Ontario is proposing changes to the excess soil management and brownfields redevelopment regime.

The changes are designed to “make it safer and easier for more excess soil to be reused locally…while continuing to ensure strong environmental protection” and to “clarify rules and remove unnecessary barriers to redevelopment and revitalization of historically contaminated lands…while protecting human health and the environment.”

Opponents will see this as a deregulation which will primarily benefit business interests at the cost of environmental protection, notwithstanding these assurances.

Excess Soil

The changes will include the development of a new excess soil regulation supported by amendments to existing regulations including O. Reg. 347 and O. Reg. 153/04 made under the Environmental Protection Act supports key changes to excess soil management.

Proposed changes include:

• clarifying that excess soil is not a waste if appropriately and directly reused;
• development of flexible, risk-based reuse excess soil standards and soil characterization rules to provide greater clarity of environmental protection;
• removal of waste-related approvals for low risk soil management activities;
• improving safe and appropriate reuse of excess soil by requiring testing, tracking and registration of soil movements for larger and riskier generating and receiving sites;
• flexibility for soil reuse through a Beneficial Reuse Assessment Tool to develop site specific standards;
• landfill restrictions on deposit of clean soil (unless needed for cover).

Record of Site Condition

Under O. Reg. 153/04, a Record of Site Condition must be filed on the Ministry’s public registry if there is a change in property use from an industrial, commercial or community use to a more sensitive use, such as residential, institutional, agricultural, or parkland.

The Ministry is proposing amendments to O. Reg. 153/04 including reduced requirements to fully delineate contaminants (i.e. additional sampling) for properties going through the Risk Assessment process when contamination is already well understood.

The amendments would also provide flexibility on meeting standards where exceedances are caused by the use of a substance for safety under conditions of snow and ice, discharges of treated drinking water, and the presence of fill that matches local background levels.

Other proposed amendments would remove the requirement for a Record of Site Condition for specific low risk redevelopment situations, including converting:

• Low-rise commercial buildings to mixed-use residential with commercial on main floor;
• Temporary roads in construction areas to residential;
• Indoor places of worship to residential; and
• Industrial or commercial to indoor agriculture in or on the same building.

The proposal is posted for comment on the Environment Registry until May 31, 2019. To read the full proposal, click here

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Manning Environmental Law is a Canadian law firm based in Toronto, Ontario. Our practice is focussed on environmental law, energy law and aboriginal law. 

Paul Manning is a certified specialist in environmental law. He has been named as one of the World’s Leading Environmental Lawyers and one of the World’s Leading Climate Change Lawyers by Who’s Who Legal.

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