Soil Protection and Contaminated Sites Rehabilitation Policy

11. Implentation plan

11.1 Legal Framework
11.2 Recognized Professionals
11.3 Fee Structure
11.4 Active Industrial Sites Intervention Program 
11.5 Economic Instruments and Other Market Mechanisms
11.6 Risk Assessment Procedures 
11.7 Assessment Mechanism for Projects Subject to the Risk Assessment Procedure 
11.8 Validation of Generic Criteria 
11.9 Administrative Documents 
11.10 Technical Guides 
11.11 Restructuring of the GERLED program 

11. Implementation plan

The Soil Protection and Contaminated Sites Rehabilitation Policy sets forth the MEF’s major orientations in this domain. However, to allow complete implementation of this policy and attainment of its objectives, various legal, administrative, economic and technical instruments must be developed and implemented. Fine-tuning of some of these instruments will require co-operation from other governmental, municipal and private stakeholders. This section describes the nature of these instruments and the schedule currently provided for their completion.

This process will not however hinder the immediate implementation of the major orientations of the Policy and the components that can be deployed now. The remaining components will apply as the various instruments set out in the implementation plan are completed.

The Environment Quality Act (Division IV, Sections 31.42 to 31.52) grants the MEF a number of powers that allow it to require and force characterization studies to be carried out on contaminated sites or the carrying out of rehabilitation work. However, most sections directly relating to contaminated soils are not in force at present. Some of them, before coming into force, should be amended still further to better reflect the present situation with respect to contaminated sites and make the MEF’s responses more energy efficient and more effective. Additional sections should be drafted to cover aspects not covered at present (recourse to recognized professionals, fee structure, etc.). Finally, two regulations provided for in the present Act, authorizing the setting of legal limits on the concentration level at which a site is considered contaminated and identifying the industrial activities likely to contaminate the environment, should be adopted.

A work group will assess, within the context of deregulation, the suggested amendments and make proposals during the next budget year.

The following factors will be considered.

• To ensure that new companies intending to operate in any of the areas of activity likely to contaminate soils carry out a characterization study of their site before beginning their activities, and implement a groundwater and surface water quality monitoring program;

• To ensure that financial resources are deposited by industrial establishments carrying out activities likely to contaminate soils and groundwater with a view, where appropriate, to securing the site, ensuring appropriate management of hazardous materials or wastes and decontaminating soils, waters and buildings.

• To ensure that owners or promoters who wish to reuse contaminated sites draw up environmental profiles of their sites, take the necessary corrective measures before reusing them and assume their responsibilities with respect to risk management.

• To ensure that owners or promoters who wish to reuse contaminated sites without decontaminating them to the use-based generic criteria publish a redevelopment of a contaminated site announcement in the newspapers and hold public information sessions on the project.

• To ensure that the MEF can obtain a copy of an existing characterization study.

• To ensure that, within the Intervention Program, operators of industries carrying out activities likely to contaminate soils submit an environmental balance sheet, determine the impact and the level of risk constituted by their site and take the necessary corrective action where appropriate.

• To ensure that companies that have operated in any of the areas of activity likely to contaminate soils and groundwater and that cease operations characterize their sites, determine the level of risk and take the necessary corrective action where appropriate.

• That a regulation be adopted establishing the concentration level in excess of which a site is considered contaminated (as provided in Section 31.52 a) of the Environment Quality Act (EQA)).

• That a regulation be adopted determining the industrial or commercial activities the exercise of which may cause soil and groundwater contamination (as provided in Section 31.52 c) of the EQA).

• That the owners of sites contaminated in excess of the use-based generic criteria corresponding to the zoning of their site register a Contamination Notice with the Registry Office (the Contamination Notice required to permit registration with the Registry Office must be prepared).

• That the owners of sites contaminated under specific criteria or on which confinement, control and monitoring (CCM) measures or restrictive measures are in place arrive at a Restrictive Use Covenant with the MEF and register it with the Registry Office (the Restrictive Use Covenant required to permit registration with the Registry Office must be prepared).

• That the owners of contaminated sites who become aware of contamination in soils or groundwater at the edges of their sites are obliged to report it to the owners of neighbouring sites.

• That a professional certification program be implemented.

• That a fee structure system be implemented.

The MEF will begin to develop the professional accreditation program in 1998. The MEF hopes to develop this program in co-operation with stakeholders. The implementation of the certification program requires amendments to the Environment Quality Act.

In 1998, the MEF will propose a fee structure for the various tasks that it may be called on to carry out in the assessment of a contaminated site. The system may be introduced in the fall of 1999.

11.4 Active Industrial Sites Intervention Program

A detailed description of the Intervention Program, including the schedules set out for each of the sectors of industrial activity targeted, a description of the environmental balance sheet and the evaluation grid will appear in the document relating to the Intervention Program that will be available beginning in the fall of 1998. This document will also include a list, taken from the former GERLED program, of the disposal sites that belong to industrial companies. These sites will be included in the Intervention Program.

Since the introduction of the Contaminated Sites Rehabilitation Policy in 1988, market dynamics has undoubtedly constituted one of the principal forces leading to Contaminated Sites Rehabilitation. This decisive influence will continue to be felt in future.

It is possible however to reinforce this trend by developing economic instruments and other market mechanisms that will encourage the owners of contaminated sites or possible promoters interested in redeveloping such sites to take action. The development of such instruments requires co-operation from many governmental, municipal and private stakeholders. The creation and implementation of instruments adapted to the various needs (rehabilitation and reuse, orphan, municipal and private sites, etc.) will take place gradually and on an ad hoc basis.

Thus, in the spring of 1997, the government announced the introduction of the Urban Contaminated Sites Rehabilitation Program. Under this program, the Government of Québec makes 40 million dollars available to the City of Montreal and Québec City to carry out redevelopment projects on contaminated sites and rehabilitate them, on condition that the two cities invest an identical amount.

The MEF, in co-operation with the Ministère des Ressources Naturelles, pursuant to the April 1997 Cabinet decision in the context of the reform of the Petroleum Products and Equipment Act, is also examining the possibility of establishing a fund to rehabilitate sites contaminated by petroleum products from underground tanks.

Finally, the MEF plans to establish a national fund that could be constituted from fees collected on the disposal of contaminated wastes and soils in the various landfills in operation on the territory of Québec (sanitary landfills, contaminated soil landfills, final disposal sites for hazardous materials, etc.). In the future, this fund would make it possible to finance, when necessary, various courses of action (characterization and rehabilitation) involving orphan landfills. A work group will be established in the fall of 1998 to identify other economic instruments and market mechanisms that should be developed, and contact stakeholders outside the MEF who could contribute to developing and implementing them.

The Policy makes it possible to use risk analysis to assess the specific risk represented by a site and select the appropriate risk management measures. The Policy provides that anyone who opts for determination of the specific risk associated with his site must consider the toxicological risk, ecotoxicological risk and the impact on groundwater (see Appendix 3). The risk must be assessed in compliance with the guidelines developed by the relevant authorities, that is, the Ministère de la Santé et des Services Sociaux (MSSS) and the MEF.

The risk to human health (toxicological) from a site must be determined in accordance with the risk analysis guidelines developed by the MSSS in co-operation with the MEF. The MSSS has established two work groups (one working on guidelines and the other on the basic principles that should orient the guidelines) made up of MSSS and MEF representatives with a view to making operational the recourse to analysis of toxicological risks. A consultation on the documents produced by the work groups is expected for the fall of 1998.

The risk to the wildlife and flora (ecotoxicological) from a site must be determined in accordance with the MEF’s Ecotoxicological Risk Assessment Procedure (ERAP). During the winter of 1997, the MEF carried out a consultation directed at a preliminary version of this document. The final version should be available beginning in the fall of 1998.

In 1994, the MEF put in place the GTE (Technical assessment group) made up of MEF and MSSS representatives. The GTE’s objective was to supervise, temporarily until the appearance of this policy, the specific assessment of risks and the introduction of risk management measures for certain projects in particular.

To continue to ensure the uniformity and the validity of the risk analyses carried out and the resulting management measures, an assessment mechanism will be introduced. Rates for this procedure will be set later (see 11.3).

In the interim, until all Policy application instruments are in place, the GTE mechanism will be maintained for any risk management project that does not lead to use of the use-based generic criteria. However, re-assessment two years after the introduction of the policy is planned.

The soil contamination assessment criteria, or ABC criteria, were introduced in Québec in 1985 and were made official in 1988 by their inclusion in the Contaminated Sites Rehabilitation Policy. They have since been used in hundreds of cases. The MEF has also carried out, in the cases it has been involved in, the validation of some existing criteria and the design of criteria for substances that did not appear in the original grid of the 1988 policy. The MEF has also worked with the Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment on verifying criteria for some twenty parameters.

The MEF intends to validate all criteria of this Policy. To ensure the accuracy of the validation it is preparing to carry out, the MEF began in 1996:

• A validation of A criterion from three information sources: The background levels compiled by the Ontario Ministry of the Environment, the data collected in Québec by the Ministère de l’Agriculture, des Pêcheries et de l’Alimentation (MAPAQ) and those collected by the MRN. This exercise has been completed, and the revised criteria appear in Appendix 2;

• The compilation and analysis of the generic criteria used abroad and their scientific justification. This exercise was carried out in order to position the criteria currently used in Québec in relation to those used abroad, to verify their scientific bases and to identify, if the need is felt, methodologies that could be borrowed elsewhere and adopted in Québec. This exercise has ended;

• The validation of the criteria from the 1988 policy, on a toxicological and ecotoxicological basis (taking into account the severity of the apprehended toxic effect, the uncertainty associated with the value assigned to the reference dose and the importance of the ambient exposure in relation to the toxicological indicators). This approach is however subject to some of the suggestions of the toxicological risk analysis that are to be developed by the MSSS in co-operation with the MEF, and the ecotoxicological risk assessment procedure that is to be developed by the MEF. It is planned to validate in this way some of the criteria as soon as these guidelines are available.

It is on the basis of these various components that the MEF will evaluate the 1988 policy criteria and define, if necessary, the new criteria to be used in future. The preparation of a validated list of soil criteria is planned for the fall of 1999 at the earliest. Until it is adopted, the criteria appearing in Appendix 2 to the policy will be used.

A list of new quality criteria, based on the uses of the resource, is presented in Appendix 2 to the policy. The criteria have been revised in order to ensure that health and the ecosystem are protected. The list is not complete for all the parameters, however. The development, for some uses, of new criteria by the MEF directorates involved is an exercise that will be carried out continuously, as needed.

The completion of the Policy Rehabilitation Section requires the preparation of the following five standardized administrative documents.

• Environmental profile;
• Environmental balance sheet;
• Work completion report;
• Compatibility certificate;
• Conditional compatibility certificate.

These documents will be available beginning in the fall of 1998.

The appearance of this policy will add one more technical guide to those already published. This is the "Guide de bonnes pratiques pour la gestion de matériaux issus du démantèlement" [Code of Practice for the Management of Demolition Materials].

As its name indicates, this guide describes good management practices for demolition materials from buildings and equipment located on contaminated sites, dealing more specifically with materials exposed to contamination. A preliminary version of this guide was the subject of a targeted consultation in 1996. The final version is currently being prepared and will be available from Publications du Québec beginning in the fall of 1998.

As well, the present Standard Guide to the Characterization of Contaminated Sites (February 1988) will be replaced by the "Site Characterization Guide."

As its name suggests, this guide will describe the major stages in characterization. A preliminary version of this guide was the subject of a targeted consultation in 1996. The final version has been prepared and will be available from Publications du Québec beginning in the fall of 1998.

The restructuring carried out to the GERLED program and the new response modes provided or to be developed for each of the new groups of identified sites are described in the document entitled Inventaire des lieux d’élimination de résidus industriels GERLED; Évolution depuis 1983 et état actuel [Inventory of GERLED industrial waste disposal sites: changes since 1983 and the present situation], available since May 1998 from Publications du Québec.