| UNITED STATES ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY O I Cr~ 0
WASHINGTON, D.C. 20460 :
September 28, 1990
OFFICE OF
THE INSPECTOR GENERAL
(V
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BACKGROUND
The Agency's Pre-Remedial Program represents the Superfund
Program's early investigative process. In this process, among
other things, contractors, working on the Agency's behalf,
evaluate suspected uncontrolled hazardous substance release
sites. These sites go through a series of increasingly detailed
evaluations designed to identify and assess uncontained hazardous
substances. .
The Agency, through its FIT contractors or the States,
starts with a preliminary assessment. Using readily available
information, the preliminary assessment determines whether a site
needs emergency action, additional action, or; no further Federal
action. If warranted, the site next receives; a "screening site
inspection," usually involving a site visit and an average of 10
to 15 samples. Finally, if warranted, the site undergoes a more
extensive "listing site inspection," including an average of 50
to 70 samples/ Through these inspections, the contractors and
States develop a hazardous ranking system score which ranks the
hazards at the sites. This ranking determines which sites the
Agency will place on the National Priorities List.
In fiscal 1989, FIT contractors and the States completed
almost 1300 pre-remedial screening site investigations and 75
listing site inspections. During these investigations, sites
were visited and samples taken. To obtain these samples, the
contractors and States, aided by subcontractors, sometimes drill
monitoring wells or bore holes. From late 1986 through October
1989, the FIT contractor for Regions 5-10 alone hired
subcontractors to drill monitoring wells or bore holes for soil
samples at over 85 sites.
The contractors send the actual samples to laboratories that
are responsible for their proper disposal after analysis.
However, in the process of taking the sample, equipment and
clothing can be contaminated, and existing waste disturbed.
Questions arise regarding how these "investigative-derived
wastes" are disposed of. These wastes include:
o Disposable Tyvek suits, gloves, and other personal
protective gear worn by the contractor's staff.
o Soil removed while drilling holes to obtain soil
samples and to install monitoring wells.
o Water removed from wells before collecting ground water
samples; and water, solvents or other fluids used to
decontaminate field equipment such as backhoes,
drilling rigs, and pipes.
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Other Agency hazardous waste programs also confront
investigative derived waste issues when theyj take samples or
investigate sites. The Pre-Remedial Program is unique, however,
because of the number of sites it investigates, and because there
are generally not on-site RCRA managed disposal facilities at
pre-remedial sites. !
RESULTS OF REVIEW |
i
OSWER had no specific formal guidance for disposing of
wastes stemming from pre-remedial site investigations. OSWER
recognized that this issue needed attention and planned to issue
formal guidance. However, formal guidance had been delayed while
OSWER and the Regions attempted to resolve concerns regarding
disposal costs and the amount of wastes to be disposed of off-
site. Because there was no formal guidance,'situations occurred
that unnecessarily alarmed the public. In one instance, the
Agency's FIT contractor employees discarded personal protective
gear and other testing materials in a public j park garbage
container. This not only alarmed the park district employees who
found the material and thought that they had1been contaminated,
but resulted in the fire and police departments treating the
incident as a hazardous material release. In another instance,
the lack of obtaining an EPA signature on a hazardous waste
manifest resulted in two drums marked "hazardous" being left on a
roadside for a short time.
The Assistant Administrator for Solid Waste and Emergency
Response has agreed to issue and appropriately distribute final
guidance by the end of October 1990 that will resolve the issues
raised. ' i
The Agency Had Recognized But Not Yet Resolved ',
Investigative-Derived Waste Issues
The Site Evaluation Section had been attempting to determine
a policy for investigative-derived waste handling since the
proposed draft National Oil and Hazardous Substances Pollution
Contingency Plan (NCP) was issued in December 1988. The December
1988 proposed NCP stated that the Agency believes that the wastes
produced during site investigations should be handled and
disposed of in accordance with CERCLA section 121, as amended.
CERCLA section 121(d) requires that remedial actions comply
with requirements or standards under Federal ilaws and more
stringent State laws, referred to as Applicable or Relevant and
Appropriate Requirements (ARARs). According jto the proposed NCP:
EPA intends that field investigation teams use best
professional judgment in determining when
investigative-derived wastes may contain hazardous
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substances and to handle such substances in accordance
with all Federal and State ARARs. \
In response to the NCP as it was proposed in December 1988/
the Site Evaluation Section directed one of its FIT contractors
to develop and submit guidance to the Agency ,by May 25, 1990, on
how to handle investigative-derived waste. I-n the interim, the
Site Evaluation Section, through a memorandum in December 1989;
directed FIT teams to use their best professional judgment in ^
determining if investigative-derived wastes may contain hazardous
substances, and how such substances should be handled in
accordance with all Federal and State ARARs until the Agency
issues a final policy.
In the December memorandum, the general approach outlined
for disposing of decontaminated personal protective gear and
disposable equipment is to put them in industrial dumpsters.
Generally non-hazardous wastes are to be disposed of on-site, and
hazardous waste off-site, in accordance with the "Off-Site Rule."
This refers to CERCLA section 121(d)(3), which attempts to avoid
having Superfund wastes contribute to present; or future
environmental problems. Only environmentally sound waste
disposal facilities are to be used. According to OSWER Directive
9834.11, it is EPA's responsibility to be sure that the criteria,
for governing off-site transfer of CERCLA waste, result in
decisions that are environmentally sensible and that reflect
sound public policy. :
Disposal costs are a concern in the development of a
national policy and, according to officials, will be largely
determined by how much waste is disposed of off-site. In
December 1989, the Site Evaluation Section estimated the annual
disposal cost of soil and water stemming from site investigations
ranged from about $3 million to $7 million. The estimates assume
that the FIT teams will continue to dispose of decontaminated
personal protective gear in dumpsters at no cost to the
Government. !
The new NCP was issued in March 1990 andI provided policy but
not implementing guidance.
Regional Practices Vary
Regional investigative-derived waste disposal practices
vary. For example, to dispose of purge water,iRegion 9 FIT
employees will, with the municipality's permission, pour non-
hazardous purge water down the sewers. According to Region 9
officials, this both saves disposal costs and avoids filling up
the limited space at hazardous waste disposal facilities with
non-hazardous waste. However, the municipalities rarely give
such permission. Where the municipality does not give permission,
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Region 9's contractor staff drum the waste and dispose of it as
hazardous. :
Region 6 FIT employees, however, drum soil and liquid wastes
and dispose of them, if possible, off-site. According to
Region 6 staff, the site owner, State and local agency staff, and
the press all can be present during site inspections. Region 6
is concerned about public perception problems resulting from
these officials observing EPA contractors pouring even non-
hazardous water from potential hazardous waste sites into
municipal sewers. :
Regional policies also vary with regard to personal
protective gear (gear). After decontamination, to prevent anyone
from wearing the gear, such as homeless persons, both Region 6's
and 9's contractor staff are required to cut up or render gear
useless. After this, Region 6 requires its contractor staff to
take the gear directly to a disposal facility; usually a
municipal landfill. '
Region 9 contractor staff dispose of the gear in dumpsters.
Also, if the gear comes into contact with either hazardous
liquids or soils, the staff of Region 9's contractor disposes .of
it with the soil. If the gear came into contact with hazardous
liquid, and no soil was being drummed, the staff would cut up the
gear, double bag it, and dispose of it in a.dumpster. However,
this situation has not occurred. According to the office manager
of Region 9's contractor, it would be too expensive to drum the
gear alone and dispose of it as hazardous.
Region 5's contractor staff used to dispose of gear in the
dumpster at the hotel where they were staying. As a result of
the incident described below, this practice >was changed.
Poor Judgment In Gear Disposal \
Unnecessarily Alarmed The Public
In July 1989, three employees of Region 5's FIT contractor
collected samples from a landfill monitoring well in the
Champaign-Urbana, Illinois area. The employees discarded their
disposable Tyvek suits, boots, gloves, and testing materials in a
garbage container in a public park next to the hotel. Two
teenage park district employees found bags containing the waste,
took them to park district headquarters and opened them.
Concerned that toxics could be present, the '.park district
notified the fire and police departments. The combined
Champaign-Urbana Hazardous Materials Team was called to the
scene. They treated the incident as a hazardous material
release. Five fire fighters donned containment suits, drummed
the waste, and scrubbed the garbage truck, tools, and grounds
with bleach. 1
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Based on a label it found with the materials, the Urbana
Police Department identified the waste as being generated by the
EPA contractor. The Police then located the three employees, who
were charged, but not convicted, of violating an Illinois garbage
disposal statute.
I
The.local press reported the incident, 'quoting park district
employees as being very alarmed. The park district operations
director told the Champaign-Urbana News-Gazette that it was a
frightening moment when he and the two teenage employees opened
the bags and found what was in them. They thought they had
touched contaminated material. The newspaper went on to quote
the park district employee as saying "I know what those suits are
for, and among the suits, gloves, and bottles were labels marked
cyanide."
>
Later testing determined that the material was not
hazardous, and the contractor disposed of it. The contractor
also added to its Region 5 site safety audits a check for proper
waste disposal. Since the incident, if the :site owner will not
allow them to leave gear on-site, Region 5'a, FIT contractor staff
will decontaminate the gear and dispose of it in a locked
dumpster within their warehouse. The PIT contractor's field
office manager maintained that the employees may have used poor
judgment, but did not violate EPA policy, because no national or
, regional guidance existed regarding gear disposal.
While the FIT teams did not expose the public to hazardous
waste, in this instance, the lack of final guidance could lead to
such exposure. In any case, the incident showed the need for
guidance to prevent (1) potential environmental harm, (2) the
unnecessary frightening of the public, and (;3) negative public
relations for the Agency.
Lack Of Obtaining Required Documentation Resulted in
Drums Labelled As Hazardous Being Left On A Roadside
When waste drums are moved off-site, long standing Agency
policy calls for EPA to sign the required hazardous waste
manifest as the generator. In January 1990, in Region 9, failure
to obtain the required EPA signatures resulted in two drums of
investigative-derived waste being left on a roadside. This
occurred when a site owner gave, then withdrew, permission to
leave the drums of non-hazardous waste on-site. The Region 9 FIT
contractor could not locate a disposal facility that would accept
the waste as non-hazardous, and was forced to dispose of it as
hazardous. The FIT contractor arranged for a subcontractor to
mark the drums "hazardous" and haul them to the disposal
facility. No EPA representative had signed as the waste
generator on the required hazardous waste manifest.
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The subcontractor loaded the barrels onto a truck, moved it
outside the facility gate, and asked a facility representative to
sign the manifest as the waste generator. The facility
representative refused, left for the day, and locked the facility
gate and the waste outside. Lacking a signature, and having
other waste to dispose of, the subcontractor unloaded the drums
outside the gate, leaving them on the roadside. The
subcontractor called the FIT contractor, who;directed him to move
the drums inside the gate - which he did by lifting them over the
fence. The contractor arranged for the necessary EPA signature
and for the drums to be picked up the next day. No public
incident was created, but for an estimated hour or two, two drums
marked "hazardous" were left on a .roadside. ;The incident
illustrates the need for FIT contractors to diligently assure
that waste disposal procedures are properly carried out.
i
Draft Report Recommendations
i
We recommended that the Assistant Administrator for Solid
Waste and Emergency Response:
1.
2.
Provide adequate oversight and timely review of the
final guidance to ensure its timely release.
Send a memorandum to the regions and FIT contractors
emphasizing the need to follow the 'final guidance as
well as other applicable Agency policies.
The final guidance, while not unnecessarily requiring non-
hazardous waste to be disposed of as hazardous, should also
consider the public perception problems, and potential
environmental effects that can result from improper disposal of
such wastes. 1
QSWERS Comments on Draft Report \
OSWER's response to our draft report and! subsequent actions
are summarized below, and included as Appendix 1.
OSWER drafted guidance on investigative-derived waste, and
distributed a draft on July 11, 1990, for comment. The guidance
is scheduled to be issued by the end of October 1990 as a part of
an OSWER directive. This action clears our first recommendation.
Regarding our second recommendation, the directive scheduled
for release by the end of October resolves our concern and clears
this recommendation. '
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ACTION REQUIRED
The actions taken clear the issues raised and no formal
response to this report is necessary. The audit is hereby
closed. However, we request that OSWER provide us with a copy of
the final directive and guidance when issued; Also, the planned
actions need to be tracked in the Agency's Management Audit
Tracking System.
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:3 5'i-E.i = -... = OV'/E',rA
WASHINGTON. 0 c. 2046o''
2 I990
SUBJECT:
FROM:
TO:
APPENDIX 1
f of 3
Don R. clay
Administrator ^^ -:-
sou, Waste
Kenneth A. onz
Assistant Inspector General for Audit
Response
.
Mmini,trator for solid
1.
the
contractor,
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APPENDIX 1
Page 2 of 3
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and revisions by July, 1990. The draft;win be distributed for
comment at that time. The final policy!and guidance should be
issued by October, 1990. The guidance will be issued as an osw-R
directive and will consist of the following two parts:
i) An opening memo providing guidelines for implementing the
guidance for Investigation Derived ' Waste (IDW) management ir.
accordance with the National Contingency Plan (NCP).
i
2) An attachment that relates in detail, guidance for managing
IDW in accordance with NCP requirements. This part involves
many different regulations relating to hazardous waste
management and its production, and has accounted for most of
the effort to date. j
We will track the progress of this process in our milestone
tracking system. :
\
We agree that the final guidance should also consider the
public perception problems and potential environmental effects
that can result from improper disposal of wastes, but we would
like to clarify how these issues are actually managed in the
field. ;
Regarding concern for environmental! effects, our research
for the IOW guidance has found that compliance with Applicable or
Relevant and Appropriate Requirements (ARARs) requires the removal
of IDW for off-site disposal at a small percentage of sites.
Therefore, the guidance will often recommend IOW be left on-site
in a prescribed manner. IOW will require removal in the relatively
few cases that involve either ARAR compliance, or where the site
manager judges that leaving wastes on-site will significantly
increase the potential threat to human health or the environment.
The primary factor governing cost* and problems associated with IDW
management involves whether the IOW should remain on-site or be
taken off-site by EPA. The decision to remove IDW from a site will
trigger significant costs regardless of the type of wastes (i.e.
RCRA hazardous or non-hazardous). In most cases, such a removal
provides neither environmental nor health benefits and may
constitute up to 20 percent of the totalisite inspection costs.
when developing a workplan for,a site inspection, community
relation aspects are always given consideration. Management of
low does net provide an exception to this rule. The factors that
create th« most public pressures associated with IOW management
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APPENDIX 1
Page 3 of 3
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involve: 1) sites., where Potentially Responsible Parties (PR?)
object to returning soil and water IDW to the area of origin
(i.e., on-site) and, 2) sites with high .public visibility such as
a site located in a residential neighborhood. From experience,
the cases involving PRP objections account for a majority of the
pressures to remove IDW from a site. 'At this stage of policy
development, we feel that many PRP objections do net justify the
expense associated with IDW removal. High public visibility car.
present a significantly different situation and the implementation
policy will provide recommendations foe addressing both of the
above cases.
!
Thank you for the opportunity to provide OSWER's comments on
this draft OIG report. If your staff has any questions, please
have then contact Jose Acevedo, OSWER Audit Follow-up Coordinator
at 382-4510. "
cc: Mary Cade i
Phyllis Anderson
Thad Juszczafc
Joonsie Webster
Jose Acevedo
Jia Haas
Steve Tiber (PM-219)
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APPENDIX 2
DISTRIBUTION OF REPORT
Inspector General (A-109)
Assistant Administrator for Solid Waste and
Emergency Response (OS-100)
Comptroller (PM-225)
Agency Followup Official (PM-225)
ATTN: Director, Resource Management Division
Agency Followup Official (PM-208)
Associate Administrator for Regional Operations
and State/Local Relations (H1501) |__
Associate Administrator for Congressional and
Legislative Affairs (A-103)
Associate Administrator for Communications and
Public Affairs (A-100)
Regional Administrators
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