The Resource Conservation and Recovery Act - Coursework Example

Resource Conservation and Recovery act (RCRA) of the The Resource Conservation and Recovery Act was introduced as an amendment to the then existing Solid Waste Disposal Act in 1976. The programs under RCRA have been designed to offer risk-free handling of hazardous as well as non-hazardous wastes. The goal behind the enactment of RCRA was to eliminate all the remaining loopholes in environmental regulations with respect to disposal of hazardous and non-hazardous wastes on land. RCRA comprises of four different types of programs. At present, strict adherence to the RCRA requirements is mandatory. It is, however, not far from criticisms. The major problem with the RCRA is that the implementation of RCRA rules and regulations requires huge amount of paper work which sometimes become quite frustrating for the corporate managers Introduction The Resource Conservation and Recovery Act was enacted in 1976. This act was introduced as an amendment to the then existing Solid Waste Disposal Act. Household as well as hazardous solid wastes are regulated by RCRA. Since its initiation, this act has been amended by a number of times. The years which experienced amendments to this act are 1978, 1980, 1984, 1988 and 1996. Most of this amendments caused significant coverage areas of the act. Most of the programs under RCRA have been designed to offer risk-free handling of hazardous as well as non-hazardous wastes. This paper seeks to offer a detailed discussion on the history, coverage, current status and shortcomings of the Resource Conservation and Recovery act. At the end, it will make an attempt to provide some solutions to the problems associated with RCRA. (Dennison, 1993). History of RCRA Earlier, state and local governments use to assume the responsibilities of regulating solid wastes generated by households and industries. Particularly, .before 1965, there was no such regulatory authority for that could handle the issues relating to solid wastes. During this time, most of the solid wastes were deposited through the method of open dumping. This kind of open dumping had not at all been environment friendly. In 1965, the Solid Waste Disposal act was enacted to deal with waste disposal methods. It started to look for environment friendly options of waste disposals. In order to reduce negative impacts of open dumping of wastes, it provided financial aids to local and state governments to appropriate waste disposal methods. In 1970, the Solid Waste disposal Act was amended to become the Resource Recovery Act and then in 1976, it was further amended to form the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. (Dennison, 1993). The goal behind the enactment of RCRA was to eliminate all the remaining loopholes in environmental regulations with respect to disposal of hazardous and non-hazardous wastes on land. Through the enactment of this act along with the subsequent amendments, federal government tried to address a set of requirements. First of all, through this act the government placed its focus on the importance of systematic management of households and industrial wastes. Second, the government made an attempt to recognize the requirement of special arrangements in dealing with wastes of hazardous nature. Finally, the act took into account a number of provisions for encouraging conservation of resources as well as their reuse or recycling. (Teets et al, 2003) Coverage of RCRA RCRA comprises of four different types of programs in order to implement the goals that as set up at the time of its initiation and subsequent amendments. The first program has been designed for encouraging states to build and promote plans for managing household non hazardous wastes. The second program has been directed towards setting up of a ‘cradle to grave’ mechanism in order to monitor and control the deposition of hazardous non-household wastes. The third program has been introduced to regulate storage in underground tanks with the help of a program known as the Underground storage Tank program. The fourth program has been designed for conducting a new kind of demonstration effort for tracking medical wastes. (Teets et al, 2003) RCRA provides encouragements to the states to generate and implement their own solid waste management programs. However, over the years, it has been found that the states find it very difficult to implement their own plan mainly due to two principal factors. First, with increase in population, the use of disposable commodities is increasing by manifolds and hence the amount of waste generation is also increasing. Second, people are not quite aware of their social responsibility. (Teets et al, 2003) Current status of RCRA The RCRA Act has long been suffered from the lack of flexibility in the process of regulation of solid waste disposal. In the most recent amendment, a great amount of flexibility has been added the prevailing system of solid waste management. In 1996, the Land Disposal Flexibility act has been proposed and this law is still being followed strictly. Under this law the decharacterized wastes that are generated from the system centralized wastewater management are disposed of on the land to that extent until which they are not become hazardous during the time of disposal. under this law, states can now exercise a little bit of flexibility at the time of regulating small landfills. This flexibility allows the states to exempt the small landfills from the requirements of ground water monitoring. This kind of exemption is, however, made under some particular conditions. At present, strict adherence to the RCRA requirements is mandatory. In case of any violations of the requirements under the RCRA norms, sever penalties, civil as well as criminal, are issued to the offenders. In case of civil penalties, penalty amount can range as high as up to $25,000 per day for each violation. Criminal penalties may take more severe form, e.g. one year of imprisonment. (Teets et al, 2003) Shortcomings of RCRA The major problem with the RCRA is that the implementation of RCRA rules and regulations requires huge amount of paper work which sometimes become quite frustrating for the corporate managers. The reviewing of applications also take a lot of time by the EPA and hence it may take long to get required permit under RCRA regulatory requirements. Critics are very often of the opinion that RCRA regulations impose unduly burden on the reputed companies that make their own efforts in waste minimization. This huge amount burden sometimes discourages less reputable companies to stay away from the regulatory process. In the presence burdensome regulations, companies frequently indulge themselves in illegal paths of generating hazards. (Teets et al, 2003) Recommendations for improvement Looking at the shortcomings of RCRA, one thing that can be recommended is implementation of less burdensome requirements. The processing system should be made simple so that it does not take long for getting required permits under RCRA. The requirements should be made simpler so that they become easy to follow. Finally, a major attention should be paid on hazardous waste disposal as they are really bad for the environment and the regulations should be made easy to understand and follow. Conclusion The issue of solid waste disposal has been a major concern as it involves major environmental degradation. RCRA has been enacted to implement certain regulations with respect to the solid waste disposal. a number of programs have been developed and implemented in this regards. Under RCRA states are encouraged and helped to a large extent for developing and implementing their own waste disposal plans. However, RCRA is not free form criticism. Actually it suffers from a complicated system of implementation of the requirements. In order to make RCRA more effective, the process of implementation of the programs under RCRA should be made less burdensome and easy to follow. References: 1. Teets, J. W., Reis, D. P. and Worrell, D. G. (2003). RCRA: Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. American Bar Association. 2. Dennison, M. S. (1993). RCRA regulatory compliance guide. William Andrew. Read More