Agricultural Pollution Control: Trends and Innovations in the Lake Simcoe Watershed

Abstract

ABSTRACT Agriculture represents 31 percent of the land use within the Lake Simcoe basin and contributes approximately 45 metric tons of phosphorus to the lake annually. Agricultural sources of phosphorus include livestock operations and soil erosion from cultivated land, fallow land and pasture. Rapid urbanization of the basin has been largely responsible for the decline of the number of farms and for some reluctance of the farming community to invest in larger capital remediation projects. Since the late 1980s, cost-share programs have been in place to reduce agricultural loadings to the lake. Over 300 remediation projects have reduced phosphorus loadings by an estimated 7.5 metric tons per year. With the increased costs of farming and rapid urbanization in the southern half of the basin, targeted programs and innovative low cost solutions, such as vegetative filter strips and flocculaters to treat milkhouse washwater systems, were developed to deal with agricultural pollution concerns.