Environment committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, members. Again, I appreciate the opportunity. My name is Don Pearson and I'm general manager of the Lower Thames Valley Conservation Authority. I have spent nearly 40 years working either with conservation authorities or with our municipal partner

Environment committee  Thank you. Similarly, if you want forest cover you encourage tree planting. If you want to reduce soil erosion you promote conservation tillage. In reality, there are multiple benefits produced from each of these examples. Forests and wetlands provide habitat, fuel, and food;

Environment committee  Thank you. I think the distinction is important. The point sources were largely accomplished through a regulatory approach. They were often industry or municipal sources, so there was an appetite and ability to create a regulatory framework, and then the technology was applied w

Environment committee  I don't think you can ever say that we've solved it, because as populations grow those point sources will respond with greater loads. We have to manage those loads to maintain them within the target, so we can never ignore them, but I think it's fair to say that we have a handle

Environment committee  Well, I'm not quite that pessimistic. It is challenging but I think we take a fair amount of comfort in the fact that in the upper part of the watershed, the forest cover is a greater percentage, it's a minimum of 9% and as high as 15% in those communities. As you move down the w

Environment committee  I can respond to that. Certainly in Ontario the urban boundary was contained in the Greater Golden Horseshoe by the implementation of the greenbelt. That had the unintended consequence of creating growth pressure beyond the greenbelt so certainly those communities of Kitchener-

Environment committee  In answer to your question, we have a lot of farm drains. There are more drains in Chatham-Kent than there are in the rest of Ontario combined, and again, a municipal drain in Ontario is a legal concept. The reality is a municipal drain looks like a stream and functions as a stre

Environment committee  We first understood, for example, that the conventional approaches to tillage were not suitable in all soil types. It depended on the soil type, depended on the slope. Fall ploughing with the mouldboard plough was the traditional way these things were done. It left acres exposed,

Environment committee  Yes. I think our challenge is really to take the 20% of producers who are really at the leading edge of the game, transfer what they know to the rest of the community, and make sure it's done to the same standard.

Environment committee  In answer to the question, it is one approach if the objective is, again, managing or improving fisheries habitat. But if your objective is to reduce phosphorus on a very wide scale across the landscape, then I would assume that the guidelines of that program would restrict its a

Environment committee  Yes, and certainly programs that would assist the landowner in undertaking a project that had benefits beyond just the return on his investment at the farm gate.

Environment committee  Certainly the issue that you mentioned in the Thames River as being fair to poor for hydrology, according to the study done by WWF, was based on the reality that it is a watershed that has been heavily developed. It's heavily developed for agriculture, so it's been drained. The w

Environment committee  It borders Lake St. Clair as well as Lake Erie. The Thames itself doesn't touch Lake Erie, but the Lower Thames jurisdiction does. The tributaries that flow directly into the north shore are under our jurisdiction as well.

Environment committee  Yes.

Environment committee  Correct, yes.