The Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), enacted in 1976, is the principal

federal law Federal law is the body of law created by the federal government of a country. A federal government is formed when a group of political units, such as states or provinces join in a federation, delegating their individual sovereignty and many po ...

in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

governing the disposal of solid waste and hazardous waste.United States. Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. , , ''et seq.,'' October 21, 1976.

History and goals

Congress A congress is a formal meeting of the representatives of different countries, constituent states, organizations, trade unions, political parties, or other groups. The term originated in Late Middle English to denote an encounter (meeting of ...

enacted RCRA to address the increasing problems the nation faced from its growing volume of municipal and industrial waste. RCRA was an amendment of the Solid Waste Disposal Act of 1965. The act set national goals for: * Protecting human health and the

natural environment The natural environment or natural world encompasses all living and non-living things occurring naturally, meaning in this case not artificial. The term is most often applied to the Earth or some parts of Earth. This environment encompasses ...

from the potential hazards of waste disposal. * Energy conservation and

natural resource Natural resources are resources that are drawn from nature and used with few modifications. This includes the sources of valued characteristics such as commercial and industrial use, aesthetic value, scientific interest and cultural value. ...

s. * Reducing the amount of waste generated, through

source reduction Source reduction is activities designed to reduce the volume, mass, or toxicity of products throughout the life cycle. It includes the design and manufacture, use, and disposal of products with minimum toxic content, minimum volume of material, and ...

and

recycling Recycling is the process of converting waste materials into new materials and objects. The recovery of energy from waste materials is often included in this concept. The recyclability of a material depends on its ability to reacquire the p ...

* Ensuring the management of waste in an environmentally sound manner. The RCRA program is a joint federal and state endeavor, with the

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is an Independent agencies of the United States government, independent executive agency of the United States federal government tasked with environmental protection matters. President Richard Nixon pro ...

(EPA) providing basic requirements that states then adopt, adapt, and enforce.Horinko, Marianne, Cathryn Courtin
“Waste Management: A Half Century of Progress.”
EPA Alumni Association. March 2016. RCRA is now most widely known for the regulations promulgated under it that set standards for the treatment, storage and disposal of hazardous waste in the United States. However, it also plays an integral role in the management of municipal and industrial waste as well as underground storage tanks.

Implementation

EPA has published waste management

regulation Regulation is the management of complex systems according to a set of rules and trends. In systems theory, these types of rules exist in various fields of biology and society, but the term has slightly different meanings according to context. Fo ...

s, which are codified in Title 40 of the Code of Federal Regulations at parts 239 through 282. Regulations regarding management of hazardous waste begin in part 260. States are authorized to operate their own hazardous waste programs, which must be at least as stringent as federal standards, and are tasked with creating state implementation plans for managing solid waste. In California, the

Department of Toxic Substances Control The California Department of Toxic Substances Control (or DTSC) is an agency of the government of the state of California. The mission of the DTSC is to protect public health and the environment from toxic harm. DTSC is part of the California En ...

(DTSC) is the primary authority enforcing the RCRA requirements, as well as the California Hazardous Waste Control Law (HWCL) of 1972.

Provisions

Subtitle A: General Provisions

* Congressional Findings; Objectives and National Policy * Definitions * Interstate Cooperation; Application of Act and Integration with Other Acts * Financial Disclosure; Solid Waste Management Information and Guidelines

Subtitle B: Office of Solid Waste; Authorities of the Administrator

* Office of Solid Waste and Interagency Coordinating Committee * Authorities of EPA Administrator * Resource Recovery and Conservation Panels; Grants * Annual Report; Office of Ombudsman

Subtitle C: "Cradle to Grave" requirements for hazardous waste

Arguably the most notable provisions of the RCRA statute are included in Subtitle C, which directs EPA to establish controls on the management of hazardous wastes from their point of generation, through their transportation and treatment, storage and/or disposal. Because RCRA requires controls on hazardous waste generators (i.e., sites that generate hazardous waste), transporters, and treatment, storage and disposal facilities (i.e., facilities that ultimately treat/dispose of or recycle the hazardous waste), the overall regulatory framework has become known as the "cradle to grave" system. States are authorized to implement their own hazardous waste programs. The statute imposes stringent recordkeeping and reporting requirements on generators, transporters, and operators of treatment, storage and disposal facilities handling hazardous waste.

Subtitle D: Non-hazardous Solid Wastes

Subtitle D provides criteria for landfills and other waste disposal facilities, and banned open landfills. EPA published its initial standards in 1979 for "sanitary" landfills that receive municipal solid waste. The "solid waste" definition includes garbage (e.g., food containers, coffee grounds), non-recycled household appliances, residue from incinerated automobile tires, refuse such as metal scrap, construction materials, and

sludge Sludge is a semi-solid slurry that can be produced from a range of industrial processes, from water treatment, wastewater treatment or on-site sanitation systems. For example, it can be produced as a settled suspension obtained from conventional ...

from

industrial Industrial may refer to: Industry * Industrial archaeology, the study of the history of the industry * Industrial engineering, engineering dealing with the optimization of complex industrial processes or systems * Industrial city, a city dominate ...

and

sewage treatment Sewage treatment (or domestic wastewater treatment, municipal wastewater treatment) is a type of wastewater treatment which aims to remove contaminants from sewage to produce an effluent that is suitable for discharge to the surrounding e ...

plants and drinking water treatment plants. Subtitle D also exempted certain hazardous wastes from the Subtitle C regulations, such as hazardous wastes from households and from conditionally exempt small quantity generators.

Special wastes

In 1980 Congress designated several kinds of industrial wastes as "special wastes," which are exempt from Subtitle C, including oil and gas exploration and production wastes (such as drill cuttings,

produced water Produced water is a term used in the oil industry or geothermal industry to describe water that is produced as a byproduct during the extraction of oil and natural gas, or used as a medium for heat extraction. Produced water is the kind of brackis ...

, and

drilling fluid In geotechnical engineering, drilling fluid, also called drilling mud, is used to aid the drilling of boreholes into the earth. Often used while drilling oil and natural gas wells and on exploration drilling rigs, drilling fluids are als ...

s), coal combustion residuals generated by electric power plants and other industries,

mining waste In mining, tailings are the materials left over after the process of separating the valuable fraction from the uneconomic fraction (gangue) of an ore. Tailings are different to overburden, which is the waste rock or other material that overli ...

, and

cement kiln Cement kilns are used for the pyroprocessing stage of manufacture of portland and other types of hydraulic cement, in which calcium carbonate reacts with silica-bearing minerals to form a mixture of calcium silicates. Over a billion tonnes of ...

dust. ''See'' Solid Waste Disposal Amendments of 1980.

Subtitle E: Department of Commerce responsibilities

* Development of Specifications for secondary materials; Development of markets for recovered material. * Technology promotion

Subtitle F: Federal responsibilities

* Application of Federal, State and Local Law to Federal Facilities * Federal procurement * Cooperation with EPA; Applicability of solid waste disposal guidelines to executive agencies

Subtitle G: Miscellaneous provisions

Whistleblower A whistleblower (also written as whistle-blower or whistle blower) is a person, often an employee, who reveals information about activity within a private or public organization that is deemed illegal, immoral, illicit, unsafe or fraudulent. Whi ...

protection. Employees in the United States who believe they were fired or suffered another adverse action related to enforcement of this law have 30 days to file a written complaint with the

Occupational Safety and Health Administration The Occupational Safety and Health Administration'' (OSHA ) is a large regulatory agency of the United States Department of Labor that originally had federal visitorial powers to inspect and examine workplaces. Congress established the agenc ...

. * Citizen Suits; Imminent Hazard suits * Petition for regulations; Public participation

Subtitle H: Research, Development, Demonstration and Information

* Research, Demonstrations, Training; Special Studies * Coordination, collection, dissemination of information

Subtitle I: Underground Storage Tanks

;Background The operation of underground storage tanks (USTs) became subject to the RCRA regulatory program with enactment of the Hazardous and Solid Waste Amendments of 1984 (HSWA).United States. Hazardous and Solid Waste Amendments of 1984. , , November 8, 1984. At that time there were about 2.1 million tanks subject to federal regulation, and the EPA program led to closure and removal of most substandard tanks. As of 2009 there were approximately 600,000 active USTs at 223,000 sites subject to federal regulation.EPA (2010)
"FY 2009 Annual Report On The Underground Storage Tank Program."
Document no. EPA-510-R-10-001. ;Regulatory requirements The federal UST regulations cover tanks storing

petroleum Petroleum, also known as crude oil, or simply oil, is a naturally occurring yellowish-black liquid mixture of mainly hydrocarbons, and is found in geological formations. The name ''petroleum'' covers both naturally occurring unprocessed crud ...

or listed hazardous substances, and define the

types Type may refer to: Science and technology Computing * Typing, producing text via a keyboard, typewriter, etc. * Data type In computer science and computer programming, a data type (or simply type) is a set of possible values and a set of allo ...

of tanks permitted. EPA established a tank notification system to track UST status. UST regulatory programs are principally administered by state and U.S. territorial agencies. The regulations set standards for: *

Groundwater Groundwater is the water present beneath Earth's surface in rock and soil pore spaces and in the fractures of rock formations. About 30 percent of all readily available freshwater in the world is groundwater. A unit of rock or an unconsolidated ...

monitoring * Secondary Containment * Release detection, prevention and correction * Spill prevention * Overfill prevention (for petroleum products) * Restrictions on land disposal of untreatable hazardous waste products. The Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act of 1986 (SARA) required owners and operators of USTs to ensure corrective action is completed when a tank is in need of repair, or removal, when it is necessary to protect human health and the environment.Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act of 1986, , . October 17, 1986. The amendments established a trust fund to pay for the cleanup of leaking UST sites where responsible parties cannot be identified. It is also recommended that above-ground storage tanks are used whenever possible.

Subtitle J: Medical Waste (expired)

RCRA Subtitle J regulated medical waste in four states ( New York,

New Jersey New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delaware ...

Connecticut Connecticut () is the southernmost state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, New York to the west, and Long Island Sound to the south. Its capita ...

Rhode Island Rhode Island (, like ''road'') is a state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It is the smallest U.S. state by area and the seventh-least populous, with slightly fewer than 1.1 million residents as of 2020, but it ...

) and

Puerto Rico Puerto Rico (; abbreviated PR; tnq, Boriken, ''Borinquen''), officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico ( es, link=yes, Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico, lit=Free Associated State of Puerto Rico), is a Caribbean island and unincorporated ...

, and expired on March 22, 1991. (''See''

Medical Waste Tracking Act The Medical Waste Tracking Act of 1988 was a United States federal law concerning the illegal dumping of body tissues, blood wastes and other contaminated biological materials. It established heavy penalties for knowingly endangering life through ...

.) State environmental and health agencies regulate medical waste, rather than EPA. Other federal agencies have issued safety regulations governing the handling of medical waste, including the

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is the national public health agency of the United States. It is a United States federal agency, under the Department of Health and Human Services, and is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgi ...

, and the

Food and Drug Administration The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA or US FDA) is a List of United States federal agencies, federal agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Health and Human Services. The FDA is respon ...

Amendments and related legislation

Solid Waste Disposal Amendments of 1980

Congress exempted several types of wastes from classification as hazardous under Subtitle C in its 1980 amendment to RCRA. The ''Solid Waste Disposal Amendments of 1980'' designated the following categories as "special wastes" and not subject to the stricter permitting requirements of Subtitle C: * coal combustion residuals (CCR) generated by electric power plants and other industries, including fly ash, bottom ash, slag waste and flue-gas desulfurization wastes *

from ore mines and mineral mines *

dust *

, and other wastes from oil and gas wells. These legislative exemptions, known as the "Bevill exclusion" and the "Bentsen exclusion", were intended to be temporary, pending studies conducted by EPA and subsequent determinations as to whether any of these waste categories should be classified as hazardous. In its reviews following the 1980 amendments, EPA determined that most of the exempted waste types would continue to be classified as non-hazardous.

Regulations

EPA published a CCR regulation in 2015 that would restrict the continued use of unlined

ash pond An ash pond, also called a coal ash basin or surface impoundment,U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Washington, D.C. "Hazardous and Solid Waste Management System; Identification and Listing of Special Wastes; Disposal of Coal Combustion ...

s (surface impoundments) by coal-fired power plants. This regulation, was which was modified by the

Trump administration Donald Trump's tenure as the 45th president of the United States began with his inauguration on January 20, 2017, and ended on January 20, 2021. Trump, a Republican from New York City, took office following his Electoral College victory ...

in 2018, has been challenged in litigation and remanded to EPA for further revision by the

United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit (in case citations, D.C. Cir.) is one of the thirteen United States Courts of Appeals. It has the smallest geographical jurisdiction of any of the U.S. federal appellate co ...

. In response to the court decision, EPA published a proposed rule on December 2, 2019 that would establish an August 31, 2020 deadline for facilities to stop placing ash in unlined impoundments. The proposal would also provide additional time for some facilities—up to eight years—to find alternatives for managing ash wastes before closing surface impoundments.

Superfund

The

Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act Superfund is a United States federal environmental remediation program established by the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980 (CERCLA). The program is administered by the Environmental Protection Agency ...

(CERCLA), also known as "Superfund," was enacted in 1980 to address the problem of remediating abandoned hazardous waste sites, by establishing

legal liability In law, liable means "responsible or answerable in law; legally obligated". Legal liability concerns both civil law and criminal law and can arise from various areas of law, such as contracts, torts, taxes, or fines given by government agenc ...

, as well as a trust fund for cleanup activities. In general CERCLA applies to contaminated sites, while RCRA's focus is on controlling the ongoing generation and management of particular waste streams. RCRA, like CERCLA, has provisions to require cleanup of contaminated sites that occurred in the past.

Hazardous and Solid Waste Amendments of 1984

In 1984 Congress expanded the scope of RCRA with the enactment of Hazardous and Solid Waste Amendments (HSWA). The amendments strengthened the law by covering small quantity generators of hazardous waste and establishing requirements for hazardous waste incinerators, and the closing of substandard

landfills A landfill site, also known as a tip, dump, rubbish dump, garbage dump, or dumping ground, is a site for the disposal of waste materials. Landfill is the oldest and most common form of waste disposal, although the systematic burial of the waste ...

Land Disposal Program Flexibility Act of 1996

The ''Land Disposal Program Flexibility Act of 1996'' allowed some flexibility in the procedures for land disposal of certain wastes. For example, a waste is not subject to land disposal restrictions if it is sent to an industrial wastewater treatment facility, a municipal

plant, or is treated in a "zero discharge" facility.

Treatment, storage, and disposal facility permits

Treatment, storage, and disposal facilities (TSDFs) manage hazardous waste under RCRA Subtitle C and generally must have a permit in order to operate. While most facilities have RCRA permits, some continue to operate under what is called "interim status." Interim status requirements appear in 40 CFR Part 265. The permitting requirements for TSDFs appear in 40 CFR Parts 264 and 270.EPA
"Part 264 – Standards For Owners And Operators Of Hazardous Waste Treatment, Storage, And Disposal Facilities."
."Part 270 – EPA Administered Permit Programs: The Hazardous Waste Permit Program ."
. TSDFs manage (treat, store, or dispose) hazardous waste in units that may include: container storage areas, tanks, surface impoundments, waste piles, land treatment units, landfills, incinerators, containment buildings, and/or drip pads. The unit-specific permitting and operational requirements are described in further detail in 40 CFR Part 264, Subparts J through DD.

References

External links

*
RCRA Orientation Manual (EPA, 2014): A good textbook-length introduction to RCRA

RCRA Online: database of documents covering a wide range of RCRA issues and topics

- EPA
Waste Management: A Half Century of Progress
a report by the EPA Alumni Association
Collected Papers of William Sanjour
a retired EPA employee and whistleblower

External links

As codified in 42 U.S.C. chapter 82
of the United States Code from the LII
As codified in 42 U.S.C. chapter 82
of the United States Code from the

US House of Representatives The United States House of Representatives, often referred to as the House of Representatives, the U.S. House, or simply the House, is the lower chamber of the United States Congress, with the Senate being the upper chamber. Together they ...

Solid Waste Disposal Act
aka Resource Conservation and Recovery Act
PDFdetails
as amended in the GPObr>Statute Compilations collection

Summary of the RCRA
from the EPA {{DEFAULTSORT:Resource Conservation And Recovery Act 1976 in law 94th United States Congress United States business law First Amendment to the United States Constitution Public administration United States Environmental Protection Agency United States federal environmental legislation Waste legislation in the United States Whistleblower protection legislation 1976 in the environment

History and goals

Implementation

Provisions

Subtitle A: General Provisions

Subtitle B: Office of Solid Waste; Authorities of the Administrator

Subtitle C: "Cradle to Grave" requirements for hazardous waste

Subtitle D: Non-hazardous Solid Wastes

Special wastes

Subtitle E: Department of Commerce responsibilities

Subtitle F: Federal responsibilities

Subtitle G: Miscellaneous provisions

Subtitle H: Research, Development, Demonstration and Information

Subtitle I: Underground Storage Tanks

Subtitle J: Medical Waste (expired)

Amendments and related legislation

Solid Waste Disposal Amendments of 1980

Regulations

Superfund

Hazardous and Solid Waste Amendments of 1984

Land Disposal Program Flexibility Act of 1996

Treatment, storage, and disposal facility permits

See also

References

External links

External links