2020 SMART Ottawa

Chris Lompart,
MECP

Excess Soil Regulation Update

Chris Lompart

Chris Lompart is the Manager of Land Use Policy at the Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks. Chris has been with the Ministry for the past twenty years and has worked on environmental policy development for over 25 years in the public and non-government sectors. Chris has spent much of that time working on brownfields redevelopment and excess soil policy as well as environmental planning and land use planning-related legislation, regulations, and policy, such as the Lake Simcoe Protection Act and Plan, the Provincial Policy Statement and Growth Plan, and the Great Lakes Protection Act.

Excess Soil Regulation Update

Excess soil is soil that has been dug up, typically during construction activities. It must be moved off-site because it can’t or won’t be reused at the development site. The purpose of this presentation will be to provide an overview of the new On-Site and Excess Soil Management regulation that was finalized in December 2019. This regulation will help to facilitate local beneficial reuse of excess soil – which in turn will reduce greenhouse gas emissions from soil transportation, while ensuring strong protection of human health and the environment. This presentation will include a summary of the key elements of the regulation including early planning requirements, reuse rules and new risk-based standards and tools referenced by the regulation.

Frank Oliva,
Environment and Climate Change Canada

Federal Contaminated Sites Action Plan (FCSAP) and the separate Northern Abandoned Mines Reclamation Program (NAMRP)

Michael Hebert,
Mann Lawyers, LLP

Current Environmental / Legal Intersections To Be Aware Of

Michael Hebert

Michael Hebert is one of the leading Environmental Law lawyers in Canada. His visionary work as the Plaintiff’s counsel in Tridan v. Shell, 2002 Carswell, Ont 1, 154 O.A.C. 1, 57 O.R. (3d) 503, a benchmark decision of the Ontario Court of Appeal radically changed the face of environmental law and the assistance it afforded to victims of environmental damage. This case established three leading principles which govern compensation and are today followed by Courts throughout Ontario and the rest of Canada. Michael’s work following that decision has continued to demonstrate a careful and innovative approach to environmental claims. He also provides ongoing consulting to all interested parties dealing with contaminated land, as well as consulting and advocacy in relation to regulatory and compliance matters under applicable environmental legislation. Michael has been appointed to the Executive of the National Environmental, Energy and Resources Law Section of the Canadian Bar Association. He also assists the Environmental Law Section of the Ontario Bar Association. Michael was born in Ottawa and obtained a B.A. Cum Laude in Economics from Carleton University. He also graduated Cum Laude from the University of Ottawa Law School in 1977. He was called to the Bar of Ontario in 1979 and joined the Beament firm in 1985. In addition to his environmental practice, Michael maintains a broad base of commercial litigation including corporate, construction, contractual, real estate and financial matters. He continues to advise public and private organizations in risk management relating to ongoing liabilities arising out of large and complex commercial and environmental matters. Michael is a member of the Advocates’ Society and has been an instructor at the Bar Admission Course. He has delivered many papers to professional associations within his areas of expertise.

Current Environmental / Legal Intersections To Be Aware Of

LEGAL ISSUES OF SIGNIFICANT CURRENT IMPORTANCE IN THE FOLLOWING AREAS: 1. PFAS Contamination is fast becoming a significant and important contaminant both in respect of its handling, degree of ability to remediate it and impact on property values. We are currently involved in the class action with the National Research Council of Canada in Mississippi Mills, Ontario. 2. Sue, don’t sue or call the MOECP? Which of these alternatives is suitable and under what circumstances? What are the consequences of relying on one over another? 3. Liability of tenants for contamination of adjacent properties and liability of landowners for contamination caused by their tenants. Is one or the other or both liable under current law as determined recently by Ontario’s Court of Appeal? This fascinating area of law has recently been determined by Ontario’s Court of Appeal. It affects the liability of landlords for the activities of their tenants and the ability of sites that are contaminated by the activities of a tenant to recover damages from either the landlord or the tenant or both. 4. Recent rulings by the Ontario Court of Appeal/Supreme Court of Canada on the ability of a landowner to avail themselves of the statutory provisions for compensation under section 99 of Ontario’s Environmental Protection Act. Find out where and under what circumstances statutory compensation is available for contamination that occurred prior to the enactment of the legislation permitting claims for site contamination.

Albert Ho,
First Capital Realty

Environmental Risk Management in Real Estate

Jessica Boily,
Gowling WLG (Canada) LLP

Science on Trial: What Environmental Consultants Need to Know About Giving Evidence in Court

Jessica Boily

Jessica Boily is an environmental lawyer in the Toronto office of Gowling WLG. Jessica focuses on environmental litigation, drawing on her commercial litigation background to achieve successful and cost-effective outcomes for her clients. Jessica uses her procedural expertise and technical knowledge to advocate for her clients. Jessica understands that complex disputes require creative scientific and legal approaches. Her clients appreciate her practical advice when managing and resolving multi-party environmental disputes. When litigation is necessary, her clients know that she is a trial lawyer who uses her courtroom and tribunal experience to achieve the best outcome. Jessica’s litigation experience means she understands risk and can help clients manage it. She provides proactive advice and helps engage with regulators on matters involving contaminated sites, director and officer liability, environmental approvals and permits, pest control products, chemical substances, waste, transportation of dangerous goods, reporting and emergency response.

Science on Trial: What Environmental Consultants Need to Know About Giving Evidence in Court

In many cases, environmental engineers and geoscientists will work on a property long before regulators and lawyers get involved. Today’s straightforward environmental site assessment or successful remediation project may quickly become part of contested litigation or a complicated regulatory process. Whether the Ministry of Environment, Conservation and Parks becomes involved by issuing a clean-up order, your client becomes part of civil litigation brought by a downgradient property owner, or you are named in a professional negligence claim, your work (and the science behind it) may be “on trial”. In a recent case, an Ontario court refused to accept as evidence field and lab testing that was found to be unreliable. The case highlights that before allowing scientific evidence to be given, courts expect scientists to demonstrate their qualifications, training and procedures as well as the reliability and quality of their data and investigations. Even once the evidence is admitted, scientists need to understand how to present information in a way that is compelling to lawyers, judges and tribunal members. The presentation will focus on the best practices consultants can implement at the beginning of a remediation project to ensure that regulators and courts accept and understand their work and the science behind it. Consultants who implement better record keeping, training, and data quality procedures will ensure that their work results in technical and legal success for themselves and their clients.

George Boire,
Marsh

Buying, Selling and/or Redeveloping Commercial Real Estate

George Boire

George has over 34 years of experience in environmental risk management associated with commercial and industrial operations. George is the Environmental Practice Leader for Marsh Canada where he has been for the past 16 years. His responsibilities include managing the operations of the practice, acting as a senior advisor to clients, managing company relationships with leading environmental insurance markets, as well as fostering new environmental risk consulting and insurance opportunities with our clients. A significant portion of George’s work is related to helping clients assess their potential environmental risks and transfer them as appropriate using traditional insurance and/or alternative risk financing options such as captives. George is also part of a Sustainability practice that includes representative from various Marsh and McLennan (MMC) companies that is looking for ways to help our clients assess and manage risks associated with climate change. George is also responsible for developing and fostering strategic business alliances with centres of influence including law firms, consulting firms, and lenders.

Buying, Selling and/or Redeveloping Commercial Real Estate

One of the most significant risks associated with buying, selling and/or redeveloping commercial real estate today is the potential for environmental liability related to both known and unknown pollution conditions. Environmental insurance that can help manage this potential liability risk has been available in Canada for some time now. The frequency and severity of claims related to such historical pollution conditions has increased over the last 5 to 10 years due to many factors including the trend towards urban infill and densification, as well as the trend towards more stringent soil and groundwater standards across the country. Claims managers and adjustors at the Environmental Insurance companies have varying degrees of understanding and experience with remediation technologies and many look to outside consultants and contractors when it comes to the management and/or oversight of claims involving soil and groundwater remediation. We will review recent claims examples and provide some commentary on how new remediation technologies can be used to improve outcomes.

Paul Nicholson,
Geosyntec Consultants International Inc.

A New Model for Sub-Slab Mitigation for Vapour Intrusion

Paul Nicholson

Paul Nicholson, P.Eng is a senior environmental engineer with a focus on assessing and mitigating human health risks associated with sub-surface vapour intrusion. Paul managed Geosyntec’s recently completed US Department of Defense funded 5-year research project on the optimization of sub-slab mitigation systems 9ESTCP ER201322). Through this research Geosyntec continues to develop innovative solutions to vapour intrusion problems and expand the understanding on how to design optimal mitigation systems. Paul was integrally involved in the development of Geosyntec’s High Volume Sampling (HVS) protocol and the subsequent modeling and analysis of HVS data for understanding the pneumatic properties of vapour intrusion. All of these tools have led to a focus on the mitigation of new and existing large commercial/industrial properties. In addition to vapour intrusion activities, Paul is involved with many remediation projects including multi-phase extraction (MPE) for hydrocarbons, enhanced in-situ bioremediation (EISB) of chlorinated solvents and the design and installation of soil vapour extraction (SVE) systems. Paul has worked on remediation sites in Canada, United States, Malaysia, Mexico and Australia.

A New Model for Sub-Slab Mitigation for Vapour Intrusion

Geosyntec Consultants has just completed a five-year research program conducted for the U.S Department of Defense (ESTCP ER201522) developing several new lines of evidence for the performance monitoring of active sub-slab depressurization (SSD) systems for the mitigation of vapour intrusion. Most mitigation systems follow decades old radon research to base the performance of the system on inducing negative pressure beneath the slab. The results of this research provide new lines of evidence to evaluate the performance of a mitigation system based on vacuum, velocity, travel time and mass flux. The study included detailed assessments at four buildings ranging in size from 1,200 to 64,000 ft2. Testing included several new pneumatic test methods for evaluating SSD systems including vacuum vs distance from the extraction point, vacuum vs time in response to cycling the fan on and off, inter-well helium tracer testing, helium flood testing and mathematical analysis of the data using a new spreadsheet model. These efforts were compared to an existing database of 121 sets of pneumatic data to provide a basis for use of alternative SSD performance metrics such as velocity, travel time and mass flux. This presentation will provide an overview of the new tools used to evaluate and design SSD mitigation systems. The new calculation of building specific attenuation factors based on the pneumatic properties of the building floor slab will be provided. In addition, four new lines of evidence to evaluate the performance of a SSD system will be presented based on vacuum, velocity, travel time and mass flux.

Brent Pautler,
SiREM

Waterloo Membrane Sampler: Passive Sampling in Remediation Projects; Soil Gas, Outdoor Air and Implications for Vapor Intrusion Studies

Brent Pautler

Brent Pautler received his Ph.D in Environmental Chemistry from the University of Toronto with a focus on developing novel analytical chemistry methods/proxies for characterization and quantification of natural organic matter in the cryosphere to better understand its biogeochemical cycling and past climate. Brent is the Customer Service Coordinator at SiREM with over 5 years of customer facing experience using his technical chemistry expertise to support sales, marketing, training and data interpretation for a wide variety of applications to help scientists achieve their desired goals. Part of his role at SiREM includes project management and business development of SiREM’s passive sampling offering including the Waterloo Membrane SamplerTM (WMSTM) for monitoring VOC vapor concentrations, SP3TM for hydrophobic organic analytes and SPeepersTM for metals/inorganics in sediment pore and surface waters.

Waterloo Membrane Sampler: Passive Sampling in Remediation Projects; Soil Gas, Outdoor Air and Implications for Vapor Intrusion Studies

Passive sampling has been growing in popularity for the measurement of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) due to lower costs, simpler sampling protocols and ease of deployment, with applications ranging from indoor/outdoor air quality and soil vapor intrusion assessments. The Waterloo Membrane SamplerTM (WMSTM), a passive permeation sampler which incorporates a polydimethylsiloxane membrane across the face of a vial filled with sorbent medium, provides additional advantages such as a high resistance to water vapor and predictable uptake rates for virtually any VOC. It has found use in collecting soil gas, indoor and outdoor air to monitor remediation projects focused on time-weighted average VOC concentration and compound specific isotope analysis (CSIA). This presentation will provide technical information on the WMSTM sampler and provide data on recent sampler developments including: • Use of WMSTM in soil gas sampling programs in which the design of the sampler was modified to incorporate a thicker membrane, reducing the potential for “starvation”, a common issue when collecting soil gas samples with passive samplers • WMSTM design modification to incorporate either a thermally-desorbable sorbent or thin film SPME sorbent for ease of detection/quantitation by TD-gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (TD-GC-MS) and direct comparison with TD tubes and real-time monitoring in outdoor air. With these modifications, increased sensitivity and correlation to real-time monitoring data, the WMSTM shows potential to be applied to all indoor and outdoor air VOC sampling, including perimeter monitoring of remediation projects such as excavations and long-term monitoring for vapor intrusion work.

Jean Paré,
Chemco inc.

Benefits of Combining In Situ Chemical Oxidation with In Situ Stabilization: Synergies and Solutions for Complex Sites

Jean Paré

Jean Pare, P.Eng., has a degree in Chemical Engineering from Laval University. He has been involved for the last 22 years in the evaluation, development, design, and promotion of both conventional and innovative environmental technologies. As Vice President with Chemco Inc., his responsibilities include the remediation design, technico-economical analysis and technology supply for chemical oxidation and reduction, soil washing, and enhanced bio-remediation. Last year, he worked with over 400 sites applying his expertise to various types of organic and inorganic contaminants in soil and groundwater. He is also involved with many environmental organizations such as CLRA, CBN, ESAA, BCEIA and Reseau-Environnement where he is an active technical committee member and regular technical speaker.

Benefits of Combining In Situ Chemical Oxidation with In Situ Stabilization: Synergies and Solutions for Complex Sites

Background/Objective. In situ solidification/stabilization (ISS) has been used at many manufactured gas plant (MGP), brownfield, and Superfund sites. ISS mixes cementitious reagents with contaminated soils reducing the bioavailability and leachability of contaminants. ISS can also be optimized to control certain ll soil characteristics, such as compressive soil strength and reduce hydraulic conductivity. Various reagents are used to promote ISS including Portland cement, blast furnace slag, lime kiln dust, etc. Several of these reagents contain calcium oxide (CaO), also known as quick lime. For example, Portland cement (PC) consists of 60% to 68% CaO by weight. ISS is often applied at highly contaminated petroleum hydrocarbon sites decreasing the leachability of BTEX, naphthalene (NAP) and other organic contaminant in soil. Cementation reactions also decrease hydraulic conductivity (K), which diverts groundwater flow away from the solidified/stabilized soil. ISS treatment also increases unconfined compressive strength (UCS), often critical for redevelopment. However, high concentrations of organic contaminant can interfere with cementation reactions requiring excessive application of amendments increasing both amendment and disposal costs of the displaced soil. This ISS limitation can be minimized by utilizing a combined remedy approach like In Situ Chemical Oxidation to degrade some of the organic contaminants present. ISCO combined with ISS has been found to be able to achieve the same or better leachability and compressive soil strength values with less overall reagent addition and displaced soils. Combining one or more remediation technology generates synergies by exploiting the strengths and minimizing the weak- nesses inherent in individual technologies. When successful, combining remedies enhances performance and/or reduces costs compared to each technology used alone. Approach/Activities. This presentation will review the advantages and limitations of using the combined ISCO/ISS remedy on a contaminated soil from different petroleum hydrocarbon sites.. The presentation will review current literature and explore both bench and field data demonstrating the successes of ISCO-ISS as a combined remedy. The objectives of this study generated by Srivastava et al. were to quantify (1) the ability of a wide range of doses of ISS-activated SP to degrade BTEX and PAH (2) the impact of BTEX and PAH removal from chemical oxidation during ISCO/ISS treatment on synthetic precipitation leaching procedure (SPLP) measurements, compared with a wide range of ISS doses alone (3) the effect of activated PS on other ISS performance parameters, such as hydraulic conductivity and unconfined compressive strength Results/Lessons Learned. Activated SP chemically oxidized a significant portion of the COCs for all the ISCO/ISS treatments, and the mass of COCs oxidized increased with increasing SP dose. The lowest molecular weight contaminants were preferentially oxidized. For the same PC dose, combined ISCO/ISS treatment was more far effective in reducing contaminant leachability than ISS treatment alone, because of the COC removal achieved by the ISCO (activated SP) component.

Gerren Feeney,
Premier Environmental Services Inc.

Case Study: New Delivery Method to Inject Remedial Amendments into a Difficult Aquifer

Gerren Feeney

Mr. Feeney is a Project Manager at Premier Environmental Services Inc., with over 11 years of experience in Environmental Site Assessment, Risk Assessment and Remediation. His project experience has extended across Canada and the United States working within the regulatory frameworks of these jurisdictions. Mr. Feeney holds a Bachelor’s degree from the University of Guelph in Environmental Science and a Post-Graduate Diploma in Environmental Engineering from Conestoga College. Mr. Feeney is a Professional Geoscientist registered in Ontario and is a Qualified Person as defined by O. Reg. 153/04.

Case Study: New Delivery Method to Inject Remedial Amendments into a Difficult Aquifer

Delivery of remediation amendments may be the most important aspect of a successful in-situ remediation project. “It’s a contact sport” is often used when describing in-situ remediation. The industry’s current preferred delivery approach is the use of temporary injection points advanced by direct push methods. This method allows for excellent distribution of remedial amendments both horizontally and vertically. Unfortunately, direct push delivery has significant limitations when it comes to deep treatment zones, cobbled sites, and weathered bedrock. With regards to deeper injection into bedrock, a viable injection method utilizes pressure packers to deliver remedial amendments into bedrock boreholes. But what about those “in-between” treatment zones? Those zones that are inaccessible for direct push injection but not competent enough for pressure packer systems? At some project sites, this transition zone is where much of the contamination may be present and yet it is also the most difficult zone to properly use the standard in-situ delivery methods. This talk will showcase recent advances in the in-situ delivery of remedial amendments to remediate this “in-between” treatment zone. The talk is based on a real-world case study site with a deep treatment zone that proved inaccessible using industry-standard delivery methods. Case study project components to be profiled include: • Data review and gap analysis for the site; • Bench-scale proof-of-concept treatability testing; • Overview of historical remedial activities; • “In-between” zone pilot-test results; • Detailed design for the full-scale in-situ remediation program; • Completion of the full-scale in-situ injection into the “in-between” zone; and, • Follow-up performance monitoring of treatment effectiveness. This talk will present the methods, observations and results of each step of the remediation process, and will detail the current state-of-the-art in these regards. Lessons learned on in-situ treatment of the “in-between” zone will be presented.

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