RCRA and EJ Overview

1
RCRA and EJ Overview

• Environmental Law
• 2008

2
Brief chronology of RCRA

• Mid-70s--RCRA enacted mainly solid waste
  management (trash and garbage)
• Starts out as a kind of EPA backwater
• 1978 Love Canal inspires a media feeding frenzy

3
The Love Canal dilemma

• FEMA can help only the victims of natural
  disasters
• This is a manmade disaster
• So, go bring a tort action

4
Love Canals Lessons Learned

• There needs to be a program for dealing with
  hazwastean unknown (but large) number of
  ticking time bombs
• RCRA imminent hazard provision pressed into
  service
• Superfund (CERCLA) enacted in 1980, states follow
  suit with parallel programs

5
Hazwaste Politics

• Jan. 1980lame-duck administration approves
  Superfund incoming Reagan team says No son of
  Superfund!
• Sweetheart settlements, scandals
• RCRA landfill regs approved despite admitted
  concerns over leakage of dumps, because it was
  cost-effective

6
RCRAs General Approach

• Command-and-control (to the point of
  micromanagement)
• Permitting of parts of waste disposal industry
• Post-closure liability (CERCLA and PCLFs)
• Hierarchy of preferred options for hazwaste

7
Features of HASWA 84

• Land bans
• Increased regulation of TSDFs
• Hammer provisions
  
  
• Tighter small generator exemptions
• Nondelegation run riot

8
What is hazwaste?

• Listed Wastes
• (Rulemaking but we wont go there)

• Characteristic wastes
• Ignitable
• Corrosive
• Reactive
• (old) Extraction Potential Toxicity (EP tox)
• (current) TCLP (toxic constituent leachate
  potential)

9
What can be done with hazwaste?

• Incineration
• Deep-well injection
• Chemical alteration (e.g., neutralization)--someti
  mes
• Landfilling
• Re-use or recycle (or incorporate in product)
• Avoid generating (toxics use reduction)

• Which of these alternatives should we prefer?
• What incentives should we create so better
  alternatives will be used?

10
RCRA and the MSW Incineration Problem

• Incineration (energy recovery) emerges as the
  solution to solid waste--1980s
• Dioxins and furans, other complex chemicals are
  produced by incineration of plastics and other
  wastes
• Some materials (e.g., mercury) volatize
• Toxins rain down and enter food webs
• Ash left after incineration concentrates metals
• Materials that are burned cant be otherwise
  recycled

11
Environmental Justice in New York (CP-29)

• Environmental justice means the fair treatment
  and meaningful involvement of all people
  regardless of race, color, or income with respect
  to environmental laws, regulations, and
  policies

• Fair treatment means that no group of people,
  including a racial, ethnic, or socioeconomic
  group, should bear a disproportionate share of
  the negative environmental consequences .

12
EJ in NY

• ECL 27-1102.2.f  requires that the Hazwaste
  Siting plan include a determination of the
  number, size, type, and location by area of the
  state of new or expanded industrial hazardous
  waste treatment, storage, and disposal facilities
  which will be needed for the proper long-term
  management of hazardous waste consistent with . .
  . an equitable geographic distribution of
  facilities. 

13

• How should New York State decide what
  distribution of hazwaste facilities is equitable?