Contaminated Sites

Human activity has left contaminated sites throughout Canada. Since 1989 CCME has developed and maintains guidelines and tools for contaminated site management, with the driver being human health and ecological risks.

CCME’s current priority is to increase jurisdictional capacity to assess, manage and remediate contaminated sites by:

• Developing guidance for contaminated site management in permafrost zones.
• Developing guidance on the re-use of excess or treated soils.
• Updating zinc and lead soil quality guidelines and developing soil quality guidelines for methanol and perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS).
• Finalizing a guidance manual on sampling analysis and data management at contaminated sites.
• Updating a guidance manual for developing site-specific soil quality remediation objectives and development of a Tier 2 remediation spreadsheet.
• Developing groundwater quality guidelines for existing soil quality guidelines for use at contaminated sites.
• Developing soil vapour quality guidelines for protection of human exposure via inhalation of vapours for existing soil quality guidelines.
• Developing ecological risk assessment guidance as a companion to CCME existing Framework for Ecological Risk Assessment guidance.

The delivery of contaminated sites activities is coordinated by CCME's Soil Quality Guidelines Task Group.

CCME’s resources on contaminated sites can be found here.