By Ed Rodrigues, P.Geo.
Chair, Brownfields Sub-Committee

A consultation session on the recently proposed amendments to Ontario Regulation 153/04 was held on November 12, 2008 at the First Unitarian Church, 175 St. Clair Avenue West, Toronto. The session was arranged jointly by APGO’s Brownfields Sub-committee and the Ministry of the Environment (the MOE), as part of the public outreach on the proposed amendments. 80 APGO members attended the session. On the invitation of APGO, several professional engineers, including a representative of the Ontario Society of Professional Engineers, and other brownfields practitioners also attended.

The MOE gave an overview of the scientific, technical and policy rationale for the proposed amendments. In the opening presentation, the MOE stated that the key goal of the amendments is “to set the bar regarding the standard of the brownfields site assessment practice in Ontario, such that the public can expect the same high level of service regardless of which Qualified Person (QP) is engaged in any particular project”. In keeping with the need for better public accountability, it is expected that QPs filing a Record of Site Condition (RSC) for any property under the regulation should have no direct interest in the property, in order to avoid the possibility of a real or perceived conflict of interest.

The MOE proposes to amend the current Phase I and Phase II environmental site assessment standards by including certain defined prescriptive elements that must be followed in order for the environmental site assessment to support a RSC filing. The MOE provided details and emphasized that the inclusion of prescribed mandatory requirements will result in improved quality and standardisation of Phase I and II reports within the RSC process, and will provide greater public confidence in the work of QPs. It will also assist in developing a more transparent RSC review procedure. The professional judgement of a QP was also recognized as an important element in the site assessment process.

An explanation of the process to revise the generic soil and groundwater standards was provided. The process involved a detailed review and updating of the toxicological data and contaminant transport models providing the scientific basis for the standards. The toxicological data and exposure models have not been updated since the generic standards were first released as guideline criteria values in 1996. The proposed revised standards incorporate the most recent peer-reviewed toxicological data and contaminant transport models, and include the findings of recent research in this field.

A new feature of the proposed amendments is the inclusion of a “modified generic” risk assessment process. The MOE provided a detailed description of this process and illustrated how it is intended to work with the input of site data in web-based spreadsheet models. The models are currently the same models used to develop the proposed generic standards and may undergo further enhancement according to stakeholder review. They would allow the applicable soil and groundwater standards to be modified by incorporating site-specific physical parameters and relevant exposure pathways. The aim of the modified generic process is to allow for a streamlined risk assessment procedure and reduce the review time under the regulation for sites that differ only slightly from the assumptions in the generic model.

APGO’s Environment committee has established a Brownfields sub-committee. This group will collect comments and concerns from APGO members to bring forward to the MOE. The sub-committee will be acting as the liaison between our membership and the MOE in working through these concerns and making suggested improvements to the process, with the aim of achieving the mutual goals of APGO and the MOE through co-operative partnership. The current make-up of the sub-committee includes members each having diverse backgrounds as practitioners, regulators and/or clients operating in Ontario as well as other jurisdictions in Canada and the United States. The primary role of this group will be to act as a “sounding board” for the APGO membership in voicing its concerns with the proposed regulatory changes, and in consolidating and communicating these concerns in a dialogue with the MOE. The MOE has agreed to be represented in an advisory and consultative role on the sub-committee. The MOE has also indicated that it is giving favourable consideration to providing APGO with financial assistance for developing practice guidelines for site assessment and in conducting outreach and training, all with the aim of improving the standard of brownfields site assessment and remediation practice in Ontario.

Members are encouraged to provide their comments on this important environmental issue. Comments should be provided to Audrey Benjamin of APGO at abenjamin@apgo.net. The formal comment period on the posting of the proposed amendments on the Environmental Bill of Rights Registry (EBR) closes on February 3, 2009. To facilitate the compilation of comments for the EBR submission, members are asked to submit their comments no later than Monday, January 5, 2009. Written comments provided to the MOE during the November 12, 2008 consultation session will also be taken into account. We thank the MOE staff that arranged the venue and hosted the workshop for APGO members. Staff was very helpful with their explanations of the various aspects of the amendments and took time to address comments and questions during the session.