Exciting news! I've just discovered a chapter which I failed to include in my new book, "The Merchants of Menace," recently published online. I'm posting it below as a complementary addition. ENJOY! L.P.
PHOSPHORUS: A STUDY IN CONTRASTS.
One of the lakes at the Experimental Lakes Area in Ontario, separated with a heavy "sea-curtain." Carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus were added to the bottom part, but only carbon and nitrogen to the top. The murky colour at the bottom indicates dense algal blooms, dramatically portraying the role of phosphorus in eutrophication. An International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) image.
Groundbreaking research directed by the late, internationally-renowned water expert, David Schindler in 1969 - depicted in the famous image above - clearly showed the world that phosphates were the main culprits in the eutrophication process, settling an ongoing dispute over their role in laundry detergents. To drive his point home, Schindler wrote in findings of the Royal Society in 2012;
The only method that has had proven success in reducing the eutrophication of lakes is reducing input of phosphorus. The Canadian Government responded quickly, banning high-phosphate laundry detergents and requiring that phosphorus be removed by sewage treatment plants in the Great Lakes Basin in 1973. The result was one of the biggest success stories in environmental science and policy.
Lakes Erie and Ontario, and many other lakes where phosphorus inputs were controlled, began to recover within a few years. It was exciting to do science that had such an immediate and important impact on ecosystem protection. Phosphorus control policies were enacted in many countries. Many jurisdictions from North America to Europe imposed at least partial bans, too.
Yet, almost as if phosphorus in laundry detergents was especially damaging, while the same in pig manure was somehow benign - significant action was taken to address the former - nothing for the latter. Not unlike the pork sector and its enablers, the lucrative detergents industry had indignantly tried to place the blame elsewhere, insisting that the problem lay, not with phosphates at all, but with carbon, or perhaps nitrogen!
Meanwhile, the hog lobby remains quick to point the finger of “eutrophication blame” almost exclusively at human waste rather than its own, copious by-product. In 2011, when a de facto ban on new barn construction was still in effect, the Chair of the Manitoba Pork Council, Karl Kynoch, scolded politicians at a legislative committee hearing;
One of the most infuriating things about this total ban on new hog production is the unfairness of it all. You have not treated any other group in Manitoba with the same mean-spirited tactics. For example, while the city of Winnipeg contributes several times more nutrients to the lake than the hog industry, including numerous major spills of raw sewage every year directly into the rivers, you haven't banned all new buildings in the city the way that you have the hog sector.
And, as is sometimes the case with such sweeping statements - there’s an element of truth in it. Records show the City of Winnipeg has probably released raw, untreated sewage into the Red and Assiniboine Rivers hundreds of times since at least 2004. In April of 2022 for example, it was forced by prolonged rainfall, to release almost sixty million litres (59.5ML) into the Red River (which flows into Lake Winnipeg) from one of its wastewater treatment plants. To have done otherwise, says the city, would have posed “a serious risk of basement flooding upstream.”
Sadly, while such incidents have become all-too-common, Kynoch’s allegation that they represent “several times the nutrients going into the lake” than that of his own industry (which, we he would have us believe, are either infinitesimal or non-existent), must surely be relegated to the category of blatant corporate overstatement.
Keep in mind, sewage releases like the ones just described are “forced” events - considered unavoidable if serious property damage is to be avoided. Slurry-spreading, on the other hand - and its inevitable spreading into the wider environment - is “baked into” formal government policy. And, while manure could be effectively processed in digesters, or composted, none of the former and only insignificant amounts of the latter are happening in Manitoba.
At this writing at least, agreement has been reached which will see three levels of government spend more than half-a-billion dollars ($550m) to upgrade Winnipeg’s north end sewage treatment plant, the city’s oldest and largest. According to the plan;
The sludge it produces will be treated and converted into a nutrient-rich product that can be safely re-used as fertilizer or soil - diverting it from landfills - removing phosphorus and ultimately improving the health of Lake Winnipeg, one of Manitoba’s greatest treasures.
While improvements such as these have been slow in coming (sometimes delayed by funding or jurisdictional disputes), they’re surely indicators, finally, of change in the wind. Meanwhile, don’t forget the pork industry, government and even some segments of academia have still not budged from their obstinate position that “all is well.” In other words, they continue to defy both the “common sense” and “scientific” arguments I presented earlier in this book, clinging instead to the following;
• “The fact is, there never was any credible scientific evidence showing that any measurable amounts of pig manure get intowaterways in the first place.” Manitoba Pork
“There’s no compelling evidence that any of these changes (building more barns) will put water at risk.” Premier Brian Pallister, 2017.
“If all the hogs in Manitoba disappeared, the amount of phosphorus flowing into the lake would essentially be the same.” Prof. Don Flaten, U of M.
Ironically, neither have they hesitated to refer to the ban on the winter spreading of slurry on farm fields as evidence that hogs were contributing only insignificant amounts of phosphorus to waterways. Please read on. You’ll see what I mean.
My full book may be accessed here.
