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OFA: New Funds Announced to Reduce Phosphorus loss (2016)

Dec 09, 2016

By Crispin Colvin, Director, Ontario Federation of Agriculture

The work to reduce phosphorus losses into the Thames River and Lake Erie received a boost with the announcement of new funding to develop a five-year strategic plan. Funding of $203,000 was recently approved by the Agricultural Adaptation Council from Growing Forward 2 – the federal agriculture funding program. Partner organizations, including the Ontario Federation of Agriculture (OFA), contributed an additional $100,000 to launch the joint five-year ‘Strategy to Reduce Phosphorus Loss into the Thames River’.

High phosphorus levels in Lake Erie and the surrounding waterways stemming from municipal water and lost agricultural phosphorouscause serious, toxic algae blooms. The OFA is part of a new partnership to develop a workable strategy to reduce phosphorus loss into waterways. The partnership includes OFA, the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative (GLSLCI)and other organizations including local governments, drainage professionals, conservation authorities, First Nations, researchers, water technology companies and NGOs.

Funding for the new partnership will help build a coordinated approach – including agriculture and other municipal sources of phosphorus loss – to find new and innovative ways to keep phosphorus of out of waterways and improve water quality in the Thames River. The group’s work is timely too, to address the reduction targets set earlier this year by the Ontario governmentto reduce phosphorus in Lake Erie by 20% in 2020 and by 40% in 2025.

The new five-year plan will include water management initiatives like retaining water on the land during the non-growing season and installing cost-effective treatment technologies in drainage channels before the water reaches the Thames River and its tributaries.The group’s strategy will include working with other ongoing initiatives to reduce phosphorus loss into waterways.

Partnering with the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative on this new strategy means OFAis working with regional organizations to bring agricultural representation to the solution.

The Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative involves more than 120 municipalities bordering Lake Ontario and Lake Erie. Additional partnering organizations and financial supporters include the municipality of Chatham-Kent, Grain Farmers of Ontario and its Chatham chapter, the City of London, the Lower Thames Valley Conservation Authority, Blue Water Pipe Inc., and the local chapters of the OFA in Kent, Lambton and Middlesex.

The phosphorus funding announcement is a welcome resource to implement the five-year strategy. Water is vital to everyone and ever industry. OFA looks forward to this collaboration work on clean water and improved water quality for Ontario.

Source: OFA