Ontario Stops Landfilling Clean Soil on January 1. Who Carries It Next?

On January 1, 2027, Ontario landfills stop accepting clean excess soil as waste. The rule sits in section 22 of O. Reg. 406/19, the On-Site and Excess Soil Management regulation, and the province already pushed it back once, from January 2025, to give industry time to prepare. That time runs out in about nine weeks.

The policy goal is reuse. Clean soil is treated as a resource that belongs on a farm, a pit under rehabilitation or a development that needs fill. For insurance, the effect is that more soil will travel further and land on more properties owned by someone other than the contractor who dug it up. Each of those properties is a place a pollution claim can start.

What changes on January 1

From that date, excess soil that meets the Table 2.1 residential, parkland and institutional (RPI) standards, or better, cannot be deposited at a landfill or dump. The restriction applies even where a landfill's Environmental Compliance Approval would otherwise allow the soil. Soil that is worse than Table 2.1 RPI falls outside section 22 and stays under the facility's approval, and soil mixed with construction and demolition waste can still be handled as waste under Regulation 347. Class 1 and Class 2 soil management sites, which store and process soil for later reuse, are not affected.

Clean soil can still reach a landfill in two ways. The first is ancillary use, where the landfill needs it for daily or final cover, grading, berms or roads. The second is a written declaration from a qualified person (QP), usually a professional engineer or geoscientist, that the soil contains a parameter with no applicable standard and could cause an adverse effect at a reuse site, carries invasive species, or is unsuitable as structural fill and no reuse site would take it after reasonable efforts. The QP must keep that declaration for seven years, and the landfill operator and sending site for two.

The Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks guidance from June 2026 puts the weight on paperwork. A landfill operator must confirm with reasonable certainty that soil does not meet Table 2.1 RPI before accepting it for disposal, and anyone who causes, permits or arranges a deposit without a valid exception risks contravening section 22(1). Environment Journal's analysis of the province's Excess Soil Registry traced nearly 24 million cubic metres of construction soil moving across Ontario, and its October review found the capacity of Class 1 sites across the province unclear.

How it reaches an insured

The scenario below is hypothetical. It follows the way the regulation and Ontario's cleanup law work.

Scenario. In spring 2027, an excavation contractor is digging underground parking for a commercial redevelopment in York Region. The developer is the project leader. The QP's soil characterization report says the soil meets Table 2.1 RPI, so the overflow that went to a landfill in 2026 now has to go somewhere else. The contractor hauls 9,000 cubic metres to a rural property 80 kilometres away that needs fill for grading. Because that property is taking less than 10,000 cubic metres, it never files a notice in the Registry. One corner of the excavation sat under a former service garage that the assessment of past uses missed, and a few dozen loads carry petroleum-stained soil.

Mechanism. Eighteen months later, a neighbour's well shows petroleum hydrocarbons. The ministry orders the receiving landowner to investigate and clean up. Ontario courts have upheld orders like that against owners who did nothing wrong. In Kawartha Lakes (City) v. Ontario (Director, Ministry of the Environment), 2013 ONCA 310, the Court of Appeal confirmed that evidence of someone else's fault is irrelevant to whether a no-fault cleanup order stands. The landowner pays first, then sues the developer, the excavation contractor, the hauler and the QP to recover its costs and the neighbour's claim.

Outcome. The contractor's CGL carries a total pollution exclusion, so it does not respond. The contamination is at a site the contractor does not own, discovered long after the trucks left, which puts the claim on its Contractors Pollution Liability (CPL) policy. Whether the CPL pays turns on three pieces of wording: whether placing fill at a third-party property counts as covered operations, whether transportation is covered, and how the policy defines a non-owned disposal site (NODS). Many NODS definitions describe a site licensed or permitted to accept waste. A reuse site under O. Reg. 406/19 receives soil as a resource, so the soil was never waste in the regulation's terms. The QP faces its own claim that the characterization was wrong, and that one sits on an environmental professional liability policy, if the firm carries one.

Where programs fall short

Contractor pollution programs were built around a soil pathway that ended at a licensed landfill with an approval, monitoring and an operator who answers to the ministry. From January, a larger share of clean soil ends at pits, quarries, farms and development sites, and the smaller ones are not visible in the Registry. A NODS extension that only reaches permitted waste facilities may not follow the soil to those sites. We expect underwriters to start asking where a contractor's soil goes, who chooses the destination and who checks the receiving site, in the same way they ask about disposal sites today.

Receiving sites are the second gap. An aggregate operator or farmer taking fill is now part of the construction supply chain without thinking of itself that way. The principle in Kawartha Lakes means that owner can be ordered to clean up soil it accepted in good faith, and its property and general liability policies typically exclude the cost. Site Pollution Liability (SPL) is written for that exposure.

The third gap is professional. Under section 22, a QP declaration decides whether soil can be landfilled, and a characterization report decides where it can be reused. Both are advice that can be wrong, and both carry a seven-year record trail. The Ontario regulation also leaves compliance with the project leader even when the work is delegated, so developers will push soil quality risk down to contractors and consultants through indemnities. A contractor that signs an indemnity for soil it never sampled is carrying risk its policy may not match.

What brokers should do now

• Excavation and earthworks contractors: read the CPL's covered operations, transportation and NODS wording against three destinations, a fill site, an aggregate pit and a Class 1 soil management site. Ask where the client plans to send soil in 2027 and who arranges it.
• Developers and project leaders: pull the soil management clauses and indemnities in current construction contracts, and confirm every contractor and hauler moving soil carries CPL with transportation coverage.
• Pits, quarries and landowners taking fill: ask what documentation they require from senders, whether they keep it, and whether they carry SPL. A single bad load is enough to trigger an order.
• Environmental consultants and engineering firms acting as QPs: confirm their professional liability covers soil characterization reports and section 22 declarations, and check the retroactive date against the seven-year retention period.
• Haulers: ask whether their auto and CGL policies respond to a pollution claim at a delivery site. If the answer is unclear, a CPL with transportation coverage closes the gap.

If a client will move soil in Ontario next year, send us the current program and the planned soil destinations. TerrAssure will show where the wording follows the soil and where it stops. Contact our underwriting team to start the review.

Sources

• MECP Resource Sheet: Restricting Landfilling of Excess Soil (June 2026)
• MECP Webinar: Excess Soil Landfilling Restriction (June 18, 2026)
• O. Reg. 406/19: On-Site and Excess Soil Management
• Landscape Ontario: Ontario finalizes amendments to excess soil regulation (December 2024)
• MECP and RPRA: Excess Soil Registry handout
• Environment Journal: Room at the receiving end (October 2026)
• Osler: Ontario excess soil regulation and the project leader
• Mondaq: Ontario Court of Appeal affirms liability for innocent land owner (Kawartha Lakes)