Proposed Land Use Guidelines Have Consequences For Ontario Planning Approvals

Introduction

The Province has proposed changes to the guidelines used to assess the impacts of noise, dust, air pollution and odour from industries on sensitive land uses in Ontario when making municipal land use planning decisions. The proposed guidelines have wide-ranging implications and introduce broader areas of study and more onerous requirements than the current D-Series Guidelines.

The most significant proposals include:

• expanding the planning approvals to which the guidelines apply, to include lower level approvals such as minor variances and site plan approval;
• increasing the Area of Influence (AOI) and Minimum Separation Distance (MSD) associated with various classes of industry, and increasing the number of classes; and