Fraser Valley farmers won't know for weeks how floodwaters have affected prized soil

Six days into the flood, Harman Kaurand her husbandtook a drive past their acreage and found thousands of their ruby-red blueberry bushes were still completely buried in themurky, brown floodwater.

Leaking pesticides swirled around the field.Garbage and gas tanks floated past. The smell of fuel filledtheir noses.

"There was a complete layer of oil on top [of the water], and we're talking what I could just see from the road," said Kaur, 29, whose family has owned their farm in the Arnold area of Abbotsford, B.C., for more than a decade.

"We don't even know what's gotten into the plants and the soil.... God knows."

Kaur and her husband are among the farmers worried for the health of the valuable soil in the Sumas Prairie, now that hundreds of acres have been sitting in muddyfloodwater for more than a week.

Images of oil, garbage and jerry cans drifting through the water create theimpression of an agricultural nightmare, but experts say it will be weeks until assessments can confirm exactly how the water has affectedsome of the most prized farmland in the province.

Prized fields 'like a war zone,' responder says

Muchof B.C.'s food production happens in the Sumas Prairie, a low-lying part of the Fraser Valley about 90 kilometres east of Vancouver. The areais irresistible to some of the largest agriculture operations in the province fora combination of reasons: thefields are flat, there's a temperate climate year-round and it's close to the big city.

But the soil stands out, too.

The prairie was a shallow lake until it wasdrained in the 1920s, whichmakes the soil sandy at thelake's edge and clay-like towardits centre especially nutrient-rich and suitable fordozens of varieties ofvegetables, berries and livestock.

The city has warned thewater now on top of those fields is not safe.

"It's full of gas, diesel, fertilizer, manure ... it smells like gas," said Kevin Estrada, director of the Fraser Valley Angling Guides Association, whose team has been taking waders and jetboats through the floodplain to help with disaster response.

"It looks like a war zone out there."

Flooding will upset life within the soil

Experts won'tspeculate on how contaminated the soil might be until testing can be done, butthey knowextreme flooding toxic or not will disrupt the ecosystem within thesoil.

"There are lots of different things going on it's going to be a long road," said Rose Morrison, professor emerita at the University of the Fraser Valley who's studied soil science and lived in Chilliwack, B.C., for more than 40 years.

The weight of the water alone will squeezeany available oxygen out of the soil, Morrison explained. The lack of air will starve plants' roots and kill scoresof beneficial bacteria, fungi and earthworms living beneath the surface.

The floodwater can erode and wash away critical topsoil the most important, organic part of the soil and spread it elsewhere, like into the nearby Fraser River.

"Those pollutants may not be on site anymore. They actually might be in our nearby aquatic ecosystems," said Sean Smukler, an associate professor and agricultural ecologist at the University of British Columbia.

Some fields will fare better than others, Morrison added. Some soils willdrain better, some plants will bebetter at neutralizing chemicals and some areaswill have better water flow to dilute pollutants.

Morrison has every faith the farmers have the skill, knowledge and technology to restorethe fields when the time comes.

"The farmers on the Sumas Flatsare extremely good farmers ... we know when it comes for them to rebuild after this devastating effect, we will be in good hands," she said.

"The soil is the farmer's livelihood, they're not going to take chances with it."

Province putting together team for testing

The province has assembled a team of soil scientists to assess the viability of the soil in wake of the floods, but thatwork can't begin until the water recedes. The ministrysaid the work will likely take weeks.

"It's an incredibly sad mess that we have," Agriculture Minister Lana Popham said in an interview with CBC on Wednesday.

"There is contaminated water resting on good growing lands and those lands are going to have to be remediated."

The cost of soil sampling, testing and analysis could get into the thousands of dollars for a few acres depending on what kind of chemicals are being tested for, Smuklersaid.

WATCH | B.C. Agriculture minister on help coming for devastated farmers:

Thousands of hogs and poultry feared dead in aftermath of B.C. flooding

3 years ago

Duration 6:44

B.C. Agriculture Minister Lana Popham tells Power & Politics she's confident her government can work on a compensation deal to help farmers in the province recover from the recent severe flooding.

After the water finally receded from Kaur's property, she and her husbandreturned Tuesday to find thered blueberry bushes were left coated in a layer of grey muck. The buds of the plants, where fruit is supposed to appear, were caked with silt and dirt. The top soil was gone and, in some places, the exposed roots were covered in a sticky, blue-green material they couldn't even identify.

Answers will come soon enough.

"Honestly, I'm afraid my bushes are just going to fall down," Kaur said.