Excess soil cannot be…

Excess soil cannot be assumed to be clean fill. Excess soil within the ground water table has a high risk of contaminating the aquifer. Ridgemount Quarry extends into the Onandaga aquifer and is adjacent to Frenchmen's Creek. The current Rules for Soil Management require that only a fraction of the source soil be tested, and only a sample from one in two hundred trucks be sampled at the receiving site. The proposed 5.975 Million cubic meter volume of soil to be imported amounts to approximately 597,500 tri-axle truckloads based on an average 10 cubic meter loads. The Ontario Society of Professional Engineers (OSPE) sub-committee on Excess Soil for reuse in pits and quarries is quoted (page 3): "Given the volume of material imported, the rehabilitation process can pose short- and long-term impacts to human and ecological health." This comment does not specifically speak to importation of material and placement within the ground water table. If one small part of contaminated soil in a truckload is not identified, the entire aquifer can be contaminated PERMANENTLY. That risk can be multiplied by 597,500.
The sure method to prevent all risk is to adjust the rehabilitation plan to utilize the soil and aggregate on site as would have been the basis of the decision to grant the original license(s).