Ministry of Environment

With the recent release of version 8.0 of Protocol 6, “Eligibility of Applications for Review by Approved Professionals” we have received requests to explain the differences between “preapprovals” under Protocol 6 and approvals under other contaminated sites provisions of the Environmental Management Act (the Act).

The term “preapproval” is used only in the context of Protocol 6. Those applications for a contaminated sites legal instrument listed in Table 2 of the protocol require preapproval by a Director before the entire application is considered. The current version of the Protocol 6 Preapproval Application form must be completed and submitted as directed in the form’s instructions.

On the other hand, “approval” is used outside of the Protocol 6 context. While “approval” is defined in section 1 of the Act in the context of authorizing the introduction of waste to the environment (under Section 15 of the Act), the Land Remediation Section commonly uses “approval” in the context of requests such as:

• Establishing background soil concentrations for a site under section 5.2.3.4 of Protocol 4, “Determining Background Soil Quality” where the regional background estimates approach is not used.
• Establishing local background groundwater concentrations in a geographic area under section 4.4 of Protocol 9, “Determining Background Groundwater Quality,”
• Specifying environmental media uses (for example, under section 12 (4) of the Contaminated Sites Regulation, drinking water use does not apply),
• Establishing that a parcel of land is situated in a region of wide area or “area wide” contamination, and
• Clarification of technical and legal policy questions and issues involving more than one hour of staff time.

For these types, applications should be submitted to the ministry using the Contaminated Sites Services Application Form provided on our website.

Also please note that a new Q & A describing the changes to preapprovals required between Protocol 6 version 8.0 and Protocol 6 version 7.0 is now available as item 5 under the General Q & As header.

If you have any questions or comments please send them to site@gov.bc.ca.

It has been a few weeks since our conference and we have received a good deal of positive feedback from many of you. Your comments are appreciated.

In order to improve our educational activities, we have sent out a survey to all those who registered for the conference. We would appreciate it if you would take five minutes to complete and submit the survey so that we may use your feedback for planning future events. The ministry would again like to thank the conference presenters and organizers who volunteered their time and expertise over the last year.

Most of the conference presentations are now posted at http://www.env.gov.bc.ca/epd/remediation/presentations/index.htm and there are more to follow shortly.

If you have any questions or comments please send them to site@gov.bc.ca.

The CSAP Society is now accepting applications for the 2013 membership examinations.

Deadline for applications: May 31, 2013.

Detailed information regarding the examinations has been posted to the CSAP Society website:
• Examination guide and fee information at: Guidelines
• Experience review information and application at: Experience Review
• Information regarding the dates, time and location of the examination at: Date and Location

If you have any questions or comments please contact Catherine Schachtel, Executive Director of the Society, at cschachtel@csapsociety.bc.ca

To reflect the switch of our sales tax system from HST to PST/GST, our Site Information Request and File Contents Retrieval Application forms have been updated. We would appreciate your using these updated forms starting today. We expect to prepare fillable pdf versions of these updated forms and of the recently amended Site Risk Classification Report form in the near future.

If you have any questions or comments please send them to site@gov.bc.ca.

The Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resources is now taking applications for funding available under the Brownfield Renewal Funding Program. The program funds studies to determine if a site is contaminated and to develop options for site restoration and redevelopment. It is available to private property owners, including local governments, First Nations, non-profit agencies, and businesses.

Application forms can be found online at: http://www.brownfieldrenewal.gov.bc.ca/financial.html, and the deadline for applications is May 17, 2013.

A brownfield is an industrial or commercial property that is abandoned or underused. Brownfield sites are often contaminated and have redevelopment potential. Brownfield redevelopment helps to increase commercial space, creating employment, improving community safety, retaining green space and reducing pressures on undeveloped land.

For more information about this program, please contact Jeff Thom at: jeff.thom@gov.bc.ca or 250-356-2244.

Today we released 14 new and revised documents which support British Columbia’s contaminated sites regime under the Environmental Management Act. They include four new and five updated Protocols and Procedure documents and four new and one updated Technical and Administrative Guidance documents. Most of these were released in draft form for public review and comment last July, and all of them come into effect on April 1, 2013.

We would like to point out several of these documents which have particularly important new provisions — Approved Professionals and other environmental consultants are expected to become very familiar their requirements:

• Protocol 06, “Eligibility of Applications for Review by Approved Professionals” Version 8.0 (contains a new contaminated sites legal instrument classification system and fewer requirements for preapproval of applications)
• Protocol 20, “Detailed Ecological Risk Assessment Requirements” Version 1.0 (provides a new checklist with the key elements of detailed ecological risk assessments for use in the regulatory context)
• Procedure 12, “Procedures for Preparing and Issuing Contaminated Sites Legal Instruments” Version 1.0 (contains almost 40 pages of requirements and advice for ministry staff and Approved Professionals regarding contaminated sites legal instruments)
• Administrative Guidance 11, “Expectations and Requirements for Contaminant Migration” Version 1.0 (provides new guidance for consultants and parties involved with the migration of contaminants, focussing on communication expectations)
• Technical Guidance 15, “Concentration Limits for the Protection of Aquatic Receiving Environments” Version 1.0 (provides detailed guidance on establishing concentration limits for substances in water for protecting aquatic receiving environments)

Note that two of the documents released in July continue under development: draft Procedure 11, “Transfer Agreement Procedures for Mining Properties” and draft Technical Guidance 22, “Use of Monitored Natural Attenuation for Groundwater Remediation”.

If you have any questions or comments please send theem to site@gov.bc.ca.

Please note that registration for our March 7–8 Site Remediation in B.C. conference closes on Sunday March 3, 2013. If you are planning to attend, please have your registration complete before the closing date.

If you have any questions, please contact Kerri Skelly at kerri.skelly@gov.bc.ca.

Our conference is fast approaching and there has been a good deal of interest from many to attend. Thank you to those who have already registered. For those who haven’t, space is still available. If you are not sure if this conference is right for you, please check out our updated brochure. We have added program information for the brownfields sessions and included additional quality speakers to the already world class list of presenters. You won’t want to miss out, sign up today.

Please note that the deadline for poster submissions for the Remediation Challenges and Innovative Solutions session is February 22, 2013. If you are interested in submitting a poster, please sign up during your conference registration. If you have any questions, contact Stephanie Gustafson at Stephanie.Gustafson@gov.bc.ca.

Sponsorship opportunities are still available. Please refer to our sponsorship form or contact Kelli Larsen at Kelli.Larsen@gov.bc.ca for more information on how to support this event.

GeoEnviroLogic Professional Development will be holding two contaminated sites workshops: “Fundamentals: Investigation, Regulations, Risk Assessment Principles, and Remediation/Management Planning” on February 13, 2013 and “Soil Vapour Investigation and Data Interpretation: Regulations, Scientific Principles and Best Practices” on February 14, 2013.

For registration and event details, please visit www.GeoEnviroLogic.ca.

The Director of Waste Management has approved a new Interim Industrial Land Use, Human Health Protection – Intake of contaminated soil standard for lead with an effective date today, February 1, 2013. This new standard augments the existing Schedule 5 human health protection soil quality standards for lead under the Contaminated Sites Regulation. The new interim standard will remain in effect until January 31, 2014.

In addition, the Director has approved, effective today, an updated version of Protocol 11, “Human Health Soil Ingestion Upper Cap Concentrations.” The protocol has been extensively revised to reflect changes to standards made in the Stage 7 and Stage 8 amendments to the Contaminated Sites Regulation and the new Director’s interim soil standard for lead. In addition, the update corrects various typographical and transcription errors.

If you have any questions, please contact Glyn.Fox@gov.bc.ca.

Are you looking for more details about our conference before registering? Our conference brochure has been updated to provide more information on the sessions offered and presenters. Please check out the latest version to see what is planned for March 7 – 8, 2013. The conference is sure to be informative across a broad spectrum of topics and will provide opportunity for active participation in discussions. Register today.

New to the conference program: Tony Crossman of Miller Thomson LLP and Stephanie Bohdanow of the Green Municipal Fund will be presenting in the brownfield stream.

Please note we are still accepting posters for the technical program. You can sign up to submit a poster during registration. Details are provided in the brochure.

Sponsors are also very welcome. Please see our sponsorship form or contact Kelli Larsen at kelli.larsen@gov.bc.ca for details.

If you have any questions or comments please send them to site@gov.bc.ca.

Stage 8 amendments to the Contaminated Sites Regulation came into effect yesterday, January 24, 2013. The amendments modify the Generic Numerical Water Standards for iron and manganese in Schedules 6 and 10 of the Regulation and also establish new Matrix Numerical Soil Standards in Schedule 5 of the Regulation.

Please consult our Update, “Stage 8 Amendments to the Contaminated Sites Regulation” for further details.

If you have any questions or comments please send them to Glyn.Fox@gov.bc.ca.

Further to our CS e-link message issued on December 4, 2012 regarding formats for submissions of forms and information, we would like to provide the following update.

This is to remind clients to submit information, applications, reports and plans and similar documents in electronic and/or paper formats to the Land Remediation Section of the ministry as required below. This will help streamline the review of your submissions and will speed up the retrieval of documents you submit.

• The submission of reports (including reports submitted in support of Scenarios 3, 4 and 5 release requests identified in Administrative Guidance 6), applications and similar documents to the Land Remediation Section is required in both electronic and paper formats.
• Electronic versions of reports and plans must be submitted on a CD, DVD or via a FTP site (or by e-mail for reports 20 pages or less in length). Also, please submit only one paper copy of a report or plan.
• Site profiles, Notifications of Independent Remediation and Notifications of Likely or Actual Migration, file contents retrieval, site information requests and Site Risk Classification Reports may be submitted in either electronic format or hard copy, preferably in electronic format.

Electronic information should be sent to the following e-mail addresses:

Site profiles, associated release requests and supporting documentation: siteprofiles@gov.bc.ca

Contaminated site service applications and supporting documentation: csp_cio@Victoria1.gov.bc.ca

Notifications of Independent Remediation and Notifications of Likely or Actual Migration: Advisor.SiteInformation@gov.bc.ca

Site information requests and file contents retrieval requests: Advisor.SiteInformation@gov.bc.ca

Site Risk Classification Reports and supporting documentation – please see the instructions in our Site Risk Classification Report Form

If you have any questions or comments please send them to site@gov.bc.ca.

Are you interested in attending our conference, but not sure what we have to offer?

In addition to the comprehensive sessions provided in our regulatory and brownfield streams, our technical program will tackle topics focused on innovation, sustainable and green remediation. There will be a number of projects showcased in a poster session on remediation challenges and innovative solutions as well as two sessions devoted to case studies detailing innovative approaches to remediation. Discussions on option analysis and the identification of barriers and opportunities for increased use of innovative remediation approaches will also take place. Speakers for this stream include Stella Karnis from CN, Ron Timm with the State of Washington’s Department of Ecology, Lesley Reid and Anne Fitzpatrick with AECOM and Bill Donald from Keystone Environmental Ltd. as well as many other experienced professionals.

Please see our brochure for details and register soon.

Join us for a series of workshops that will highlight the environmental, economic, and social benefits of remediating contaminated sites in B.C. The Ministry of Environment is bringing together experts from a variety of disciplines for an upcoming conference that will contribute to the future of the contaminated sites regulatory regime. The Site Remediation in B.C. – From Policy to Practice conference is to be held March 7–8, 2013 at the Vancouver Convention Centre.

There will be presenters from a number of professional backgrounds discussing the regulatory and technical aspects of remediation and the processes required to revitalize brownfields. Carlos Pachon from the US Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Superfund Remediation and Technology Innovation; Michele Beaulieu from Quebec’s Ministry of Sustainable Development, Environment and Parks; Matthew Lahvis of Shell Global Solutions and Todd Latham of Actual Media Inc. are just a few of those presenting. Local contributors include Ward Trotter from B.C. Brownfield Renewal, Mark Adamson of Golder Associates, William McNaughton of Borden Ladner Gervais LLP and Grand Chief Stewart Phillip, President of the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs. Scheduled one on one time with Land Remediation Section staff will be available on Day Two, and of course, staff will be happy to assist you throughout the program.

Don’t miss out. Sign up today.

GeoEnviroLogic Professional Development will be holding two contaminated sites workshops next month: “Fundamentals: Investigation, Regulations, Risk Assessment Principles, and Remediation/Management Planning” on February 13, 2013 and “Soil Vapour Investigation and Data Interpretation: Regulations, Scientific Principles and Best Practices” on February 14, 2013.

For registration and event details, please visit www.GeoEnviroLogic.ca.

The Land Remediation Section has just issued a Request for Qualifications to environmental consulting companies with Contaminated Sites Approved Professionals on staff. This Request is expected to result in a list of qualified suppliers to complete reviews for the external contract review process.

The request for qualifications is entitled “External Contract Reviewers Contaminated Sites – RFQ” and is available at the following website: www.bcbid.ca. Please click on “Browse” in the “Browse for Bid Opportunities or Bid Results” link to find the listing under the Ministry of Environment heading.

We welcome your response by February 28, 2013 at 4:00 PM Pacific Time.

Ardith Gingell
Senior Contaminated Sites Officer
Land Remediation Section
B.C. Ministry of Environment