The following are general…

The following are general comments from OSRTF on the Draft Excess Soil Regulations. Our technical review, dated June 11, 2017, was submitted previously.

In the past few years Ontario has undergone reviews of many of its provincial laws and regulations that touch on the regulation of the dumping of excess soil - Aggregate Resources Act, Municipal Act, Conservation Authorities Act, and the Greenbelt Acts. Each of which was aware of these pending regulations to deal with excess soil. With few exceptions (such as the municipal site alteration by-laws coming into effect in the Conservation Authority areas), it appears that they have been silent on the issue expecting the soil regulations to look after everything. While the proposal represents many steps forward, in our opinion, it does not look after everything. These regulations are the last chance to get it right. They must get it right.

The draft regulations put a lot of the supervision and judgment of the movement and disposal of excess soil in the hands of Qualified Persons. In our experience we have seen a local newspaper ad for a high school graduate to be the on-site representative for a receiving site QP. In another case the contact phone number for the “independent” receiving site QP was picked up in the office of the source site. At another site all the test results of samples taken by the representative were clean while all those taken by an independent geotechnical company all showed severe contamination. We can point to several situations where soil from soil processing sites (which should have been acceptable) turned out to be contaminated when tested at the receiving site. More effort must be put into ensuring that the QPs are in fact qualified and are acting professionally.

The regulations miss a few of the environmental impacts. The impacts on surface runoff patterns, groundwater infiltration, invasive species, and the resultant landform must be considered at the receiving site. Too many of the receiving sites we see are areas of ugly weed infested ground with a flat top interspersed with the piles as they were dumped from the trucks and steep eroding sides. While the receiving site might be in the jurisdiction of the municipality, MOECC could set some minimum standards for the fill management plan of the receiving site similar to what the Aggregate Resources Act sets out for the decommissioning of pits.

Most of the proposed regulations deal with the source sites and the movement of soil to the receiving site. However, it is at the receiving site that the environmental impact may be felt years into the future. Standards for chemical contamination change. The geotechnical soil characteristics have been altered from that of the natural soil. The proposed registry must register all of the receiving sites. There must be a permanent public registry that a plot of land was a receiving site for excess soil. It then follows that the excess soil management plans for the source sites that deposited there must be on file for future reference, even if only for the eyes of government officials asked to comment on the suitability of a plot of land for an intended use many years in the future.

All this regulatory effort will be useless if there is not oversight, enforcement, and penalties. At the meetings we hear provincial staff and persons in the industry speak of “a few bad apples”. The bad apples will find the loopholes (they have been pretty good at it so far) and fill out the paperwork but it is only through inspection, enforcement, and severe penalties that violations can be uncovered and stopped. Penalties must be severe enough that they are not just another “cost of business”. The small rural municipalities are not in a position to do the inspections and the court fights. Only the MOECC has that strength.

An effort should be put forward to seek truly innovative ways to deal with this huge quantity of excess soil. The Humber Islands was an idea that can be reconsidered. How about solid waste landfills accepting excess soil at no charge for the daily cover. Build a multipurpose recreational hill on an impermeable clay pad. Any of these would be a much better beneficial reuse than filling in a valley.

OSRTF is the Ontario Soil Regulation Task Force - an association of over 20 community groups concerned about the dumping of excess soil.

[Original Comment ID: 209860]