Farmscape for May 2, 2006  (Episode 2128)

Manitoba Water Stewardship is confident amendments to proposed water quality management legislation will address public concerns related to the use of agricultural capability zone maps to determine where livestock manure can or can not be applied.

Officials with the Association of Manitoba Municipalities and several agricultural organizations have raised concerns related to the proposed Water Quality Management Zone Regulation for Nutrients, key among them the use of reconnaissance scale maps to identify zones where  livestock manure fertilizer may or may not be applied.

Although Manitoba Water Stewardship had originally planned to imbed the maps into the regulation, they'll now only be used as reference.

Water Science and Management Branch Director Dwight Williamson says the maps will simply display where these zones are most likely to be found.

Clip-Dwight Williamson-Manitoba Water Stewardship 

We need to appropriately qualify the maps but never the less they will be and will need to be a valuable planning tool.

It's not sufficient for us to say, for example, certain activities can not occur in landscapes classified as Canada land inventory class six without telling people where they might find CLI class six.

That's simply all we're doing.

These would be maps that simply depict, using our best available information, where it's most likely to find these areas and, if once you get to this region depicted on the map as being potentially one zone or another and you find something different, then it will be what is actually found on the ground that will dictate management from there on out.

Williamson notes information and comments received during a series of public consultation meetings which concluded in mid-March is now being compiled.

He says a final report is being worked on and should be ready for release fairly shortly.

For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

       *Farmscape is a presentation of Sask Pork and Manitoba Pork Council