Resource Productivity and Recovery Authority works with industry to complete excess soil registry

TORONTO—The Resource Productivity and Recovery Authority (RPRA) has been working and engaging with the industry to complete the build of the excess soil registry that will enable the industry to meet its notice filing requirements under the On-Site and Excess Soil Management Regulation.

RPRA has been working with the Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks and PwC Canada, RPRA’s technical vendor for the project, to complete the first two stages of the project which focus on designing the registry to meet the regulatory requirements, the business needs of registry users and the requirements of the minister’s direction.

Over the past few months, a cross-section of industry representatives were invited to participate in the Industry Stakeholder Working group.

The group and the wider industry were also invited to take part in a communications survey, with the results being used to inform RPRA’s outreach plan in the lead-up to the launch of the registry.

A key finding was that almost half of respondents said they were not sure if they would be responsible for filing excess soil notices. This indicates that there is a need for RPRA and the ministry to develop materials that will provide further clarification about who is required to file a notice and when.
The majority of Industry Working Group meetings have been focused on getting feedback on how best to design the registry to enable users to submit filings.

During the most recent meetings, industry representatives have been shown wireframes, a visual layout or blueprint of the web design, and walked through the initially suggested filing processes for each of the three required types of notice filings: residential development soil depot notice filings, which will be required before excess soil is deposited on a residential development soil depot site; reuse site notice filings, which will be required when at least 10,000 cubic metres of excess soil is expected to be deposited for an undertaking at a reuse site; and project area notice filings, which will be required before excess soil is removed for a development, construction or infrastructure project in the province.

RPRA and PwC are currently working to incorporate the feedback from the working group into the design and build of the registry.

Information will be posted at https://rpra.ca/excess-soil-registry/ in the coming months and will include information about how the RPRA will set and collect fees to recover the costs for the registry development, deployment and ongoing support to regulated people.