Why reuse, and what the rules require

The rule in one pass

Ontario’s excess soil regulation is O. Reg. 406/19, On-Site and Excess Soil Management, made under the Environmental Protection Act. The ministry’s handling excess soil page says it was made in December 2019 so construction soil could be managed and reused, soil costs could come down, and health and the environment would still be protected.

The regulation is read with the Rules for Soil Management and Excess Soil Quality Standards. That document is incorporated by reference. It holds the management rules and the Excess Soil Quality Standards. The ministry says the fact sheets are information, not legal advice. This page is the same kind of note.

What came into force when

The ministry describes the phase-in this way. On 1 January 2021: reuse rules, including risk-based standards, waste designation, and approvals. On 1 January 2023: testing, tracking, and registration, with some exemptions. Those 2023 requirements were briefly in place from January to April 2022 and were then suspended until 1 January 2023. On 1 January 2027: restrictions on landfilling cleaner soils.

Table 1, Table 2.1, and Table 3.1

Soil Swap can work with soil from Table 1 through Table 3.1. The Rules say Table 1 provides the full-depth background site condition standards, and that it contains the same standards as Table 1 of the Soil, Ground Water and Sediment Standards made under Part XV.1 of the Environmental Protection Act and referred to in O. Reg. 153/04. The excess-soil Table 1 is modified to note when leachate analysis is required and whether a number is an analytical reporting limit.

Table 2.1 is the volume-independent full-depth excess soil standard in a potable groundwater condition. Table 3.1 is the volume-independent full-depth standard in a non-potable groundwater condition. Separate small-volume tables, numbered 2 to 9 and capped at 350 cubic metres, are the coarse-textured standards from Tables 2 to 9 of those Soil, Ground Water and Sediment Standards. The Rules do not reprint them. Which table applies depends on volume, property use, depth, shallow soil, and water. A qualified person makes that call. Meeting a table is not, by itself, permission to place the soil.

Planning, the registry, and the haul

The ministry says larger projects, more than 2,000 cubic metres, and riskier sites such as gas stations and industrial sites, have extra reuse planning. That includes an assessment of past uses, tracking, registration, and soil sampling and characterization if it is necessary. Reuse sites of 10,000 cubic metres register and need procedures to track and inspect the soil they receive. The project-area fact sheet is the ministry’s longer version of those project rules.

Notices go to the Excess Soil Registry. RPRA operates the registry. The ministry enforces the program. RPRA’s page says that from 1 January 2023, project leaders, and operators or owners of reuse sites and residential development soil depots, file notices about reuse and disposal. Not every load is filed. Schedule 2 of the regulation lists cases where the section 8 planning rules do not apply.

Where a notice is required, section 16 of O. Reg. 406/19 requires a tracking system, built to the Soil Rules, for each load while it is transported and deposited. The person hauling the soil completes a record. On arrival, that record includes the name and phone number of the person at the destination who acknowledges the deposit. The ministry page also points to hauling guidance, including hauling-record templates developed with the Ontario Environment Industry Association.

A local home, and the 2027 landfill line

Section 22 says no person shall deposit excess soil at a landfill or dump if it meets the soil quality standards the Excess Soil Standards set for that subsection. The Rules say that soil is soil meeting Table 2.1 for residential, parkland, or institutional use, or soil of better quality. Subsection 22 (2) says this does not apply when the soil will be used for daily cover, final cover, the construction of roads or berms, or another ancillary use that supports the landfill or dump. Subsection 22 (3) allows a deposit in further cases when a qualified person has done what that subsection requires, including a written declaration. The ministry dates this landfilling restriction to 1 January 2027.

A provincial filing does not replace a municipal site-alteration or fill bylaw. The ministry points municipalities to the Canadian Urban Institute’s site-alteration by-law language tool for bylaws they write themselves. The same ministry page says the Greenbelt Plan and the Oak Ridges Moraine Conservation Plan contain excess soil policies.

What the public research counted

Two public figures get quoted. They are not the same number, and neither is a live inventory.

The ministry’s handling-excess-soil page says an estimated 25 million cubic metres of excess soil is generated in Ontario every year. It does not show the worksheet behind that estimate.

The Residential and Civil Construction Alliance of Ontario published a 2017 update, Quantification of Excess Construction Soils in Ontario, prepared by Frank J. E. Zechner Professional Corporation. It estimated a minimum of 25.8 million cubic metres of excess construction fill in Ontario in 2015, and between 20.0 and 24.6 million cubic metres in 2010. It said the 2015 volume would fill the Rogers Centre to the top of the roof 16 times. That is an industry research estimate for 2015, not a government count for this year.

The ministry lists what local reuse is for: fewer greenhouse gas emissions from hauling soil, less illegal dumping, less road damage, less reusable soil going to landfill, and lower transport and landfill cost. That page does not publish a dollar saving or a tonne of emissions. Soil Swap does not invent one.