Contaminated sites pose billions in risk
OTTAWA — The federal government is facing $7.7 billion in environmental liabilities for approximately 22,000 federal contaminated sites across the country and a funding shortfall to clean up the polluted lands, the commissioner of the environment and sustainable development warned Tuesday in a new report.
While the government has made progress in identifying contaminated sites for which it is responsible — having closed the files on more than one-third of them — about half of the sites have yet to be assessed for remediation and prioritized for action, Environment Commissioner Scott Vaughan says in his report.
There is also a $500-million shortfall to deal with the sites that have already been assessed, he notes, and federal funding is shrinking significantly for assessing the remaining locations. Most of the allocated funding that remains is earmarked for a few high-risk sites and it remains unclear how thousands of other contaminated sites will be addressed, he said.
"Many of these sites are buried and out of the public eye, but they will impose human health risks and environmental and financial burdens for generations to come," Vaughan says.
Of the 22,000 identified sites, around 14,500 of them are considered active, with the remaining having been closed (deemed no further action is required, but doesn't necessarily mean they have been remediated).
Nearly half of the active sites were in the initial stages of being identified and examined, while 81 per cent of the active sites do not yet have a recorded financial liability.
Furthermore, a performance reporting system does not yet exist so it's difficult to know whether federal dollars spent on cleaning up sites are delivering results.
"We found that the government does not know the full extent of its financial exposure at this time," the report says. "Because so many sites are still at the early steps of the process, the government does not have the information it needs to know the cost and the resulting financial liability for federal contaminated sites."
Federal sites can include anything from small areas of soil contaminated by fuel spills to massive abandoned mines with heavy metals and other toxic substances. The contaminants can include toxic and hazardous substances and range from petroleum products to radioactive materials.
Unless properly managed and remediated, the sites can contaminate water, soil and air, and threaten human health.
The $7.7 billion in federal environmental liabilities includes $4.3 billion for approximately 2,200 contaminated sites and $3.3 billion for the Nuclear Legacy Liabilities Program for the decommissioning of contaminated lands, research facilities and radioactive waste of Atomic Energy of Canada Limited.
"While progress has been made in addressing federal contaminated sites, environmental and human health risks remain, given the number of contaminated sites still to be addressed," the report says.
Nearly half of the identified sites had contaminated soil while about 16 per cent had contaminated groundwater and 14 per cent with sediment, six per cent with surface water and five per cent with surface soil. Petroleum-based products are the most common type of contaminant, found in more than half the sites, with metals accounting for about one-third.
Approximately 827 of the active federal sites are considered high-priority, which are "much more likely to have a greater impact on human health and the environment." There are 2,437 medium-priority active sites.
Some of the high-priority active sites include a soil remediation project at the Attawapiskat reserve in Northern Ontario that has been grappling with a housing crisis. The site includes a former school that had to be closed in 2000 due to health concerns after nearly 25,000 litres of diesel fuel seeped into the soil two decades earlier, when the site was home to a former water treatment plant and underground fuel supply lines.
Since 2005, the federal government has spent about $1.5 billion to address contaminated sites. The investment is part of a $3.5-billion, 15-year (2005-2020) cost-sharing program known as the Federal Contaminated Sites Action Plan.
The environment commissioner made two recommendations, which have generally been accepted by the government. They are: to conduct a risk review of contaminated sites and issue a publicly available report on the progress of the government's action plan.
The sites identified in the commissioner's report became contaminated due to operations of the federal government as well as from tenants on Crown lands, such as with private mining companies extracting gold and other metals under federal permits.
In thousands of cases, the environmental damage occurred decades before the government adopted grittier regulations on pollution and toxic substances.
Environment Canada, one of the federal departments involved in cleaning up contaminated lands, estimates about 13 per cent of the sites will take a decade or longer to identify and remediate.
The commissioner found that the five federal departments audited — Environment Canada, Treasury Board, Aboriginal Affairs, Fisheries and Oceans, and Natural Resources Canada — have mechanisms in place for assessing the risks associated with contaminated sites and identifying priorities.
However, an important tool for validating the effectiveness of the risk-assessment process and government's decisions to ensuring sites are remediated was not in place for departments when closing a contaminated site. The government is in the process of developing a consistent set of criteria that must be met in order to close a site.
Contaminated sites pose billions in risk
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