Agricultural Drainage and the Environment Conference

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Agricultural Drainage and the Environment Conference

[ https://www.sierraclub.ca/en/civicrm/ev ... qGtmxtXk0g ]

Nov. 6, 2019 - REGINA, SK

Presentations from a range of speakers including Dr. John Pomeroy - Global Institute for Water Security, the Saskatchewan Farm Stewardship Association, and the School of Environment and Sustainability - U of S will cover many topics such as:

Overview of water quality impacts of agricultural with a focus on drainage:

Highlights of the Qu'Appelle River Qu'Appelle Watershed Land-Use and Water Quality Study

To Drain or not to Drain? Farming with Wetlands.
The hydrology of wetland drainage in prairie potholes.
The “Plowprint” Report for Habitat Loss on the Canadian Prairies
Carbon Losses from Wetland Drainage
Agricultural Water Management Strategy and a New Mitigation Policy for Agricultural Drainage Licencing in Saskatchewan
The Challenges of Accumulative Effects in Federal and Provincial Environmental Assessment
Mitigation of Wetland Loss for Industries in Saskatchewan
A Producers Viewpoint on the Benefits of Agricultural Drainage and proposed mitigation
An Environment View of Agricultural Drainage and the Agricultural Water Management Strategy
First Nations perspective on farmland drainage impact to land, water and rights.
When a Water Problem is more than a water Problem: Fragmentation, Framing and the Case of Agricultural Wetland Drainage.

There will also be an avenue to express your thoughts, opinions, and suggestions on this issue during question periods and round table discussions.

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Agricultural drainage - focus of conference

[ https://farmnewsnow.com/2019/11/01/agri ... y4lwYlpsEg ]

Nov 01, 2019

The Saskatchewan Citizens Environmental Alliance is bringing together urban and rural community leaders to discuss their experiences at the Agriculture Drainage and Environment Conference in Regina.

Conference Chairperson Jeff Olson said the Alliance is interested in water management in the province and will highlight the economics and environmental effects of draining and restoring wetlands.

“We want to further co-operation to change and make the water better in the province. We initially noticed there was a lot of things going on but not necessarily the actions that are needed to make the changes that have been occurring over time,” Olson said.

When the Alliance was formed they decided to focus on farmland drainage.

“Right now and it’s major issue that’s been going on for decades, but seems to not have any solution in sight,” Olson told farmnewsNOW. “So we put forth the idea to have a conference to discuss the issue and make sure we have a good scientific view of it and the perspectives of different people including producers, First Nations and organizations that protect the environment.”

The Alliance is comprised of farmers, academics, public servants, industry leaders, environment groups, research scientists and civil servants.

“We have all of the perspectives at the table. We’re talking about issues trying to make the world a better place. One of the biggest problems we’ve had is the lack of awareness on the issue itself,” Olson said. “One of the things, over time, in the environmental field is the cumulative effects and we really haven’t done a very good job at that. If you look over the fence and see your neighbour doing a little bit of drainage you say ‘that’s no big deal’ and ‘what does that mean?’ and the majority of people think or believe that they don’t know anything about it if they’re from the big city so they really don’t know.”

But Olson said there is a significant impact and creating awareness is the first step.

“The second is to engage people of all parts of society into the discussion on where do we get to a place as we as a society find acceptable,” Olson said. “There’s no interest in going back to the days of no drainage or starting over as pioneers. There’s an interest in addressing the environmental issues and how best that can be done.”

The conference is Nov. 6 at the South Travelodge in Regina.

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LISTEN. . . CBC Radio - Blue Sky Phone-in - Nov. 5, 2019 - 1 hour

Agriculture Drainage and Water Management

[ https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1- ... management ]

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Agricultural Drainage and Environment Conference aims to find medium between conservation and economy
Regina conference focuses on drainage

[ https://regina.ctvnews.ca/agricultural- ... -1.4673558 ]

Watch video clip: Environmentalists and farmers gathered in Regina to discuss agricultural drainage. Kayleen Sawatzky explains.

Kayleen Sawatzky Last Updated Wednesday, November 6, 2019 7:05PM CST

REGINA-- The Citizens Environmental Alliance brought conservationists and farmers together for the Agricultural Drainage and Environment Conference.

The primary focus was on how agricultural drainage – which is used as a tool to increase economic gains – is impacting the environment.

“There’s water quality effects,” said Jeff Olson, the managing director for Citizens Environmental Alliance ( STH Editor Added:
[ https://www.facebook.com/groups/4818467 ... oup_header ] ) . “Introduction of phosphorous and nitrogen, as well as other contaminants downstream. There is loss of fish and wildlife habitat.”

Saskatchewan wetlands

Ahead of the conference, a statement from Olson said a recent study of water quality in the Qu’Appelle River system found that 91 per cent of the total phosphorus and 51 per cent of the total nitrogen flowing into the river came from agriculture runoff.

In addition to those contaminants, Saskatchewan farmers are partially responsible for the rapid loss of wetlands in the province. Despite the many economic and ecological benefits that wetlands provide, 10,000 acres are drained and converted into cropland each year. It is estimated that 90 per cent of wetlands in Saskatchewan are already gone.

“We don’t want to do something that is going to affect future generations,” Olson said. “It’s a cumulative effect.”

The two perspectives worked towards finding a healthy balance between the environment and the economy. The goal was to move this issue from conflict to sustainability.

Myles Thorpe, president of the Saskatchewan Farm Stewardship Association, said there are many ways farmers are attempting to mitigate the harms that come with draining cropland.

“There are repercussions,” Thorpe admitted. “But we’re doing our best to try and minimize our effect on the environment, and use the land to the best of our ability by not over-applying nutrients, and making use of the water.”

He also emphasized a need for a healthy environment in order for farmers to continue their jobs.

“We have a connection to the land,” said Thorpe. “Without it, we’re out of business.”

Despite speaking from the environmentalist perspective, Olson recognized that the agriculture industry is integral to Saskatchewan’s well-being. He said the Citizens Environmental Alliance is not trying to discourage drainage completely, but to try and make it more environmentally friendly. The conference gave experts and the public an opportunity to give their ideas on how to accomplish this.

“We want to get an understanding with the farmers and eliminate the conflict” said Olson. “We want to get the collaboration to recognize that there are maybe better ways to do it.”

= = = =

Jeff Olson, Managing Director
Citizens Environmental Alliance
Theodore, Sask.
[ https://www.facebook.com/Citizens-Envir ... 245069414/ ]

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WATERSHED UNDER DURESS - A Snapshot of Local Impacts of Global Warming and Disregard for the Qu’Appelle Valley Watershed
2010-2019

[ http://qvea.ca/PDF/watershed_wakeup_fin ... r6Sjiy91H8 ]

By Jim Harding, Ph. D. Director, Qu’Appelle Valley Environmental Association (QVEA.CA)
Retired Professor of Environmental and Justice studies June 2019

Preface:

I became involved in watershed protection after we moved to the Qu’Appelle Valley in 2001. I had long been active in environmental groups, including helping stop the expansion of the uranium mining in Saskatchewan into refining, nuclear power plants and a nuclear waste dump. We have had to quickly raise awareness that uranium mining is the front end of the nuclear industry, and that what happened here mattered globally. We built international networks, starting with the International Uranium Congress held in Saskatoon in 1988 and later with the good work of Clean Green.

As the climate crisis unfolded, we had to keep from going “from the fossil-fuel frying pan, into the nuclear fire”, as I put it when on speaking tours with my book Canada’s Deadly Secret.1 Now, facing cataclysmic climate change, and an increasingly cynical and fragmenting public, we have to quickly embrace the fundamentals in the needed ecological paradigm shift. Protecting watersheds and water is fundamental to the needed transformation towards sustainability. Focusing on our watersheds can help us change the bottom line from suicidal economic growth, that externalizes environmental costs onto future generations, to preserving local and global environmental health.

The Fort Qu’Appelle KAIROS group became interested as the wider ecumenical movement embraced environmental as well as social justice. This group started to raise awareness about the watershed, of which very few people even had basic knowledge. At the time, few realized that the Qu’Appelle Watershed ended up in the Arctic. Ironically, one of the people who carried a bucket of water with us from the Qu’Appelle River to downtown Fort Qu’Appelle, as part of a KAIROS awareness campaign about the lack of water security worldwide, was Andrew Scheer, when he first ran for office. We have never seen him since.

In 2016, some remaining KAIROS activists formed the Qu’Appelle Valley Environmental Association (QVEA) to carry on this work. We have been busy trying to get transparency and accountability regarding local land uses that have dire implications for watershed and lake protection. We have been protecting a major marsh area within Fort Qu’Appelle from inappropriate commercial development as a big-boat marina. I think we have won this, though there remains a concerted cover-up of the conflict of interest that occurred when the Town “sold” a North Dakota energy company, Abaco, land that should have been protected as floodway. You can find the results of our in-depth research using Freedom of Information (FOI) records by going to The Marsh Papers at QVEA.CA.

We are now focusing on the climate crisis, which must be the top priority for all water-protector groups. We now know that the prairies are warming at a much faster rate than elsewhere. With the highest per capita carbon footprint in all of Canada, and amongst the highest on the planet, Saskatchewan residents have a particular ecological, moral and political duty to see that carbon is quickly reduced. With a provincial economy heavily dependent on high-carbon resource extraction and agricultural industries, and carbon-slacking politicians that prefer to politicize carbon pricing as a “carbon tax”, this will be a big challenge. We clearly live in the belly of the beast.

There is a lot of climate denying here. Yet the extreme weather we have already faced is clearly the writing on the wall. The climate crisis continues to unfold: B.C. had record wildfires last summer and already, this spring, while we just survived an unprecedented Arctic Vortex, and remain in a serious drought, Alberta, Yukon and Northern Ontario are facing unprecedented wildfires.

Since 2010, I wrote nearly 300 columns on “sustainability” for the R-Town newspaper chain. I have gone back over these to see which articles addressed the impact of global warming on our watershed. What was in these articles even surprised me. How quickly our memories fade as we try to cope with new, often unsettling, events and information. We clearly need to base our local actions to protect our watershed on trend lines and the big picture.

I hope these articles help. They are a snapshot on how global warming is already changing our local weather and putting our watershed at even greater risk. While this is happening, biodiversity continues to decline, worldwide, and especially in prairie eco-systems such as ours. If we don’t want to see continual watershed degradation of marshes, water quality and habitat biodiversity, we need to protect the watershed from further assaults and work quickly to get sensible energy, agricultural and transportation policies and practices that quickly move us towards a low-carbon economy.

Carbon pricing will have to be one approach. Time is not on our side and procrastination is not an option.

– Jim Harding - Crows Nest, Fort San, SK
June 2019