The following comments are…

The following comments are offered in good faith by the Oxford Coalition for Social Justice in order to assist the NDMNRF in improving their proposal related to bringing excess soil onto aggregate zones for rehabilitation.
1. It is good that the Best Management Practices document be subject to regulations which will increase the odds of its implementation. We note, however, that the authors group on this BMP includes too little representation from community and environmental groups.
2. These regulations propose to ban the importation of liquid soils, those with asbestos and other hazardous wastes. This is as it should be.
3. Coordination with the MECP on the tables will assist in defining soil quality.
4. There are many community and environmental groups which should have been consulted, not principally the industry as represented by OSSGA. A dangerous deficit of public trust in government institutions could be remedied by full, transparent communication and consultation. Similarly, municipalities need to have tools to make, monitor and enforce excess soil bylaws. Testing of soil samples needs to be at the expense of the companies profiting from the soil dumping, not at a cost to municipal taxpayers.
5. Since the new document would allow the importation of lower quality soils into pits and quarries, there could be concerns about the cumulative impact of these contaminants. Contaminants in the excess soil could well pose new and long-lasting threats to ground and surface water, notably drinking water as well as to farmlands and forests since Table 1 is no longer the only permissible quality of soils to be dumped in pits and quarries on private lands. Importation of soils, even of table 1 quality, to replace sand, gravel and stone changes the ecological function of the site and impacts adjacent ones especially downstream. These impacts need to be studied, quantified and considered before importation is allow (or excluded).
6. The importation of excess soil for rehabilitation could be seen as hastening the restoration of sites after decades of extraction but also exacerbates impacts which communities are all too familiar with – trucking noise, dust, traffic continuing after the ‘interim use’ which many would say has already gone on too long. Any project under 10 000 cubic metres of excess soil is allowed under self-filing which is not rigorous enough. If self-filing is to be considered the threshold should be much lower. .
7 . The plan for its ‘beneficial reuse’ in pits and quarries does not include returning the landscape to former grade levels, which means a reduction in total lands available to agriculture. Soil fertility, according to the National Farmers’ Union, is lost during storage in piles or berms. Neither current rehabilitation practices, when they occur (seldom), nor soil dumping seems ideal: Rural communities may wish to be spared from both. All Ontario may be interested in the production of foodstuffs. It is also not evident how the control of the spread of invasive species can be effective in this protocol.
8. The impacts will be enduring and widespread. Pits and quarries requiring less than 10 000 cubic metres, the approximate equivalent of a hockey rink filled 6 metres deep, will not require a public consultation under the proposed regulations as non-significant amendments. Given the large number of dormant pits and vast quantities of excess soil, there is a high likelihood at many large extraction sites that more than the approximate equivalent to 10000 cubic metres, i.e., 700 truckloads will be brought in. Our understanding of communities' experience with amendments is that they are routinely approved. This means significant disruption to communities and significant risks to them.
9. 8 000 Legacy pits, those created before the Pits and Quarries Act of the early 1970s, the predecessor to the Aggregate Resources Act, remain the responsibility of TOARC which is run by the industry and are not controlled by this regulation. Both the siphoning of taxpayer funds to an industry-controlled organization and their scarce progress seem to need revision. This opportunity is missed in the current proposal. Further, a plan for their rehabilitation should be a priority given their age and continuing environmental impacts, but with consent of the community.
10. The expertise of the MECP is not brought to bear, it would appear, during the rehabilitation process, which means that after licence surrender and/or revocation, that ministry and/or the municipalities would need a transfer of all information regarding the soil deposited in the meantime. This is not apparent in the document. This means that the municipalities would inherit costs and responsibilities over which they have had no control, and poses an unfair burden upon them and local communities.
11. The final dates for submission are too quick. There should be an extension of the comment period by at least 90 additional days to allow for NDMNRF staff to reach out to community and environmental groups for their comment.
12. The principle that pit and quarry licence holders will be obliged to show the need for the importation of soils for rehabilitation should be extended as a preventative measure so that they need to show need to extract the materials in the first place which causes the rehabilitation need.
Further comments are available should you wish.