Excess soil management…

Excess soil management regulatory proposal

We have reviewed the “Excess soil management regulatory proposal”. Our understanding is that the proposal has the following goals:

• Protect human health and the environment from inappropriate relocation of excess soil;
• Enhance opportunities for the beneficial reuse of excess soil and reduce greenhouse gas emissions associated with the movement of excess soil.

For the first goal, the regulation proposes a management mechanism to regulate the displacement of soils and we believe current management processes are likely to adapt to meet its requirements. However, although the regulation aims at improving practices of soil management, we believe that the proposed regulation cannot be efficiently enforced against those unwilling to follow regulations, for example by the illegal dumping of contaminated soils, thus still generating risks for the environment and communities.

Several regulations and guidelines have been put in place since the early 1990s to regulate the management and disposal of contaminated soils. The primary objective of these measures was to control illegal dumping of contaminated soils to protect the environment. One of these measures was the introduction of a traceability process using transport manifests. It was brought in as a way to control the disposal of contaminated soils to authorized sites. However, even with these regulations, illegal soil dumping is still a problem. Governmental agencies, environmental organisation and property owners still have to deal with this problem today, generating financial, environmental and social impacts. The obvious conclusion of the industry was that current management processes are vulnerable to fraud and therefore ineffective to control the illegal dumping of contaminated soils.

Recent cases published in national medias have shown that contaminated soils are still illegally dumped by individuals and sometimes criminal organizations. This way they can charge disposal fees to site owner without paying disposal cost in authorized sites. The short term financial gains are a drop in the bucket compared to the societal cost of cleaning up needlessly contaminated land and it can take years or even decade before the problem is even found. The main reason this happens today is that the transport management of contaminated soils is still done manually with paper manifests. It has several security weaknesses which among others include:

• Absence of transport manifests;
• Presumed disposal of contaminated soils on land in different jurisdictions;
• Falsification of documents and manifests;
• Production of false manifests.

Moreover, considering that contaminated soil generators are legally responsible of the soils until disposition in authorized sites, consequences of inadequate provision are severe. This problem exposes contaminated soil generators to fines by the government authorities, legal proceedings and ultimately important financial risks.

The obvious conclusion is that conventional management processes are vulnerable and ineffective in countering illegal dumping of contaminated soils and that a more modern approach to soil transport would be necessary to maximize the benefits of the new regulations, in making sure they cannot be disregarded.

In summary, although the proposed regulation does better regulate the excavated soils management and reuse (including contaminated soils) to protect human health and the environment, no efficient mechanism is proposed to counter the illegal soil dumping which will disregard those regulations completely.

Electronic traceability with new technologies

The use of electronic traceability is the best way to effectively counter illegal dumping of contaminated soils. In fact, access to the latest information technologies now makes it possible to create powerful traceability and management tools. Electronic traceability allows encrypted, permanent and real-time data between the source site and the authorized receiving sites.

Our company has developed an innovative application using the latest technologies to track soils movements in remediation projects involving excavation. The application allows stakeholders to have an electronic, permanent and real-time tracking of the disposal of contaminated soil between the source site and the authorized receiving sites. The traceability is done in two layers:

• Creation of permanent electronic transactions on the source site which can only be closed through the system by the receiving sites;

• Truck tracking in real time using GPS devices.

The simple process consists of creating electronic transactions at the source site the same way it is currently done with paper manifest, only now using a mobile phone or computer instead of pen and paper. When the truck vehicle reaches its destination, the confirmation of the reception of the soils at the receiving site is done by entering the mass of soil disposed. At the end of a project, an electronic traceability certificate is generated by the application including all data collected during the project; demonstrating to site owners and government authorities that soils have been disposed in an authorized site with respect to the regulations in force.

Connecting emitting and receiving sites in an electronic traceability system is an effective way to control the legal dumping of contaminated soils and reinforce regulations without having to assign extra resources to compliance.

Greenhouse gases emission

The reduction of greenhouse gases is the second goal targeted by the new regulation. Available information indicates that the reduction of greenhouse gases is based primarily on the assumption that reuse of excavated soil in construction projects should reduce the distances traveled by trucks. While this approach remains plausible, it will be very difficult to measure the effectiveness of regulation to reduce greenhouse gases.

Using an electronic traceability system allows the collection of mobile data in real-time for each vehicle between the source and receiving sites such as time and distance. Since these data are recorded and save for each vehicle, they can be used later on for detailed analysis such as greenhouse gases emission based on real data. Also, real-time tracking data can be used to analyze driver movement to identify suspicious behavior, promote optimized routes with less congestion, avoid residential areas and schools, etc.

Conclusion

Modernizing the regulation for excess soil management is an excellent initiative to protect our health and the environment from inappropriate relocation of excess soil. However, the use of conventional management processes makes soil management vulnerable to unscrupulous individuals and criminal organizations that carry out illegal dumping for pecuniary purposes and this could undermine the goals of this modernization.

Integrating technology to the management processes is the most sensible way to counter the stratagems that contribute to illegal dumping. Our application is designed to address these issues with secure electronic transactions and real time GPS tracking of trucks. Geolocation data between the source site and receiving sites can be used for detailed calculation of greenhouse gases emission and to identify suspicious behavior of carriers. Furthermore, data can be used to create new functionalities to support environmental sustainability, project management and business opportunities for all project stakeholders.