On Wednesday, December 4th, Minister of the Environment, Conservation and Parks Jeff Yurek announced the filing of the long awaited On-Site and Excess Soil Management Regulation (O. Reg. 406/19).
The Ministry has been working on this regulation for several years, most recently posting a proposed regulation on the Environmental Registry on May 1, 2019. The finalized regulation is conceptually consistent to the proposed regulation, but does contain a number of significant changes related to specific requirements for managing “Excess Soil”, as well as the implementation dates for the new regulation:
- reuse rules and waste classification amendments/clarifications will come into force July 1, 2020;
- excess soil planning and notification (public registry posting) requirements will come into force January 1, 2022; and,
- general prohibitions on directing excess soil to landfills will come into force January 1, 2025.
As part of the new regulation, ancillary changes to Ontario’s Records of Site Condition – Part XV.1 of the Act regulation (O. Reg. 153/04) were also filed. These changes came into force immediately (i.e., December 4, 2019). Although the amendments include some minor changes from the May proposal, the revisions have now enacted long awaited changes to the rules governing the filing of Records of Site Condition, including exempting exceedances of parameters associated with placement of a substance (e.g., salt) on ground surfaces for the safety of vehicular or pedestrian traffic under conditions of snow or ice as an impediment to filing a Record of Site Condition.
Terrapex staff would be happy to meet with clients to present a summary of the regulation and answer any questions you may have – please contact Peter Sutton, Vice President, Environmental Services to arrange a suitable meeting time/date at P.Sutton@terrapex.com or (416) 245-0011 ext. 234.
TORONTO OFFICE
