–Copied in entirety from SWANA November Members Newsletter–
In October, three significant actions were taken that will effect municipal solid waste operations throughout the United States. As the impacts of these actions play out, look for future communications from SWANA to keep you up-to-date and informed on the decisions that are impacting your operations.
President Signs Rail-Based Transfer Station Legislation
On October 16, 2008, the President signed into law the Clean Railroads Act of 2008. This legislation closes the loophole that has allowed solid waste transfer stations to operate unregulated along rail lines. Under previous law these facilities were under the jurisdiction of the Surface Transportation Board, which had no infrastructure to monitor them, but the new law will require these facilities to adhere to state and federal standards.
For more information on the law see October’s MSW Solutions.
EPA Updates Definition of Solid Waste
On October 7, 2008, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency issued a final rule updating the definition of solid waste. This ruling would change the definition so that hazardous materials sent to recycling or reclamation facilities would not be considered solid waste, and thus would be exempt from the Subtitle C hazardous waste regulations. The goal of this rule is to encourage recycling of hazardous materials and the USEPA estimates that this change would exclude 1.5 million tons of hazardous materials from the Resource Conversation and Recovery Act’s hazardous waste regulations.
It is not clear what impact this change would have on municipal solid waste management facilities such as Subtitle D landfills, transfer stations, Waste-to-Energy facilities or Material Recycling Facilities. If these excluded materials actually go to bona-fide hazardous materials recycling operations there would be no impact on municipal solid waste management facilities. If, however, this creates a loophole through which hazardous materials escape regulation, they may find their way to municipal solid waste facilities or, even worse, be open dumped.
This rule makes waste screening at municipal solid waste facilities even more important. Municipal solid waste managers need to know where their wastes are coming from and need to put in place practices to detect and screen out prohibited materials.
The materials targeted are “hazardous secondary materials” and are generated mostly through metals and solvents recycling. The rule excludes materials from the federal hazardous waste system that are:
* generated and legitimately reclaimed under the control of the generator;
* generated and transferred to another company for legitimate reclamation under specific conditions; or
* determined by EPA or an authorized state to be non-wastes on a case-by-case basis via a petition process.
Not regulating them would save the USEPA millions in regulatory costs and would ease the regulatory burden on legitimate recyclers. However, we need to be vigilant to assure that they do not have an unintended adverse effect on the municipal solid waste practices.
The rule will become effective on December 29th.
EPA to be Sued by Environmental Group
On October 23, 2008, the Environmental Defense Fund announced its intentions to sue the Environmental Protection Agency for failure to update their air pollution standards for landfills. According to Section 111(b)(1)(B) of the Clean Air Act the EPA must review its new source performance standards every eight years. The last time these standards were updated was in 1996.
Section 111 of the Clean Air Act requires EPA to set a best demonstrated technology standard for controlling emissions. EDF’s position is that technology has advanced significantly over the past decade and the new standards should reflect these changes. In 1996, methane emitted from landfills was mostly controlled by flaring. Today, much of this methane can be captured to create energy.
EPA’s Landfill Methane Outreach Program has been working with small landfills to harness this potential energy.
EPA has 60 days to respond to EDF’s notice, a copy of which can be found here http://edf.org/documents/8713_NOILandfillNSPSOct2008.pdf.
Loading ...