Highway 148

Environmental Assessment Process

The Ontario Environmental Assessment Act (EAA) lays the groundwork for the Environmental Assessment (EA) process, a planning and decision-making process that ensures all technical and environmental factors of a project are considered. A Class EA is a pre-approved and specific process for a defined group of projects that are similar in nature. Projects included in the scope of a Class EA can be implemented with no further approval under the EA Act, given that the specific Class EA process was followed.

The Class EA process for this Detailed Design study will be completed as a Group ‘B’ project under the Ontario Ministry of Transportation (MTO) Class Environmental Assessment for Provincial Transportation Facilities (2000), which represents major improvements to existing provincial transportation facilities.

As required for “Group B” projects, a Transportation and Environmental Study Report (TESR) was published in June 2018 to document the preliminary design phase of the project and can be found under the Reference Documents section. An addendum to the Transportation Environmental Study Report (TESR) has been prepared to document changes to the Preliminary Design such as additional property requirements and limited night work.

As part of this Detailed Design stage, a Design and Construction Report (DCR) will be prepared to document and summarize the environmental and design work that will be carried out. This includes the existing environmental conditions, environmental impacts, proposed mitigation measures and monitoring requirements and the environmental permits and approvals obtained. The DCR will also document the consultation activities undertaken as part of the project.