Property owners, potential investors and other stakeholders can now find the status of any registered contaminated site in New Brunswick via an online interactive map. The new resource responds to a 2022 recommendation from the provincial auditor general, which called for publicly accessible information about contaminated sites.
At that time, Auditor General Paul Martin concluded: “The Department of Environment and Local Government is not effectively administering the contaminated sites management process.” Auditors found a backlog of more than 1,000 sites for which there was little monitoring to determine if remediation was underway or had been completed, and recommended an update to New Brunswick’s Clean Environment Act to specifically reference standards for site management and requirements for parties responsible for contamination.
The report also criticized the fee-based structure for providing site information, which charged applicants $55 per property to receive “summary information of environmental impacts on the property” and an additional fee of $30 per hour to retrieve information from scientific reports such as environmental site assessments or documentation of remediation. In turn, it maintained that publicly accessible information on the Department of Environment and Local Government’s website would increase government transparency and accountability, allow for broader general knowledge about contaminated sites and potentially reduce the Department’s administrative burden.
The new online map shows all contaminated sites that have become known since the 1980s and summarizes the extent of their contamination and progress to remediation. A contaminated sites regulation under the Clean Environment Act, which came into force in August 2024, now requires property owners to provide the Department with notice of new or historic contamination within 30 days of becoming aware of its existence.
“It gives the public critical information they need to identify potential environmental concerns and make informed planning and development decisions,” says Gilles LePage, New Brunswick’s Minister of Environment and Climate Change.
