At the end of December, 2016, the Ministry of Environment and
Climate Change ("MOECC") in Ontario released its Excess Soil Policy Framework.
The problem of excess soil is not a small one, and it has been
gaining more attention, particularly as big cities seek to
intensify, creating vast quantities of "fill" that then
has to go somewhere. Clarington banned it from coming to its town completely.
Residents in the Town of Erin and Wellington County have
established a website to bring attention to their town's
plight in having to deal with this unwanted excavated material.
The failure to manage these soils properly impacts ground and
surface water, natural areas, and agricultural lands. It also
causes serious nuisances to receiving communities in the form of
dust, track traffic, road damage, erosion, drainage and other
social, health and environmental problems. As the Framework also
notes, it has implications for greenhouse gas emissions, as
thousands of trucks annual
