Help CenterOntario's excess soil regulation (O. Reg. 406/19) exempts some projects from reuse planning: the registry notice, sampling, soil characterization and tracking. Phil can't tell you whether your site qualifies. Confirm with your QP, and treat this page as a starting point only.
Where it comes up in Phil
When you create an excess soil listing, the Do you have a QP? step lets you attach exemption documentation along with soil reports. A listing with a QP or documentation gets more matches, because the receiving site can see the soil is accounted for.
Common exemptions
- Low-risk sites. The 2,000 m³ trigger doesn't apply when the whole project area is, or was most recently, used for agricultural, residential, parkland or institutional purposes, as defined in the Records of Site Condition regulation (O. Reg. 153/04).
- Under 100 m³ to a waste disposal site. Less than 100 m³ going directly to a landfill or another waste disposal site that isn't a Class 2 soil management site.
- Emergencies. Soil removed in response to a danger to health, safety, property or the environment, or to a spill.
- Fit state of repair. Maintaining existing infrastructure, such as ditch cleanouts or like-for-like culvert replacement. Excavating a stormwater management pond doesn't count.
- Topsoil. Topsoil sent directly for reuse as topsoil, where the project area was never an enhanced investigation area and the project isn't remediation.
- Infrastructure soil reused by the same owner or a public body. Soil from an infrastructure project placed at a reuse site owned by the same project leader or a public body, as part of another infrastructure undertaking.
What cancels an exemption
Two things trigger the full requirements even for small volumes: a project area that is an enhanced investigation property (a gas station or industrial site, for example), and a project whose purpose is remediating contaminated land.
The official text
Read the regulation on ontario.ca and the province's fact sheet on reuse requirements for project areas.