Soil waste from Ontario construction projects could fill 16 Rogers Centres in 1 year: Report

By Amara McLaughlin
CP24.com
April 26, 2017

Ontario construction projects generate enough excess soil in one year to fill 16 Roger Centres, a new report has found.

With the Greater Toronto Area’s soaring housing market, real estate experts say buyers are being forced to purchase tear-down homes for premium prices, in order to secure limited amounts of highly sought-after land.

According to the Residential and Civil Alliance of Ontario (RCCAO), the skyrocketing housing market is contributing to a growing excess of construction soil that is being sent to landfills.

The construction agency says 25.8 million cubic metres of excavated materials needed to be removed from sites across the province in 2015. This is enough to fill 16 Roger Centres.

Of this, excess soil from residential projects has grown by more than 30 per cent in the last five years.
“The province does not collect data or track excess soil volumes from infrastructure and development activity,” said the report’s author Frank Zechner. “These are primarily clean soils and can be reused on-site or at another construction project with proper planning.”

If the province could repurpose this waste, it would curb the environmental impact that transporting the waste has, the report said.

“As part of the province’s initiatives to address climate change, support an innovation economy and deliver infrastructure in more effective ways, implementation of the excess soil management framework is a critical objective,” the report reads.

With the federal budget projecting that $186 billion will be invested in housing infrastructure this year, Zechner doesn’t see the quantity of excess construction soils declining anytime soon.

“Expectations are that the quantity of excess construction soils will continue to be high in the coming years,” he said.

If addressed, the RCCAO says fuel and truck emissions will be reduced because they will no longer be transporting soil to landfills.

This can be done in a number of ways, including looking for opportunities to minimize the amount of soil being excavated.

“Our main objective is to reduce the current ‘dig and dump’ approach as this results in a range of consequences,” said RCCAO’s executive director Andy Manahan in a news release.

The construction agency is calling on the province to invest in research, which looks at the amount of soil-related waste created by municipal and residential construction projects in hopes of reducing it in the long run.