The Eastern Ontario Subsidiary Agreement Drainage Program: Impacts on the Land Resource and Initial Evaluation

Merritt Clifton was an environmental journalist and lived in Brigham, Quebec.

Despite the jawbreaking title and the typically abstract, bureaucratic writing within, this is one of the most self-critical, tough-talking government reports issued in recent memory. The authors examine 252 soil drainage projects undertaken jointly since 1979 by the Ontario and federal governments. They conclude that the $1 million spent was quite literally poured down the drain.

Most significantly, they found that agricultural drainage doesn’t really pay for itself. In a single paragraph they confirm what drainage critics have been saying for years:

Given a reasonably generous evaluation of the benefits likely to accrue to agriculture from drainage and a conservative consideration of the costs, it was found that a significant number of the drains subsidized by the program are unlikely to generate future benefits equal to the costs of the drains. Indeed, it appears likely that this would be the case for the majority of the drains. Given the level of the subsidization, other costs borne by government, and the provision of allowances to farmers for damages as a result of the drain construction, farmers bear only 12.5% of the direct costs of the drainage projects. Given the situation of farmers bearing a proportion of costs more in keeping with the apportionment of benefits, many drains with poor benefit-cost figures might never have been initiated.

The study also discovered that many and maybe most drainage projects are poorly engineered; are selected on political rather than economic or environmental criteria; cost much more than they should, because of lax bidding and accounting: and do great damage to wildlife habitat, floodways, and streams.

Bottom line: “The general means of evaluation for federal assistance to farmers should... help farmers to adjust their operations to the land resource base rather than attempting to alter the land resource to fit the farm operations.”

Are farmers paying attention? Is government?