They are the invisible waterways. Laced with farm manure, choked with invasive grasses and often seasonally dry, their subtle meanderings go unnoticed and unappreciated. There are hundreds of them in the Fraser Valley, providing critical habitat for endangered fish and frogs against a tide of government neglect, poor farming practices and public ignorance. On Zero Avenue in south Langley, some don’t even have proper names, including F1.1, a ditch that flows into Bertrand Creek — one of the Fraser Valley’s most important fish streams — and eventually the Nooksack River in Washington state’s Whatcom County. The Washington state target for the Bertrand watershed is 49 fecal coliforms per 100 millilitres of water, to protect public health and avoid polluting Lummi shellfish beds. But the numbers flowing south from Canada are far above those levels — and livestock manure is to blame. State agency staff make regular trips north through the Aldergrove-Lynden border crossing to take water samples from the ditch, and analyze them at a Bellingham lab. The results show a spike of 34,000 fecal coliforms in November 2013 and 3,800 at Jackman Ditch at the border, just to the west. The May results are no better: 19,000 fecal coliforms in the Bertrand main stem at the border, 25,000 at nearby Cave Creek, and 3,000 in Jackman Ditch. Farm manure is part of a cycle that acts to diminish the productivity of fish streams, especially when there is no streamside vegetation to help keep the water cool. It creates conditions for growth of invasive sun-loving species such as reed canary grass, which clogs the ditches. This grass dies back annually and rots, stripping the water of oxygen during high temperatures. Then farmers demand to have the streams excavated to improve drainage; excavation causes even more damage. Ammonia in manure can also be toxic to fish at high levels. Nitrates, found in manure and fertilizers, have filtered into the aquifer to pollute wells used for drinking water. In 1998, the Washington state agriculture department developed a water-quality program backed by law. Dairy farmers are required to develop and follow manure management plans and there are regular inspections. In B.C., after more than two years of trying, the province is still embroiled in talks with farmers to find a compromise that would allow a crackdown on manure violators. “It’s a significant concern, an ongoing challenge,” explains Andrea Hood, a program co-ordinator with Washington’s office of shellfish and water protection. “Farmers in the county feel it’s unfair that the state cracks down on them, while manure continues to flow unimpeded from Canada. “‘Why should we clean up when it’s already polluted?’ They maybe feel more persecuted ... whereas they don’t see improvements from the north.” Without public recognition and protection, these important streams stand little chance of survival. • “People have no idea,” says Mike Pearson, a consulting biologist from Agassiz who has worked on federal recovery plans for endangered Salish suckers and Nooksack dace. “The majority of coho in the Fraser River are produced between Vancouver and Hope. Their habitat is under threat. The root problem is bad farming practices.” Pearson recalls surveying for fish on Elk Creek in Chilliwack and finding almost no fish in the main stem, but hundreds of coho in a roadside ditch that was slightly warmer and out of the stronger flow. “That’s where they go in winter. They get off the main channel.”

He laments that agriculture is a big player on the land base, with “very little regulation environmentally. It’s quite legal to spray and spread manure right up to the water’s edge. I’ve even seen it spread over top of streams. It’s an invisible problem, but once you understand it, it’s everywhere.” Guillermo Giannico, a fisheries specialist at Oregon State University who did his PhD on juvenile coho in Langley, has documented 15 species of fish that depend on small streams flowing through farmland. Meandering streams with streamside vegetation and buffers from active farming are most productive for fish, while “torpedo ditches” lacking complexity are the least productive. The problem on both sides of the border is that these critical streams remain poorly protected, he says. Ditch F1.1 is directly across Zero Avenue from an Aldergrove mushroom farm, Truong’s Enterprises Ltd. On the day The Sun visits, the property looks cluttered with debris. Water floods from the property almost across the narrow two-lane road into the ditch. A row of compost sits on the property only a few metres from the road. Owner Quan Truong is not around and does not return The Sun’s phone calls. B.C. authorities are familiar with the mushroom farm, which was fined $18,641 by WorkSafeBC in 2012 for failing to install proper guardrails after a worker suffered a skull fracture when he fell two metres from a mobile work platform. This time, it’s the pollution that has caught the province’s attention. Ministry of Environment spokesman David Karn says that a new ministry team responsible for monitoring, compliance and stewardship is investigating “alleged discharge from the mushroom farm.” Of course, sometimes pollution goes the other way — and the Americans are known to take decisive action. In April, the state’s Department of Ecology fined Sarbanand Farms and Pacific Pumping Inc. $4,000 each for spreading a large amount of manure last September on a bare field before heavy rain, allowing manure to pollute a tributary of the Sumas River, which flows north into the Fraser River. “Manure can be a resource or a waste, depending on how you use it,” said Ginny Prest, program manager for Washington’s dairy nutrient management program. She remembers what it was like in the late 1980s into the early 1990s. “It was pretty ugly — a lot of manure getting into the water, shellfish bed closures, beach closures, those kinds of things.” • At the same time, farmers’ reaction to nutrient legislation was “loud and unhappy,” she added. She estimated more than one-fifth of dairy farmers continue to use practices that have the potential to pollute. However, officials only act when pollution occurs to state waters. “You can see there is manure right up against the creek, no buffer, no setback,” she said. “We have to get that number smaller ... take stricter enforcement. It’s going to take a legislative change to make that happen. The language could be stronger so we could be more proactive.”

Over the past decade, the state has issued 16 penalties and 169 warnings to dairy farmers for violations such as applying manure without adequate setbacks or to saturated fields, during non-application seasons or at inappropriate rates. Others relate to record keeping or collection, conveyance and storage. In 2013, the penalties included $7,000 and $9,000 for applying manure under inappropriate field conditions and $8,000 for a collection system malfunction. In one case in Custer, an inspector noted about 30 dead fish, some as far as almost three kilometres downstream from the spill. Whatcom County Health closed the beach at the mouth of California Creek and the state Department of Health closed commercial shellfish harvesting in Drayton Harbor for one week. The Washington legislation may have had some unintended consequences —the higher cost of meeting environmental laws leading to concentration of ownership. While the number of dairy cattle in the state has increased to 270,186 from 240,421 since the act came into effect, there’s been a significant change in concentration of ownership, with the number of dairies dropping to 426 from 754. “Government policy in a lot of ways has helped facilitate the generation of factory farms,” said Prest, noting that the state legislation does not apply to other agricultural sectors that could also cause manure problems. On the B.C. side of the border, you’d be hard-pressed to find a dairy farmer fined for a manure-related violation — although that could be changing. In January 2012, the B.C. Ministry of Environment released a discussion paper on changes to the Agricultural Waste Control Regulations aimed at a code of practice — legally binding requirements for farms promoting sound practices for using, storing and managing wastes, such as manure and compost. It proposed that manure storage sites be located at least 30 metres from any watercourse, that farms must have the capacity to store at least a year’s worth of manure and other waste, and that direct discharge to surface water or groundwater be banned. It raised the potential for buffers or setbacks from the property boundary and a ban on spreading manure during wet conditions, and hinted at a ban on applying manure to crops grown for human consumption 90 days prior to harvest. Angry farmers blocked the proposal. “The people who did it didn’t understand agriculture,” said Ken Vandeburgt, a dairy farmer from Dewdney, east of Mission. “They threw this thing out at the farmers and it was like an instant war. A lot of it made no sense, it was complete nonsense.” • Farmers formed a committee and began working with the ministries of Environment and Agriculture on a model they could live with. More than two years after release of the discussion paper, agreement on new regulations giving the province more powers could happen later this year. “If a guy is going to spread manure right up to his creek and there is manure going in the creek, he’s going to get nailed,” Vandeburgt, vice-chair of the B.C. Dairy Association, said of the changes. “That’s pretty much where we’re at. There is zero tolerance for pollution.