrates were released into the groundwater by fall plowing and a ban would also solve many of our erosion problems.
• 3. Eliminate the practice of spreading manure in the fall or over the winter, when there are no growing plants to take up the nitrogen.

In addition, we need to both strengthen and actively enforce our existing laws. The mandatory three-year crop rotation legislation is just not working - it has too many exemptions and there isn't enough enforcement. The restrictions on growing row crops on steep slopes, if indeed it is being enforced, hasn't seemed to stop fall plowing on slopes much greater than 9%. Both of these laws are critical to protecting our water quality and need to be fixed.

Finally, there arises the question about who will pay for the changes. As a taxpayer, I am all for supporting people who go beyond existing legislation. If you want to double the size of your buffer zone, or make ecologically-sound improvements to your forests, I'm happy to support programs since we all benefit from the actions. What grates most people is when someone says that they are not going to stop polluting until they get paid. If you are putting too much nitrogen on your fields, or fall plowing and releasing excess nitrogen and topsoil into waterways, there should be no subsidy for you to stop.

We should spend public funds where they are really needed by the agricultural industry - promoting new crops and new forms of agriculture, and rewarding the many farmers who have already taken steps to reform their operations. Failure to do so will mean that in the future, we may see money once earmarked for agricultural support targeted for increasing health care costs.