Agricultural Activities

Agricultural activities are considered potential threats to drinking water due to the possibility of contaminants such as nitrogen, phosphorus, pesticides and bacteria to enter into our ground and surface water.

Specific agricultural activities that are listed as significant drinking water threats under the Clean Water Act are:

• application, handling, and storage of agricultural source material (i.e. manure produced by farm animals, runoff from farm yards and manure storages, or wash water from milking centre waste, or compost, or source materials produced from the cultivation of fish or other aquatic organisms in a controlled environment),
• application and storage of non-agricultural source material (i.e. sewage bio-solids and other wastes such as pulp and paper bio-solids),
• grazing of livestock, pasturing and outdoor confinement areas,
• application and storage of commercial fertilizers, and
• application and storage of pesticides.

Given the largely rural nature of the Quinte Source Protection Area, agricultural activities are widespread throughout. However, the actual number of agricultural activities that occur within the vulnerable areas of municipal drinking water systems is relatively small. To see if your agricultural operation is affected, use our Policy Information Map.

The Ontario Farm Environmental Coalition has created the Farm Source Water Protection Framework to help farmers engaged in significant drinking water threat activities to which source protection plan policies will apply. This template will help farmers to organize accurate information specific to their farm businesses in a format that facilitates discussion with the risk management official.