Excess Soil Management

Onus on Developers

NRU
Dec. 13, 2017
Daniel Taylor

Early in 2018, the provincial government is expected to enact a regulation under the Environmental Protection Act, which will increase developers' responsibilities for managing the removal of excess soil from their development sites. Requirements are to include the creation of soil management plans detailing where the soil will be going, and how it will be handled.

Ontario land and water senior policy analyst Sunjay Coelho told NRU that over 25 million cubic metres of excavated soil or sediment is moved from construction sites across Ontario every year. Much of it is untracked and ends up in illegal dump sites.

"There have been many cases of large [soil] receiving sites emerging in rural areas that are accepting soil from urban areas such as [Toronto]. And key issues related to excess soil movement include illegal dumping, situations where ... soil is untracked from the site that it's generated to the site that it ends up at, and local issues that include noise, dust, road traffic ... and concerns around ground water, agricultural land ... and inconsistent oversight, particularly of large fill operations."

While municipalities have by-laws that control how the soil is managed in their jurisdictions, there is little regulation managing the source of the soil, Coelho explains.

"Municipalities have site alteration by-laws which effect how soil is managed on reuse sites but there are limited existing policies that clarify the responsibilities for source sites."

In April provincial staff posted an Excess Soil Regulatory Proposal on the Environmental Bill of Rights. Seeking comments before the end of June.

Canadian Urban Institute urban infrastructure programs manager Amanda Smith told NRU that at CUI's recent excess soil symposium the 300 participants were generally supportive of the proposed regulation.

"We had a wide range of perspectives from the development industry, municipalities and residents and we heard general approval for the proposed regulatory package. ... [The province] announced that if approved, the regulations will be phased in over a transition period over the next few years and people reacted well to that. It gives developers time to build it into site due diligence and for municipalities to review their by-laws."

Durham Homes Group principal Jeff Goldman told NRU that most developers are not aware of the anticipated regulation.

"For the most part developers have not been paying attention to this because it's just been a regular line item on their pro forma along with 100 other line items and costs for the development. ... The development community in my respectful opinion really needs to wake up," said Goldman. "We applaud the government for slowing things down with a transition period to make sure they get it right. But whether it's in 2018 or 2020, they're coming and we're going to have to do things differently, better and smarter."

Goldman says that under the proposed regulation, developers will have to create a management plan for the excess soil their developments generate and that will have an impact on their timelines.

"When you're a project manager doing a high condo in mid-town Toronto, you may have to truck out hundreds of loads of soils that are not pristine. So you better know where that soil is going and how it's going to be handled. We're going to have to start looking at things way, way ahead of time."

"The province is going to put a lot more responsibility on the developer the generator of excess soils so we may be liable for any human impacts, for example. If someone gets sick from contaminated ground water and it's found that it comes from the soil from your development. You could be in trouble."

"The key is going to be education. The best method of enforcement is educating developers on why this makes good sense environmentally, economically. Because the big kicker is that if you give thought to this in advance this is an expensive item now if you pay attention and do proper advance planning with your consultant you're going to save money, and it's better for the environment."