LAND COALITION Concern over holding ponds

A group that advocates for protecting the Island's ecology is calling on government to enact an interim moratorium on agricultural holding ponds while it completes regulations for the Water Act.

The Coalition for the Protection of P.E.I. Lands also wants the Department of Environment to begin daily monitoring of all wells in the neighbouring communities. A new seven-million-gallon holding pond is being constructed in Shamrock near Kinkora under the supervision of the Irvings. It is expected that pumping to fill the pond will start by the middle of this month and that it will take two pumps going round the clock every day for a month to fill the pond. There is currently a moratorium in place on high-capacity wells used for agriculture. However, low-capacity wells are not currently regulated.

Less than a year ago, then Environment Minister Brad Trivers said the new water act would apply the same rules to multiple low-capacity wells used together to pump the same volume as a high-capacity well.

"Rest assured, government is listening," he said at the time, promising that the Department of Environment, Water and Climate Change would immediately commence inspections of all existing irrigation ponds.Proposed regulations to the province’s Water Act, governing low-capacity wells, are due to be introduced in the legislature after public consultations have finished. Those consultations were impacted by health restrictions in response to the coronavirus.

“We cannot allow COVID-19 to be used as an excuse for inaction," said Marie Burge. "Clearly this government knows the danger the continuous digging of these ponds poses to residents. As long as government defers action, there is nothing to prevent the proliferation of this way of circumventing the moratorium on high-capacity wells.”