Land Remediation

The Director of Waste Management recently streamlined the contaminated sites services application process. The changes improve the way applications for Approvals in Principle, Certificates of Compliance, and other services are administered by ministry staff, by focussing on casefile review turnaround times. Further information is available by checking out the "New Services Application Process" (160 KB) update.

The Director of Waste Management has approved a new "Protocol 10" (231 KB) for developing site-specific water quality standards to protect freshwater aquatic life for cadmium and zinc, for water hardness up to 500 mg/L as CaCO3.

In keeping with the ministry's enhanced emphasis on checking functions through increased monitoring, auditing and public reporting, findings of our random audits of submissions from the Roster of Professional Experts are now available for review at the link above.

The Director of Waste Management has approved for contaminated sites regulatory purposes a new analytical method entitled "Aliphatic/Aromatic Separation of Extractable Petroleum Hydrocarbons in Solids or Water by Silica Gel Fractionation" (221 KB). It takes effect on March 1, 2003.

The Director of Waste Management has approved a new procedure entitled Contaminated Sites Cost Recovery Fees for Mines. It has been created for the convenience of our Contaminated Sites Program staff, to consolidate the mines fees provisions adopted in the Waste Management Amendment Act (Bill 32) on May 10, 2002. There are no new provisions in this procedure beyond those already contained in Bill 32.

John E.H. Ward
Head, Legislation and Finance Unit
Contaminated Sites Program
Ministry of Environment

The ministry is requesting comments on a draft protocol which provides a method to develop site-specific water quality standards for cadmium and zinc to protect freshwater aquatic life. A table of pre-calculated, pre-approved aquatic life protective site-specific water quality standards for cadmium and zinc for water hardness up to 500 mg/L as CaCO3 is also provided. The comment period closes November 30, 2002.

Please send your comments to Glyn Fox.

John E.H. Ward
Head, Legislation and Finance Unit
Contaminated Sites Program
Ministry of Environment

This message requests comments by December 13, 2002, on three draft documents recently prepared for British Columbia's Sediment Technical Committee:

• Criteria for Managing Contaminated Sediment in British Columbia (draft)
• Criteria for Managing Contaminated Sediment in British Columbia - Technical Appendix (draft)
• A Guidance Manual to Support the Assessment of Contaminated Sediments in Freshwater, Estuarine, and Marine Ecosytems (draft)

The draft reports may be viewed.

Please send your comments on the reports by December 13, 2002 to Mike Macfarlane, Manager, Contaminated Sites Review Project.

The primary purpose of this message is to elicit broad stakeholder review and comment pertaining to the scientific credibility of the proposed draft sediment quality values and ancillary technical support and guidance described within the reports. They are being posted for scientific and stakeholder review purposes only. The draft criteria have not been finalized for regulatory purposes and are subject to change. The ministry has made no decision related to the final form (i.e. standards, guidelines, criteria or screens) the proposed values and associated guidance will take.

The ministry is also evaluating the option of a stakeholder workshop as a forum for discussion. No dates have been established for a workshop as yet, however, stakeholder feedback on this option is being sought.

British Columbia's Federal/Provincial Technical Committee on the Development of Sediment Quality Criteria for Assessing and Managing Contaminated Sites was established in January 1998. Known as the Sediment Technical Committee, it consists of representatives of the British Columbia Ministry of Water, Land, and Air Protection (BCWLAP), Environment Canada (EC), and Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO). It was charged with the task of developing:

• a joint federal-provincial framework for assessing and managing contaminated sediments;
• a guidance manual to support the design and implementation of sediment quality assessments at contaminated sites; and
• Sediment Quality Criteria (SedQC) to support the management of contaminated sediments.

Environment Canada, Fisheries and Oceans Canada and the ministry are committed to a periodic review of these criteria and the approach used to establish them, in order to ensure that they are consistent with the best scientific information available at the time. The agencies acknowledge the lack of regional data contained in the databases used to establish the proposed sediment quality criteria and agree that these draft documents are the first step to developing a "made in B.C." sediment criteria.

The agencies have also suggested that the proposed values be re-evaluated after a three year period to ensure the scientific merits of the criteria remain valid and reflect new data and analysis methods as they become available. This three year review is consistent with the existing review timeline of the Contaminated Site Regulation. Accordingly, the following options are under consideration:

• Environment Canada in consultation with DFO, would establish and maintain a regional sediment chemistry/effects database (REG-SCED) for the purposes of facilitating the re-assessment of the sediment values at year three.
• Responsible Parties would be required to collect confirmatory bioassays following remediation at a Typical Contaminated (TSC) site, and these data would be used to evaluate the adequacy of the TSC criteria at the 3 year review. These data would not be used for regulatory purposes. Environment Canada and DFO may be able to complement this requirement by taking samples on a limited basis at some sites.
• The ministry would develop a sediment section as an addendum to its "Recommended Guidance and Checklist for Tier 1 Ecological Risk Assessment of Contaminated Sites in British Columbia, March 1997." This work would be completed as time and ministry budgets permit.

Please contact Mike Macfarlane if you have any questions.

John E.H. Ward
Head, Legislation and Finance Unit
Contaminated Sites Program
Ministry of Environment

On October 4, the following information was sent by Eric Partridge,Director of Waste Management, to Regional Managers in the ministry's Environmental Protection Division. It provides a provincial background groundwater value for cobalt, to address issues arising from amended cobalt water quality standards in the Contaminated Sites Regulation, passed last February. Here is the information sent by Eric on cobalt:

• Recent analysis of province wide groundwater monitoring well data indicates that the normal background concentration of cobalt in groundwater is approximately 20 µg/l (i.e. a grand mean for provincial data of 21.1 µg/l with lower and upper 95% confidence limits of 14.7 and 27.6 µg/l respectively).
  
  This estimate is based on relatively limited data obtained for monitoring wells located primarily in the Vancouver Island, Lower Mainland and Southern Interior regions of BC. This provincial estimate is subject to change should additional data from other regions within the province become available at a future date.
  
  In accordance with section 11 (3) of the Contaminated Sites Regulation, a site containing cobalt in water in excess of the Schedule 6 aquatic life standard (9 µg/l) but less than the provincial background estimate (20 µg/l) for cobalt is not a contaminated site. In applying this release, managers should be satisfied that the concentration of cobalt at a site does not include any contribution from local human made point sources and cannot reasonably be attributed to commercial or industrial activities which may have occurred at the site

Please contact Glyn Fox or Doug Walton for further advice.

John E.H. Ward
Head, Legislation and Finance Unit
Contaminated Sites Program
Ministry of Environment