Niagara-on-the-Lake’s decades-old irrigation system is in line for major upgrades after the province committed $41 million to Niagara Region for irrigation pipelines — funding local farmers and officials say is critical, as dry conditions strain crops.
This week, Ontario announced it’s investing $135 million in water and irrigation projects in Niagara and Leamington, Ont., with $94 million set aside for Niagara — $53 million for water system projects to support housing growth and $41 million for irrigation infrastructure.
To share the news and talk about the irrigation portion of the funding, local and provincial officials, along with farmers from across Niagara, gathered at St. David’s Hydroponics on Monday morning.
The town also sent out a media release.
“This is a game-changer,” said Coun. Erwin Wiens, who’s also a farmer.
While those involved don’t know what the town’s share of the $41 million will be, the funding will allow long-planned upgrades to its user-paid municipal irrigation system to go ahead, he said.
“We have a master plan in place and we have an irrigation committee (that) meets every month, so we have infrastructure ready to go,” he said.
The timing of the provincial funding is also unknown, but Wiens said the funding will be distributed through Niagara Region’s irrigation committee, of which the town is a partner.
“We want the money this year. We have to see how it unfolds.”
It will be shared between NOTL — the only municipality in Ontario with an Irrigation Act — the Town of Lincoln and the City of St. Catharines.
The aim is to expand and modernize Niagara’s irrigation systems.
The $41 million is separate from an earlier $1.8 million investment, said Wiens, who has been on the town’s irrigation committee for more than a decade.
“The $1.8 (million) was between the province, the Greenbelt Foundation, the region, the town … a basket of people,” he said, adding that it was used for feasibility studies.
“This is a separate $41 million — just from the province.”
The new money will go toward getting “shovels in the ground,” said Wiens, which the town is ready to do, he said.
“Farmers are starving for water,” he said, with the idea of this upgraded system to get more water in different directions of their crops more efficiently.
Grape Growers of Ontario chair Matthias Oppenlaender said the funding comes at a critical time, with climate change driving an ever-growing demand for irrigation and heading into “one of the driest seasons we’ve had,” he said.
“The need is getting bigger, bigger and bigger,” Oppenlaender said.
With Niagara surrounded by lakes and bordered by the Welland Canal and the Niagara River, he added, “we should be having the water that we need.”
For farmer and fellow long-time irrigation committee member Kevin Buis, a strong NOTL irrigation system, first built in 1988, is critical to fruit quality, crop size and economic viability.
Buis said fruit that grows to only two inches — which can happen with reduced irrigation — is “less salable” than two-and-a-half-inch fruit, even though about twice as many of the smaller size are normally produced, he said.
That loss in size can affect crop tonnage, he said: “Then, your bills are almost the same, but you just have less money to pay for it.”
“It’s big dollars,” he said.
Healthy plants also produce better-quality fruit and are more likely to survive Ontario’s winters, Buis added.
At St. David’s Hydroponics, vice-president Toine van der Knaap said his greenhouse wouldn’t operate without the municipal water supply.
“I’m drinking a lot of water myself with the warm weather, so the plants do the same,” he said.
The greenhouse can store about three-and-a-half weeks of water in its pond but still depends on the irrigation system to keep it full, said Van der Knaap.
Part of the irrigation system at that greenhouse is “an example of infrastructure money that was used,” said Wiens, adding that the goal with the funding is to see more irrigation parts like that in NOTL.
But once the system “is up and running,” he said, “the farmers pay for it.”
Coun. Wendy Cheropita called the announcement “very, very exciting” for the town’s farming community.
“This is something that our farming community and Erwin Wiens and (Lord Mayor) Gary Zalepa have been working long and hard on,” said Cheropita.
“To make sure that the province sees irrigation as infrastructure.”
The funding follows years of lobbying to have irrigation recognized as essential infrastructure, Wiens said.
“We started this 15 years ago.”
Reclassifying irrigation as infrastructure by the province was the first step in making this kind of investment possible, he said.
Debbie Zimmerman, chief executive officer of Grape Growers of Ontario, stressed its importance to the country’s largest grape and wine region.
“It’s absolutely critical,” she said. “The government of Ontario has poured a lot of money into the grape and wine industry for its success.”
According to the province, the agri-food sector in the Niagara region added more than $2 billion to Ontario’s GDP last year.
Zalepa told the crowd that irrigation is “top of the list” in the town’s strategic plan and said the funding will allow NOTL to move ahead with system upgrades as soon as it gets the green light.
“We’re ready to go,” he said.
