The MISA Wastewater Regulat ions: A Review is Overdue
The MISA regulations set limits on the amounts of certain toxic substances that can be directly discharged into surface waters from Ontario’s nine industrial sectors with large wastewater discharges: petroleum; pulp and paper; metal mining; industrial minerals; metal casting; organic chemical manufacturing; inorganic chemical manufacturing; iron and steel manufacturing; and electric power generation. Originally, the MISA program also was intended to regulate effluent from the over 400 municipal sewage treatment plants (STPs) operating in Ontario. However, by 1993, amid an economic recession, the Ontario government quietly shelved its plans to regulate STPs, and the municipal “M” part of MISA never came to be.
In January 2010, two applicants requested that the Ministry of the Environment (MOE) undertake a review of the province’s MISA program. The applicants argued that such a review is long overdue given that the ministry has not re-evaluated the MISA regulations since they were first introduced over 15 years ago. The applicants set out a long list of deficiencies with the current MISA program. These are summarized below.
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No Mandatory Pollution Prevention
The MISA program fails to establish a framework for preventing the generation of contaminants at the point of use or creation, but instead focuses entirely on end-of-pipe pollution controls.
No Periodic Review of Discharge Limits
The MISA discharge limits were set in the early 1990s based on the contaminant levels and “best available technologies economically achievable” at that time. MOE had stated that the limits “would be reviewed every five years with a view to establishing more stringent requirements.” Over the past 20 years, technologies that were once unproven or too expensive have since become commonplace and affordable, yet MOE has never revised the MISA discharge standards to reflect these advancements. The outdated MISA standards provide no incentive for dischargers to improve their treatment processes over time.
No Regulation of Municipal Sewage
Municipal effluent is a significant source of pollution to surface waters in Ontario. Without a MISA regulation for municipal STPs (as was originally intended), there are no minimum standards for sewage effluent, and no consistency across the province with respect to the operating conditions, levels of treatment, quality of effluents or reporting requirements for wastewater plants.
No Regulation of Industrial Discharges into Sewers
The MISA program only addresses direct discharges to surface waters; it does not regulate industrial discharges that flow into municipal sewer systems. Instead, MOE relies on municipal sewer-use by-laws to control industrial discharges into municipal sewers. However, MOE does not require municipalities to have sewer-use by-laws; those by-laws that do exist vary greatly from one municipality to the next; and municipalities often lack the ability to enforce those by-laws. As most STPs are not designed to treat industrial wastewater, when industrial pollutants enter the sewers, they often pass through the STPs untreated into the receiving waters or are trapped in sewage sludges that may be applied to land.
No Consideration of Cumulative Effects
The discharge limits established in the MISA regulations do not take into account the existing conditions of a water body or the cumulative impacts of multiple facilities discharging into a watershed. As such, multiple facilities are permitted to continue discharging pollutants into bodies of water that are already degraded without any regard for the cumulative impacts of the multiple discharges. This failure to consider cumulative effects is contrary to MOE’s Statement of Environmental Values (SEV), which requires the ministry to consider the cumulative effects on the environment in its decision making.
Numerous Contaminants Not Included
A number of MISA facilities are known to release toxic contaminants (such as nitrate, benzene, toluene, ammonia, arsenic, cadmium and lead, among others) into surface waters, but such releases are not regulated under MISA.
Ministry Response
In July 2010, MOE declined to undertake the review. MOE stated that while it “recognizes that some aspects of industrial effluent management have not been updated in recent years,” the ministry is already engaged in several other initiatives that “will help address various aspects” of the concerns identified by the applicants, including:
- implementing the Toxics Reduction Act, 2009;
- developing policies to support the Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment (CCME) Canada-wide Strategy for the Management of Municipal Wastewater Effluent;
- implementing MOE’s “Modernization of Approvals” project; and
- reviewing ministry policies and programs for consistency with its SEV.
MOE concluded that, as all of these programs are underway, it is not necessary for the ministry to undertake a separate review of the MISA program. MOE noted, however, that it may consider reviewing the MISA program when these initiatives are completed.
For the full text of the ministry decision, see our website at www.eco.on.ca.
ECO Comment
The ECO is very disappointed that the ministry did not undertake this review. The applicants raised a number of valid and well-supported concerns regarding the current MISA program. In response, the ministry provided an unconvincing rationale for declining to undertake this review.
The ECO strongly disagrees with MOE’s assertion that the ministry’s current initiatives – namely, the Toxics Reduction Act, 2009, CCME’s municipal wastewater strategy, the modernization of approvals project, and the ministry’s SEV review – either individually or collectively, will help to address the concerns raised with respect to MISA.
The MISA program was a bold initiative in its day, involving a decade of work and a huge investment of time and resources. MOE’s failure to review and maintain this program represents a squandering of this enormous investment.
Industrial effluents – whether discharged directly into surface waters or indirectly via sewage treatment plants – are a major source of toxic contaminants to Ontario’s water bodies. MOE continuously states that reducing chemical discharges into the Great Lakes is a key priority for the ministry. Yet, MOE’s decision not to review the industrial discharge limits under MISA seems counter to this goal. A review of the MISA regulations could identify opportunities for strengthening discharge limits based on new economically achievable technologies that have arisen over the past 20 years. Updated discharge limits could compel facilities to implement new cost-effective technologies and reduce chemical discharges into the Great Lakes and other water bodies.
Furthermore, the ECO has repeatedly expressed serious concerns about MOE’s failure to adequately regulate municipal sewage discharges (see, most recently, Part 4.1 of our 2009/2010 Annual Report). Given this ongoing concern, it is a major disappointment that MOE declined to review the MISA framework with a view to considering the development of a much-needed regulation for municipal wastewater.
Finally, the ECO has long advocated the need to consider cumulative effects when regulating activities that can be harmful to the environment. To adequately protect receiving waters, the regulatory framework for permitting discharges of contaminants into a water body should include consideration of background levels, total loadings from individual plants, and overall loadings from all dischargers. Currently, neither the MISA regulations for industrial discharges nor MOE’s approach for approving sewage discharges takes into account the existing conditions of the receiving water or the cumulative impacts of multiple dischargers.
| Recommendation 12:
The ECO recommends that MOE undertake a review and update of the province’s outdated MISA program. |
For a more detailed review of this application, please refer to Section 5.3.6 of the Supplement to this Annual Report. For ministry comments, please see Appendix C.
| This is an article from the 2010/11 Annual Report to the Legislature from the Environmental Commissioner of Ontario. |
Citing This Article:
Environmental Commissioner of Ontario. 2011. "The MISA Wastewater Regulat ions: A Review is Overdue." Engaging Solutions, ECO Annual Report, 2010/11. Toronto: The Queen's Printer for Ontario. 124-127.
