EJQ2 - Fall 2024 - Journal - Page 53
WHEN THE PROVINCE OF ONTARIO enacted Ontario Regulation
406/19 (On-Site and Excess Soil Management), the goal was to solve a
long-standing and signi昀椀cant problem: preventing contaminated soils
from being managed inappropriately. This problem certainly needed to be
addressed, but the solution has created its own set of problems. Is this a
case of the cure being worse than the disease?
This article tackles one aspect of the regulation that is particularly salient
to this question: the very conservative nature of the Excess Soil Quality
Standards (ESQS). This is important because there is, not surprisingly,
a direct correlation between how low soil quality standards are and how
much soil will be classi昀椀ed as contaminated. Particularly in the context of
excess soils, both the costs and the bene昀椀ts of this relationship become
an important public policy consideration.
The province already had a set of soil quality standards that were broadly
applied in the assessment of soil quality: the Ontario Regulation 153/04
Standards, otherwise known as the “Brown昀椀eld soil standards.” But
because it was recognized that signi昀椀cantly larger volumes of soil would
often be deposited at soil reuse sites than the default volumes assumed
in the derivation of the brown昀椀eld standards, there was a concern that
E N V I RON M E N T J OURN A L QUA RT E RLY RE PORT • FA L L 2 02 4 • P AGE 5 3
