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2001 October Report of the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development
October 2001 Report—Chapter 1—Section 4
Case Study 1.4.1—Controlling erosion in the Bay of Quinte watershed
Agricultural runoff, sediment, sewage treatment plants, industrial discharges, urban runoff, sewer overflows, illegal sewer connections, shoreline development: all have contributed to water quality problems in the Bay of Quinte. In 1985, the International Joint Commission designated the Bay as one of 43 areas of concern where beneficial uses of the water were impaired. The watershed is on the northeast shore of Lake Ontario and covers roughly 17,500 km2.
From 1991 to 1999, the Bay of Quinte received approximately $1.9 million from the Great Lakes 2000 Cleanup Fund to pay for projects such as construction of manure storage facilities, improvements to household septic systems, purchase of conservation tillage equipment, and fences to control livestock access to streams. These projects were predicted to reduce the phosphorus input to the Bay by 16,500 kilograms, exceeding the target set for the area of concern.
One valuable innovation proposed for the Bay of Quinte was a trading scheme for phosphorus discharges. The costs of reducing phosphorus discharges into the Bay varied with the source. Using alternative farming practices to limit soil erosion may be one of the cheapest ways to reduce the total amount of phosphorus going into surface waters—compared with changing sewage treatment, for example. The proposal was that sewage treatment plants would pay farmers to reduce the phosphorus running off their land rather than making more costly modifications to their plants, thereby reducing the total cost for all users. (This approach would not deal with other water quality problems associated with sewage treatment.)
Although the scheme was considered feasible and would have cut costs overall, it was not adopted at the Bay of Quinte. A similar proposal was used successfully, however, in the South Nation watershed in eastern Ontario.