NPRI reporting requirements 2022–2024

Summary#

This notice from Environment and Climate Change Canada sets reporting rules for the National Pollutant Release Inventory (NPRI) for the calendar years 2022, 2023 and 2024 under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999. Facilities that meet listed criteria must send detailed data about specified pollutants to the government by June 1, 2023, June 3, 2024, and June 2, 2025, respectively.

What it does#

• Requires the owner or operator of a facility that meets the notice’s criteria to report releases, disposals and transfers of the substances listed in Schedule 1 (many common industrial chemicals, metals, dioxins/furans, and air pollutants).
• Covers three separate reporting years: 2022, 2023, 2024, with final submission deadlines of June 1, 2023, June 3, 2024, and June 2, 2025.
• Lists the specific substances and groups to be reported (in multiple parts and groups). It also gives the reporting units and thresholds—for example:
  • Group A default mass threshold 10 t and concentration threshold 1%.
  • Criteria air contaminants (Part 4) mass thresholds such as carbon monoxide 20 t, nitrogen oxides 20 t, PM2.5 0.3 t, PM10 0.5 t, sulphur dioxide 20 t, and total particulate 20 t.
  • Speciated volatile organic compounds (Part 5) must be reported if released to air at 1 t or more; an individual stack reporting threshold for speciated VOCs is 0.25 t.
• Defines which facilities need to report. Examples of triggers include:
  • workplaces where employees work a total of 20,000 hours or more in a year;
  • certain activities such as incineration of 26 tonnes or more of waste, wastewater discharges averaging 10,000 m3 per day, or pit/quarry production of 500,000 tonnes or more.
• Adds and removes a few named substances compared with past lists (for example, adds chlorhexidine; removes two others).
• Updates reporting details and methods. New or clarified items include:
  • requirement to say why a substance is being reported for the first time;
  • request for provincial/territorial permit or authorization numbers when applicable;
  • two additional permitted estimation methods: “remote quantification” and “speciation profile”;
  • changes to how air releases are categorized (e.g., “storage tank and related handling releases”, “unpaved road dust”);
  • more detailed individual stack reporting (lowered stack height threshold from 50 m to 25 m and changed some stack thresholds and reporting fields).
• Confirms that some reported information will be published publicly, and allows confidential-treatment requests under the Act (subject to legal limits).

Who's affected#

• Facilities and businesses in industrial, commercial and other sectors that meet the notice’s thresholds and activity tests. Likely examples:
  • chemical plants, refineries and petrochemical units;
  • power plants and large boilers (electricity generation units of 25 MW or more are singled out for additional reporting);
  • metal smelters, cement plants, pulp and paper mills, and foundries;
  • wastewater treatment plants and large wastewater collection systems;
  • incinerators and wood-preservation sites;
  • quarries and large pits, and many oil and gas installations including pipeline installations.
• Owners and operators who must keep records for three years and provide certified reports.
• The public, researchers and local communities who use NPRI data, because some submitted data will be published.
• If it’s not clear whether a specific site meets the criteria, the notice’s tests and thresholds must be checked; the source provides many specific exemptions and calculation rules.

Why it matters#

• The NPRI is the federal public inventory used by government, researchers and communities to track where pollution is coming from. This notice updates who must report and what details must be reported for three years of data, affecting what information will be publicly available for local air, water and land pollution.
• For affected facilities it can mean more detailed record-keeping and new measurements or estimation work to meet the updated stack and substance reporting requirements.
• Enforcement is statutory: failing to report or giving false information can lead to fines that the notice references under the Act (for example, up to $25,000 for an individual on summary conviction and up to $500,000 for a corporation on indictment, with higher penalties for repeat offences).
• The changes aim to improve transparency and the quality of data used for air-quality modelling, policy making and pollution prevention efforts.