Farmscape for August 24, 2010   (Episode 3398)

Manitoba Water Stewardship says, despite continuing deterioration of water quality in Lake Winnipeg, government efforts to reduce nutrient loading are beginning to have an effect.

Manitoba pork producers have raised concern that, despite a ban on new hog barn construction or expansion in much of the province, Lake Winnipeg water quality continues to decline.

Manitoba Water Stewardship assistant deputy minister Dwight Williamson says wile water quality in the lake remains a concern we are moving in the right direction.

Clip-Dwight Williamson-Manitoba Water Stewardship:
It is my view that water quality in Lake Winnipeg would be far worse than it is now if these measures were not in place.

Things like the hog moratorium not affecting existing operations but certainly not allowing additional nutrients to come from future expansion or expansion of that sector in those three areas.

Other measures that have just started to take effect include new regulations on septic fields, those affecting many homes within the Manitoba region, buffer zones on the application of fertilizers to areas adjacent to streams, rivers and lakes, the previsions that we've put in place to prevent the application of phosphorus in fertilizers within urban and rural residential areas and another measure that just came in on July 1st of this year is the prohibition on phosphorus over a very small percentage in the detergents that we use in all of our households.

Williamson says the issues on Lake Winnipeg and elsewhere are still significant but they would have been much worse without these measures.

He says as these measure come into full effect we expect grater improvement.

For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

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