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COUNTRY LIFE IN BC • MAY 2018
Neonics in water not from farm operations Pesticides in Nicomekl River point to upstream contamination sources
by PETER MITHAM
LANGLEY – Development in Langley is once again a potential factor in water contamination affecting the livelihoods of farmers in the Fraser Lowland. Sky-high levels of neonicotinoid-type pesticides in the Nicomekl River are baffling researchers and threaten to cost farmers access to tools once seen as attractive due to their low toxicity to mammals. Neonics are under review
in Europe due to the potential danger they pose pollinators, and Health Canada’s Pest
Management Regulatory Agency is reviewing three specific materials – imidacloprid, clothianidin and thiamethoxam – as part of a cyclical review as well as court-ordered investigations triggered by public concerns. Tests in Ontario and Quebec found levels of imidacloprid well above the threshold of 41 nanograms per litre Health Canada deems acceptable, but it hadn’t considered data from BC. The province’s pesticide specialist, Ken Sapsford, wanted to see if levels in BC waterways were similar. “How can you ban it
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completely across Canada when you don’t even know what the results are here in British Columbia?” he told growers attending the BC Potato and Vegetable Growers Association annual meeting in Delta on February 28. “I wanted to make sure I had some data for this industry.” Sapsford was able to
secure provincial funding to test water quality at five sites in the Okanagan and three in the Fraser Valley between June 8 and mid-September 2017. While test results from the Okanagan were largely clear, as were those from sites in Delta, Chilliwack and Langley held some surprises. Sapsford tested both
downstream of farming areas as well as upstream to determine if contamination was linked to farming activities or not. Thiamethoxam wasn’t
detected until the end of September and when it was, it was at the upstream test site, just where the Nicomekl River left Langley.
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clothianidin on June 20 at the downstream site suggested a misapplication when a farm worker didn’t respect the required buffer zone and came to close to the water. “There’s the one hit and it disappears and there’s nothing else,” Sapsford said. But imidacloprid showed
up every time, often at levels well above the 41 nanogram per litre threshold.
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“Something’s going on
here,” Sapsford said, flashing a table showing detections at both the downstream and upstream testing sites. “This is coming out of Langley before it enters the main agricultural area.” Tests found a level of 740
nanograms per litre on June 8 at the upstream site, then levels declined to safer levels before ratcheting up again in late August to hit levels of more than 200 nanograms per litre in September. “Our upstream is always higher or fairly equal to the downstream,” he said. “First of all, that tells me it’s highly unlikely that it’s a field crop system because I don’t know of any cropping system out there that they can use an insecticide after the crop is just about ready to be harvested, or is harvested.” What the upstream source could be isn’t clear to him, however.
While he can eliminate most field crops, he can’t rule out greenhouses. Upstream golf courses were able to provide spray records showing that they weren’t using them on turf. Neonicotinoids are common in flea collars for pets because of their low toxicity to mammals, he noted. Growers at the meeting asked if urban landscaping firms or homeowners might be applying them at elevated rates against pests such as chafer beetle.
The scenario brings back memories of 2015, when Washington State’s Department of Agriculture asked the BC government to clean up its act with respect to fecal coliform counts in Perry Homestead Brook and Pepin Creek. When the letter
got lost in the political shuffle, Whatcom County farmers banded together to highlight the impact urban development in Langley was having on US watercourses. “Urban areas are major contributors of fecal coliform contamination,” Whatcom Family Farmers said in 2016. “The percentage of paved and developed areas in the Canadian portion of the Bertrand watershed has more than doubled in the past 50 years, and the paved percentage of Fishtrap watershed in Canada is even higher, at double that of the Bertrand.” The outcry led to formation of the BC-WA Nooksack River Transboundary Water Quality Task Group, an intergovernmental working group charged with tackling the issue. However, a definitive
answer regarding neonics still eludes Sapsford. “I still don’t know,” he said. Sapsford has told Health
Canada that the evidence doesn’t point to agriculture being the culprit, but he knows that’s not how the general public – which is increasingly unaware of production practices – will nevertheless blame farmers in lieu of evidence to the contrary. It’s also possible a farm was misapplying imidacloprid, sold under the trade names Admire, Advantage and Gaucho. With eight talks behind him, Sapsford says the grower responsible might have taken note and will do things differently this year. “If that happens, great. But
we’ve got to dig,” he said. “In order to keep these products available to all the industry, we need to find out where this is coming from.”
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