The Ontario Clean Water Act will restrict farming within 100 metres of municipal well heads and farmers affected by the restriction can forget about compensation unless there is some heavy political pressure, says Shawn McCrae, a Glengarry County cash crop farmer who has fought hard to include compensation in the act.

The concern that many farmers have now is that political pressure will not happen.

The Clean Water Act was passed in 2006 but protesting farmers had hoped to include compensation through the back door. The province set up 19 regional committees across the province, that included farmers, to write in the "terms of reference" for the act. So, McCrae’s committee and at least two other committees added in the need for compensation. The others balked and so did the Minister of Environment, who refused to accept it. McRae said he got word in June that the final "terms of reference" for the act were approved. The Clean Water Act is a kind of super act that supercedes all other related acts, including the Nutrient Management Act.

"Restrictions will be severe," McRae concludes. "But they won’t start showing up on Joe Farmers’ radar for several years."

He figures any land within 100 metres of a municipal well-head or water intake pipe will face bans on manure, fertilizer and pesticides. Farmers "haven’t been told officially" about the bans, said McRae, noting that government legislation can take a long time to enact.

The province will also set restrictions on land around municipal drinking water intake pipes but has left the door open for municipalities to decide how to deal with clusters of privately owned wells, such as rural subdivisions, even if the farm was there first. The Ministry of Environment "doesn’t want to open that can of worms yet," McCrae said.

The Act, as it stands, will have an enormous impact. Says McRae: "There is potential in the Act to go to the nth degree. They can make park land out of private land without compensation."

Prescott County Federation of Agriculture president Reg Presley says an Ontario Federation of Agriculture lawyer told them that the best way now to seek protection is to work on additional legislation and persuade MPPS to accept it. "There is still some hope."

But as it stands, says Presley, "They’ve (the province) covered their asses in section 98 of the Clean Water Act. Farmers will have no recourse (to compensation) unless their land has been expropriated."

Ontario Federation of Agriculture president Bette Jean Brews said that the OFA is in frequent contact with Minister of Environment John Gerretsen and wants two main things: more funding for the stewardship fund that ends in 2011 and site specific regulations rather than blanket bans on activity close to a well head.

The $7 million stewardship fund "is a drop in the bucket," Crews said. The fund was set up as a kind-of-compensation-fund without saying compensation.

Crews said OFA researcher David Armitage is in contact with the MOE each week. Crews hopes that the regulations will be expanded to account for specific factors on each site, such as "slope and drainage and cropping and depth of groundwater," Crews said. "There is hope that we will end up with what will be workable for farmers and will be based on science."

The OFA is also pushing for new legislation that could be introduced as a private member’s bill that would prohibit laws like the Greenbelt Act, which effectively is "expropriation by legislation," she said.

When asked if the OFA would ramp up political pressure if necessary, Crews pointed to a provincial election that could be two years away.