ACCESS ENVIRONMENT HELP
Access Environment Help document provides useful information and search tips to assist you with your search.
Access Environment
Search Access Environment to find detailed information about environmental approvals and registrations in local communities and to locate Ontario facilities on an interactive map.
Using this map based online tool, you can search for:
- Environmental Compliance Approvals (ECA)
- Renewable Energy Approvals (REA)
- Environmental Activity and Sector Registry (EASR) registrations
Note: Environmental Compliance Approvals (ECAs) include all Certificates of Approval (CofAs) previously issued under the Environmental Protection Act (EPA) and approvals previously issued under s.53 of the Ontario Water Resources Act (OWRA).
Access Environment displays the following information:
- approval or registration number
- business name
- facility address and location on an interactive map
- type of approval or registration from the ministry (view a PDF or HTML copy)
- date of issue
- status of the approval (approved, amended, revoked and/or replaced)
- status of the registration (registered, removed)
Access Environment also provides access to copies of approval documents including ECAs, REAs and EASR registration confirmation letters.
Note: Geographic references for approvals data are continually being updated. In some cases, the number of pins mapped may not reflect the total number of records.
Search Tips
General
- You may start a search session through the Search link on the left-side panel or through the Launch App button on the map.
- You may conduct searches in Basic and Advanced Search portals.
- In Basic Search you may search by one and only one search criteria.
- In Advanced Search you may search by one or more search criteria.
- In addition to entering values in the search criteria fields, you may initiate a search directly on the map by clicking on the proximity of the area in which you would like to search for environmental approvals.
- The maximum number of search results the system can display at a time is 1000. You will need to adjust your search criteria to obtain all records.
- You may export the search results to Excel by using EXPORT button.
- You may print the search results table by using PRINT button.
- You may access, view, download, save and print an approval document including an ECA, REA and EASR registration confirmation by using the LINK button.
- You must press ESC or the X to return to the form or search results table.
- If you click on a pin on the map, the system will highlight the environmental approval(s) for that coordinates on the search results table.
- If you highlight a record on the search results table, the system will mark the pin on the map for that record.
Search by criteria
- In searching with the Business Name criteria, you may start with a partial business name and narrow your search down in light of the first set of search results obtained. For example, you may start with entering “Toronto” as Business Name value and then narrow the search down by entering, City of Toronto and Municipality of Toronto values.
- In searching with the Business name criteria, you may want to try various business name combinations to obtain full records. For example, you will need to search for “City of Toronto” and “Municipality of Toronto” in order to obtain full records.
- In searching with the Address criteria, entering a full address string i.e. Street Number, Street Name (and Direction), and Municipality or, at least Street Name and Municipality, will provide best results.
- In searching with the Municipality criteria, you may enter the name of a city, town, municipality or geographic township in Ontario.
- In searching with the Address criteria, you may also enter lot, concession numbers with municipality or geographic township.
- You must provide an address entry to search by the Search Radius field.
- If searching with status, use “active, approved, amended, revoked and/or replaced” for ECAs and REAs.
- If searching with status, use “registered, removed” for EASR registrations.