The Court of Appeal in 0694841 B.C. Ltd. v. Alara Environmental Health and Safety Limited clarified the environmental due diligence requirements when assigning a purchase agreement to another party. BACKGROUND 0694841 B.C. Ltd. (“069”) entered into a purchase agreement for commercial property. As part of its due diligence, 069 hired Alara Environmental Health and Safety ...
Planning to move soil for an upcoming project? You may be impacted by recent changes to BC’s soil relocation process. The province has officially moved away from ‘soil relocation agreements’, introducing new amendments to the Contaminated Sites Regulation which came into effect on March 1, 2023. A few of the major changes are explored below. ...
Back in 2021, we posted about the significant changes to BC’s site profile system that came into effect that year. At the time, the “old” site profile system was replaced with the new site disclosure system. You can check out that blog post here. On March 1, 2023, new amendments to the Contaminated Sites Regulation ...
Owners and operators of facilities that meet the National Pollutant Release Inventory (“NPRI”) reporting requirements must submit their reports by June 1, 2022. The NPRI is a publicly accessible inventory of pollutant releases, disposal and recycling governed by the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999 and managed by Environment and Climate Change Canada. The NPRI is ...
The BC Supreme Court has provided some guidance on injunctive relief available in environmental contamination cases. In Ward v. Cariboo Regional District, the plaintiffs owned a rural residential property near Williams Lake that used a gravity sewage system operated by the Cariboo Regional District. The property suffered from two floods in 2015 and 2020, which ...
Let’s face it, contaminated sites remediation requires courage. Cleanup can be expensive, and the regulations are not bedtime reading. Developers want to avoid missteps, minimize exposure to claims by others, and maximize potential recovery of their costs of remediation against polluters. They will therefore often lean on lawyers with environmental expertise to guide them through ...
Property developers in BC move dirt – some clean and some not so much. Soil relocation rules are changing in BC. The old ‘soil relocation agreements’ will go away, and the movement of contaminated soil (and now clean soil, too) will be governed by new soil testing and notification requirements, along with penalties for failing ...
The Supreme Court of Canada recently released its decision in Reference re Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act, where a 6-3 majority upheld the federal Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act (the “Act”) as ‘constitutional’, which means the government can enact such legislation. Based on this decision, the federal GHG emission pricing standards are here to stay, ...
Teck Coal, a Canadian mining company, is facing $60 million in fines after pleading guilty to two charges of contaminating rivers in southeast British Columbia. This is the highest penalty ever assessed under the Fisheries Act and breaks down to $80,000 per offence per day. The majority of this fine, $58 million, will go towards ...
The suspension of limitation periods has almost been in effect for one year (which oddly feels like it was just yesterday, but also feels like ages ago, blame the “pandemic time warp”). On March 26, 2020, the government initiated a suspension of limitation periods. Previously, the suspension was tied to the provincial state of emergencies; ...
