frequently asked questions

Since the announcement of the proposal to study the CRRRC in November 2010, we have received questions about various aspects of the proposal.

In order to help address some of the key issues that have arisen to date, we have prepared the following frequently asked questions (FAQs) and initial responses. As we review questions and comments received and proceed through this study, we will update this FAQ section regularly to provide the most up to date information.

General Questions about the CRRRC

  1. What kind of waste would this facility accept?

  2. What components might the CRRRC involve?

  3. Where is Taggart Miller Environmental Services (TMES) in the environmental
    assessment process
    ?

  4. How would you protect neighbours from odours, leachate and noise that may
    come from the facility
    ?

  5. How would liquids generated by the facility be handled?

  6. My property value will fall because of this facility. How will you protect my home
    and investment
    ?

  7. Aren't the planning approvals for rezoning of the property needed before the Environmental Assessment can proceed?

  8. Concerns have been raised during public comment on the Terms of Reference (TOR) preparation about the nature and significance of earthquake and related hazards to the development of the proposed Capital Region Resource Recovery Centre (CRRRC) site. Some of the concerns relate to the potential damage from severe earthquake shaking. Other public comments request that comprehensive investigations be undertaken to evaluate the potential for future movement/displacement at or near surface along local bedrock faults close to or within the proposed CRRRC site.

  9. Was the site at Boundary Road that Taggart Miller has identified for the CRRRC project previously picked about 25 years ago as the site for a new landfill for the Region of Ottawa-Carleton? Why was it rejected then?

 

1. What kind of waste would this facility accept?

The facility is proposed to accept only solid non-hazardous waste and recyclable materials from IC&I and C&D sectors. The area where the facility will be licensed to accept IC&I and C&D materials is defined in the approved Terms of Reference. It is expected that the primary area served will be the Capital Region. Waste and recyclable materials would not be accepted from the Toronto area, Quebec or the U.S. at the facility. Radioactive and other dangerous (i.e., hazardous) waste will not be accepted, nor will bio-medical wastes. Radioactive, hazardous and bio-medial waste is handled specially in Ontario. The CRRRC would not be a designated site to receive these types of waste.

2. What components might the CRRRC involve?

The primary diversion components are currently envisaged to be: a materials recovery facility for commercial waste; construction & demolition waste processing; hydrocarbon contaminated soil treatment, surplus soil management; a drop off for separate materials or separation of materials, anaerobic digestion of organic waste from commercial sources and, leaf and yard waste compost. Space will also be available for other new waste diversion processes and technologies as they become proven and economically viable. While the focus of the CRRRC would be on resource recovery and waste diversion, there would still be a volume of residual and non-diverted waste and materials requiring disposal and therefore the facility also would have an engineered landfill component.

3. Where is Taggart Miller Environmental Services (TMES) in the environmental assessment process?

Although only the landfill component of the CRRRC is subject to the Environmental Assessment Act, Taggart Miller is voluntarily subjecting the entire CRRRC proposal to an individual environmental assessment process. Taggart Miller completed and submitted the Terms of Reference – a plan and framework for completing the environmental assessment process in September 2012. In December 2012, this TOR was approved by the Minister of the Environment. The environmental assessment is now underway.

4. How would you protect neighbours from odours, leachate and noise that may come from the facility?

The Province of Ontario has individual regulations and standards for all of these matters, which set limits which are protective of the surrounding environment and the use and enjoyment of property. A facility such as the CRRRC will not be approved or permitted to operate unless it is demonstrated to the Ministry of the Environment that it can be properly designed to meet the provincial regulations with respect to each of these issues. During design, comprehensive monitoring programs are also developed and approved by the Ministry of the Environment. These monitoring programs are implemented and the results are reported to the Ministry of the Environment (and often a community liaison committee) for review.

In addition to the monitoring and reporting mechanisms to evaluate site compliance, the Ministry of the Environment regularly visits sites like this to assess compliance with their permitted operations. More recently the Ministry of the Environment has favoured having Ministry staff working at the site on a daily basis as a mechanism to ensure adherence to regulations and to the conditions of approval.

5. How would liquids generated by the facility be handled?

Precipitation that falls on the preferred site will be separated into two main components. The precipitation that falls on much of the site (building roofs, grassed areas, pavement, roads, etc.) will be handled separately as stormwater runoff, as is typical of any commercial/industrial site. This will be managed through a site grading and drainage plan using ditches and stormwater management ponds to control the quantity and quality of runoff following storm events, such that the flows after development match the flows before the development (as is required for stormwater). This stormwater will discharge off-site to existing ditching systems, as it currently does.

The precipitation that falls on the landfill component or enters diversion or processing facilities would be collected as leachate. In order to obtain approval under various provincial regulations for the proposed project, the leachate will have to be managed and treated appropriately before it is allowed to be discharged to the natural environment. It is proposed to evaluate various options for leachate treatment and management as part of the environmental assessment process. It is possible to design, construct and operate a sophisticated leachate treatment plant on the property to achieve a high quality effluent that would, after testing and only after testing, meet the Provincial Water Quality Objectives for surface water. It is also proposed to have discussions with municipalities to explore the possibility of combining leachate treatment with municipal sewage treatment, using existing and/or upgraded treatment facilities, as this may present an opportunity for mutual benefit.

The project proposes to divert materials from disposal where possible, including processing of the organic material under controlled conditions prior to disposal of the residual. Diversion and processing will be beneficial in terms of reducing the strength of leachate requiring treatment, as well as reducing potential nuisance effects from the landfill.

6. My property value will fall because of this facility. How will you protect my home and investment?

Although the approval of waste management projects in Ontario requires the proponent to demonstrate that the project can be designed, operated and monitored in accordance with Ontario regulations such that potential off-site impacts are controlled to acceptable levels and standards, compensation plans have become common for both privately owned and publically owned waste management facilities. Although there are various compensation measures that can be considered, Property Value Protection (PVP) has been a component of many such plans.

For the proposed project in eastern Ontario, Taggart Miller is considering PVP for property owners within 5 km from the property and to engage the community to develop the details of the plan. Although there are various ways of deciding the fair market value, the details of which have yet to be worked out, the basic premise is that if the owner of a property wishes to sell, they are entitled to receive fair value for their property as if the waste management facility was not present. If there is a reduction in property value, the difference will be made up by Taggart Miller. In this way, the value of the property is protected.

There may also be other components of an overall community benefits plan to be determined through discussion with the municipality and with property owners during the EA process. It is expected that the plan will be a condition of EA approval, if received, and thereby enforceable as a legal requirement.

 

7. Aren't the planning approvals for rezoning of the property needed before the Environmental Assessment can proceed?

No. It is typical for proposals of this sort to do the EA first. Once the EA is approved Taggart Miller will begin the Official Plan and zoning by-law amendment process.

8. Concerns have been raised during public comment on the Terms of Reference (TOR) preparation about the nature and significance of earthquake and related hazards to the development of the proposed Capital Region Resource Recovery Centre (CRRRC) site. Some of the concerns relate to the potential damage from severe earthquake shaking. Other public comments request that comprehensive investigations be undertaken to evaluate the potential for future movement/displacement at or near surface along local bedrock faults close to or within the proposed CRRRC site.

The following provides information on seismic hazard potential, and in particular the potential for movement along surface faults in the bedrock at the proposed CRRRC site. The information is intended to provide the public with the current, generally-accepted knowledge and understanding of seismic and related hazards in the Ottawa area, including the area of the proposed CRRRC site.

Design for Ground Shaking
In terms of earthquakes and related effects, Ontario Regulation 232/98 and the Landfill Standards do not specify seismic analysis or design requirements, either for ground shaking or fault rupture. As described in FAQ #7 and in response to previous public comments, the potential hazard from earthquake ground shaking will be considered for the design of the CRRRC by applying state-of-practice seismic engineering analyses to examine the potential severity of the shaking. Appropriate earthquake shaking mitigation measures will be incorporated into the design of structures proposed for the facility, including the landfill component. The seismic analyses will use existing seismic hazard models developed for the national seismic hazard analysis for the 2010 National Building Code of Canada. These analyses have been accepted by the MOE for other eastern Ontario landfill projects.

Bedrock Faults and the Proposed CRRRC
The proposed CRRRC sites are located in southeastern Canada in a region marked by a record of a moderate level of historical seismicity over about the last 250 years. While the Ottawa-Gatineau region ranks as the third highest urban seismic risk area in Canada, the frequency and magnitude of historical earthquakes are only moderate, particularly when compared to more seismically active parts of the Western Quebec Seismic Zone about 300 km farther north. Initial review of the available geologic and seismic information for the Ottawa-Gatineau area and in the vicinity of the proposed CRRRC site suggests that even if a bedrock fault(s) is/are present within the project site, there is a low potential for both the presence of seismically active faults within the site and particularly for movement along faults at ground surface. The major lines of evidence, taken from various sources and contributing to this conclusion are summarized below:

  • A study of the origin and development of faults exposed within the Paleozoic rocks of the Ottawa Graben, including the bedrock formations that underlie the CRRRC site, identified three periods of fault movement. The relative ages of these three periods indicate that faults developed and underwent much of their total displacement in the Paleozoic Era more than 250 million years ago, and in a tectonic setting different than that of the present day. Some faults appear to have been reactivated in the late Mesozoic Era, more than 60 million years ago, but there is little evidence of significant fault displacement since about 50 million years ago.
  • Mapped joints and faults within the Ottawa-Bonnechere Graben generally contain calcite indicating that they have been cemented after the deposition of the rocks and movement of the faults and joints within them. Dating of near-surface (2 m below ground surface) calcite within multiphase, joint-controlled veins in the Ordovician limestone indicates ages of about 100 million years ago and about 50 million years ago for the calcite cementation. These ages for episodes of calcite vein filling coincide approximately with the relative age of the youngest of the three phases of deformation with the Paleozoic rocks, as described above. The presence of calcite within most of the fault planes and their Paleogene (22 to 65 million years ago) and older ages indicates that there has been little or no Quaternary movement (including the Holocene Epoch of the past 10,000 years) along the mapped faults.
  • A number of localities in southern Ontario show deformation features indicative of fault offset of glacial deposits and in some cases the underlying basement rock. One of the most extensively studied sites occurs on the Rouge River east of Toronto and about 3 to 5 km north of Lake Ontario. Subsequent detailed studies at this site to assess whether these observations were an example of recent seismic faulting in this part of Eastern Canada indicated that the deformation features preserved in glacial sediments at Rouge River and the normal faults preserved in outcrops of the underlying Ordovician bedrock occurred 23,000 to 15,000 years ago. Both the bedrock and glacial sediment faulting was caused by glacial processes because fault movements are compatible with regional and local ice flow directions, and borehole data indicate that faults do not penetrate beyond a depth of about 20 m within the bedrock. The faulting at Rouge River and at other localities is incompatible with deep seated tectonic stress and seismic faulting.
  • While the occurrence of ground shaking is known, no evidence for surface fault rupture has been found from the pre-historic earthquakes and more recent historic large local earthquakes.

Summary of Findings
Existing information suggests that while there is clearly a modest earthquake shaking hazard at the proposed CRRRC site, the site and the region surrounding the site have a very low potential hazard from the occurrence of co-seismic surface fault rupture. As previously stated, the earthquake shaking hazard will be addressed by the application of existing probabilistic seismic hazard models that provide estimates of the severity of earthquake shaking at various return periods. Based on these earthquake ground motions, appropriate measures will be developed as part of the site design, and as required by good engineering design practice.

As yet, we are not aware of any scientific evidence that any surface displacement has occurred in at least the past 10,000 years along mapped faults in association with these small to moderate magnitude historic earthquakes in this part of eastern Canada. The general scientific consensus is that geologic faults mapped in the Ottawa area are related to a past tectonic regime, and surface faults are probably not capable of producing large earthquakes and major ground surface displacements. While this initial study indicates a very low surface fault rupture hazard probability, a more comprehensive analysis of this matter, consisting of a more exhaustive literature review and field-based investigations is proposed to be conducted as part of the EA studies.

9. Was the site at Boundary Road that Taggart Miller has identified for the CRRRC project previously picked about 25 years ago as the site for a new landfill for the Region of Ottawa-Carleton? Why was it rejected then?

The proposed CRRRC site east of Boundary Road and south of Hwy 417 is part of “Site 10” identified by the Region of Ottawa-Carleton (RMOC) in 1987 as the preferred location for a new regional landfill during the Region's Waste Management Master Plan (WMMP) study that commenced in 1984.

MacLaren Engineers, hired by RMOC, provided the following Site Assessment in June 1987 as part of the Waste Management Master Plan:

“Detailed evaluation of the potential impacts of a landfill site at Site 10 indicates that there are no significant environmental impacts that cannot be effectively mitigated through appropriate site design, operational and management practices, or compensation of those adversely affected through development and operation of the site.”

While Site 10 was considered the preferred site in the RMOC for a new landfill, concerns arising from a couple of Environmental Assessment Board (EAB) decisions on landfill proposals in Southern Ontario in the late 1980s prompted the RMOC in 1989 to retain Walker, Wright, Young Associates to conduct an interim review of their Waste Management Master Plan process to that point in time.  Specifically, in the Halton and North Simcoe decisions, the Board held that the Master Planning process should be “traceable” and “replicable”.

The Walker, Wright, Young Associates review found a number of deficiencies and inadequacies in the way the RMOC had documented some of its decisions during the WMMP study, and concluded that it was unlikely that the study process would meet the requirements the EAB had recently laid out for approval of Master Plans by the Board. As a result of these process deficiencies, the Chief Administrative Officer of the RMOC in a report to the Environmental Services Committee dated January 18, 1990 recommended that the current waste management master planning process be discontinued.  A number of municipal waste Master Plans met the same fate around that time.

The merits of Site 10 for a new regional landfill were not questioned; it was concern about the documentation of the Region’s planning process that Walker, Wright concluded would present challenges before the EAB.  The Region then decided to look at the option of expanding the Trail Road Landfill rather than continuing with or starting another Master Plan.

Today the site remains—as it was in the 1980s—an excellent location for the CRRRC that can be designed and operated in compliance with all current Ministry of the Environment requirements.

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