Moving Soil- More Expensive And Difficult

For many years, the Ministry of the Environment has talked about adopting a Materials Management policy to regulate the movement of soils from one property to another. In the absence of such a policy, different Ministry of the Environment offices have taken different approaches. Some have argued that only "inert fill" can be moved from one property to another, which they have interpreted to mean soil meeting Table 1. This restrictive interpretation has rarely been followed in practice, though; most developers will accept Table 2 soils to a Table 2 site, and Table 3 soils to a Table 3 site.

December's amendments to Ontario's Regulation 153/04 will not only drive up the cost of remediating contaminated sites: they will also drive up the cost of disposing of "clean" surplus soil from construction projects.