City council defers blasting bylaw

BY TRACEY DUGUAY

Scared children, runaway rocks, rattled houses and shaken residents are just a few of the complaints city councillors get about the increased volume of blasting in Greater Sudbury.

And, they’re not the only ones dealing with a large list of laments from fed-up residents.

The Ministry of the Environment (MOE) sent the city a letter in June outlying its concerns about blasting-related complaints. While blasting issues at mine sites and quarries fall under the jurisdiction of the ministry, it doesn’t have any legislative authority over residential or commercial matters.

“Municipalities are responsible for issuing permits for construction and development activity within the city, and they also have the capability to create bylaws to address issues such as blasting,” stated Sudbury District office supervisor Tom Brown in the letter.

“It is our understanding the City of Greater Sudbury does not have a blasting bylaw in place, and we would like to take this opportunity to encourage municipal council to consider the creation of such a bylaw.”

Acting on the concerns, city staff presented three options to address the issue at a priorities committee on Dec. 5.

The first option involved a “status quo” approach with the responsibility staying in the hand of the MOE or Ministry of Labour. The city would petition them to change their policies to cover commercial and residential blasting.

Option 2 was to get staff to draft a “stringent regulatory control” bylaw, similar to one in Windsor (which wasn’t being enforced), taking into account any provincial legislation implications to the Municipal Act and also extra staffing costs.

There were also concerns about this option in terms of the city’s liability if it started regulating and issuing blasting permits.

The last option involved a “less stringent regulatory” control bylaw that would be enforced through the building permits, site plan control or subdivision approvals process. It wouldn’t have the legislative implications of Option 2 and would place much of the onus of responsibility and liability on those doing the actual blasting work.

However, in the end, none of the options were adopted since council felt it fell under a “grey area” in terms of whether blasting operations falls under a provincial or municipal jurisdiction.

Priorities chair Janet Gasparini also said she’s quite “concerned” about the letter and questioned the MOE’s “authority” in sending it to the city.

“I don’t think we should just roll over and accept this,” she said. “I’m not sure it’s our problem.”

Pending further discussion with the provincial MOE office, council chose to defer the matter.

While the decision may put the matter to rest for the city for a few months, it won’t help irate residents who call to complain.

In the MOE letter, the ministry said it would continue to refer people calling to complain to the city or  individual ward councillors.

However, council decided to continue directing these types of calls to the local MOE office. This leaves city residents stuck between a rock and hard place.

Another grey area related to  blasting involves aggregate materials, said a representative from the Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR).

Tim Ruthenberg, an aggregate inspector with the MNR, is concerned residential and commercial development may result in violations to the provinces Aggregate Resources Act.

“A licence is required if you’re going to remove aggregate resources from your property.”

As defined on the MNR website, “aggregate resources include any combination of sand, gravel, or crushed stone in a natural or processed state.”

Due to the city’s geography, which requires rock blasting for much of the development currently taking place, there’s a risk the Aggregate Resources Act is not being followed.

Ruthenberg points to the construction of the big box stores on The Kingsway as an example.

“They removed a half a million tons of premium quality aggregate and shipped it all over the city. That was allowed.”
Under an exemption in the act, aggregate material can be removed if someone is constructing a building on the property. In this case, the developer or property owner may not require a license.

But, the “grey” comes in when more aggregate is removed from the surrounding site than is needed just to clear the space for land for a building or other dwelling.

“I met with the city a couple of weeks ago and we talked about those type of problems. It’s a big problem now that all the valley areas in Sudbury have been developed. They’re cutting into hills and they’re developing on top of hills.

“There’s this inherent grey area we have to shake out.”

If a person or company is found guilty in a court of law of violating the aggregate act, they could be facing a fine of $500 to $30,000 per day for every day the work has taken place.

“The penalty could increase by any profit gained through commission of the offence,” Ruthenberg added.

In a worse case scenario, they may also have to rehabilitate the land in order to minimize the impact on the neighbourhood.

Ruthenberg supports the idea of the city creating a blasting bylaw of some kind but thinks the onus should be put on the contractor to monitor blasting standards.

“It’s not the city that should monitor, it’s the developers. It will add to the cost of a development sure, but if you are drilling and blasting, how are you protecting other people in the area without monitoring?”

He said the MOE sets the limits for blasting at 128 decibels for blast overpressure and 12.5 millimetres per second of ground vibration. The MNR follows those guidelines under the aggregate act.

“All blasts underground are monitored, all quarries are monitored, how come the development industry doesn’t have to monitor?”

Without blast monitoring in the construction business, property owners who believe their homes were damaged due to blasting come out on the losing end in a dispute. Without proper monitoring, there’s no way of proving a contractor violated provincial blasting standards.

“How do you tell the difference between 120 decibels and 128? And if it’s really loud, how do you prove they actually went over if you didn’t monitor the blast. That’s the problem.

“It’s like driving on the highway without a speedometer. How do you know you’re meeting the speed limit?”