No, THEP and its predecessor programs have been offering soil management since the 1990s, increasingly since 2008 with more recent expansion in 2019. Annual soil management plans have been submitted to the B.C. Ministry of Environment and Climate Change Strategy (renamed B.C. Ministry of Environment and Parks in 2025) since 2019.

Teck has been working for years to make major improvements to minimize aerial emissions from smelter operations. These efforts mean the facility is no longer significantly contributing to the deposition of metals, such as lead, into the soil.

After those source metal emissions were significantly reduced, the logical next step was to expand the Soil Management Program to focus more on addressing the historical lead in the soil that was deposited in the past. It was always the intent to expand the Soil Management Program once aerial emissions were lowered.