Amendment 2) Exempt…

Amendment 2) Exempt Specified Excess Soil Management Sites from a waste ECA

1. Aggregate Reuse Depots

A) It is noted that all other Class 1 Depots are allowed a 2 year reuse period with up to 5 years with permission by a MECP Director. By making the aggregate reuse depot only 1 year for reuse and only up to 2 years with Director permission it adds more variability and uncertainty for depot owners. Further many municipal projects may take 2 years before they start backfilling, it would be helpful for municipalities at least to have a longer reuse window. We would recommend keeping the allowed storage time and optional extension time in-line with the other depot types for consistency and to ensure these depots get used.

B) Also, if these depots are registered directly through the MECP and not registered with the RPRA Excess Soil registry, how will potential source and receiving sites find out about them?

2. Small Liquid Soil Depots

A) The proposed minimum analytical list for dewatered material is so extensive to the point of nearly making these depots too expensive to effectively operate. I requested a quote from a reputable CALA certified Ontario analytical lab for what this analytical suite would cost per soil sample (attached). I was quoted $ 3,249.50 + HST for a single sample. If sampling a 200 m3 stockpile in accordance with the proposed regulation, four samples would be needed, for a total cost of $ 13,000.00 + HST

B) In order to make these small liquid soil depots more usable, it would be helpful to allow QP discretion on the minimum sampling list so long as all liquid soil source sites have provided soil characterization to the small liquid soil depot to review in advance. The QP could then review the SCRs in combination with the load tracking to determine what parameters need to be tested based on the SCRs provided. Alternatively, the MECP could consider this for small liquid soil depots which only accept liquid soil from a single or limited number of source sites or only low-risk source sites. The MECP could also add a limitation that if liquid soil from enhanced investigation properties is accepted, then the full list will be required regardless of QP discretion.

C) Also, if these depots are registered directly through the MECP and not registered with the RPRA Excess Soil registry, how will potential source and receiving sites find out about them?

D) If small liquid soil depots cannot be set up at adjoining properties and they are not registered in a Public registry, how would an adjoining property owner know about the presence of an adjacent small liquid soil depot? It is very possible that two adjoining sites under separate ownership may setup depots, only for the second one to find out after investing in facility setup that the MECP will not allow them to register as their neighbour did first.

Amendment 7) Regional Mapping of Naturally occurring local background concentrations.

This is a great initiative and would be very helpful in many regions. From my own experience in Eastern Ontario, Champlain Sea Clays with naturally occurring metals have been a real issue over the years, which something like this would greatly assist with and would lead to significant savings industry-wide. The main questions this would lead to are:

1. Who is going to be responsible for funding and completing these studies?
a. Municipalities likely hold much of the data that would be needed, but generally wouldn’t have the funding to publish one of these reports on their own outside the major cities.

2. Assuming only public bodies could publish these reports, how would the studies be publicized to industry upon completion?

3. Would these studies also be usable to justify naturally occurring background concentrations for Record of Site Conditions filed under O.Reg. 153/04.

4. Would the MECP provide an example or guidance on what one of these studies would require in order to be considered sufficient to prove naturally occurring local background concentrations?