UNITED STATES ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY
REGION IX
100 California Street
San Francisco, California 94111
oOo
PUBLIC DISCUSSION SESSIONS
on
RESOURCE CONSERVATION AND RECOVERY ACT
PL 94-580
Hoii day Inn
480 Sutter Street
San Francisco, California
March 10, 1977
7:10 p. m.
March 11, 1977
8:45 a. m.
Reported by:
THOMAS R. WILSON, CSR, CM
(CSR No. 2052)
THOMAS R. WILSON, C.S.R.
681 Market Street, #1085
San Francisco, CA 94105
(415) 543-3194
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HEARING PANEL:
PAUL DE FALCO, JR., Administrator, Region IX,
United States Environmental Protection
Agency, San Francisco, California
JAMES CHANNEL, Chief, Hazardous Materials
Branch, Region IX, United States
Environmental Protection Agency, San
Francisco, California
H. L. HICKMAN, JR. , Director of Management
and Information Staff, Office of
Solid Waste, United States Environmental
Protection Agency, Washington, D. C.
WILLIAM SANJOUR, Chief of Assessment and
Technology Branch, Hazardous Waste
Management Division, United States
Environmental Protection Agency,
Washington, D. C.
J. NICHOLAS HUMBER, Director of Resource
Recovery Division, United States
Environmental Protection Agency,
Washington, D. C.
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INDEX
AGENDA_I.TEM PAGE
Opening Remarks - Paul De Falco, Jr.,
Regional Administrator, EPA Region IX 5
Overview of Resource Conservation and Recovery
Act - H. L. Hickman, Jr., Director of
Management and Information Staff, Office of
Solid Waste, EPA, Washington, D. C. 8
Training/Public Information/Public Participation
Hazardous Wastes - William Sanjour, Chief of
Assessment and Technology Branch, Hazardous
Waste Management Division, EPA, Washington,
D. 'C. 28
Land Disposal - H. Lanier Hickman, Jr. 50
Resource Conservation and Recovery and Overall
Technical Assistance - J. Nicholas Humber,
Director of Resource Recovery Division, EPA,
Washington, D. C. • 62
State Program Development - H. Lanier Hickman, Jr. 76
QUEST K)NS:
Larry Burch, California Solid Waste Management
Board, Sacramento, California 22
87
Ronald Schwegler, Los Angeles County Sanitation
District, Los Angeles, California 25
94
Jean Siri, West Contra Costa Conservation League 40
74
103
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I N D E X (Cont’d)
PAGE
J. P. Heliman, California Trucking Association,
Burlingame, California 44
H. Clay Kellogg, Carson, California 46
Stanley Judd, Standard Oil Company of California,
San Francisco, California 58
Sandra Mathias, Southern California Association of
Governments, Los Angeles, California 59
88
Russell Papenhausen, Supervisor, Plumas County,
California 61
90
99
104
Clarence Kaufman, County of San Diego, California 71
74
Ariel Parkinson, Berkeley Solid Waste 1anagement
Commission, Berkeley, California 72
93
Mark Harris, City of Palo Alto, California 86
STATEMENTS:
H. Clay Kellogg, Carson, California 105
Larry Burch, California Solid Waste Management
Board, Sacramento, California 107
Daniel A. Cotton, Sonoma County, California 112
- - - o Oo - - -
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CHAIRMAN DE FALCO: Good evening, ladies and
gentlemen. I would like to call the meeting to order.
My name is Paul De Falco. I am the Regional
Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency for
Region IX.
I would like to introduce the people at the head
table.
On my far right is Jim Channell, who is the
Chief of the Hazardous Materials Branch here in Region IX.
Next to him is Nick Humber, the Director of the
Resource Recovery Division of the Solid Waste Program in
Washington.
To my immediate right is Lanny Hickman, the
Director of Management and Information Staff of the
Solid Waste Program in Washington.
To my left is Bill Sanjour, Chief of Assessment
and Technology Branch, Hazardous Waste Management Division,
Solid Waste Program in Washington.
On October 21st, last year, the President
signed into law the Resource Conservation and Recovery
Act of 1976, known now as Public Law 94—580. This
significant new environmental law provides the opportunity
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for EPA, the states and local governments to develop
comprehensive solid waste management programs which will
control hazardous waste, eliminate the open dump as a
principal disposal practice, and increase the opportunitieE
for resource conservation.
The Act provides for broad public involvement
in its planning and implementation. The purpose of the
public discussion session being held here tonight is to
enable the private citizen, as well, as representatives of
environmental, industrial, governmental and other organiza-
tions who are potentially affected by the new Act to offer
their preliminary views, attitudes and suggestions for
EPA ’s guidance.
The way the program will operate, we will give
you a brief run-through of the statute and its various
obligations. Then we will essentially have the dis—
cussion after each section, listen to questions and then
listen to prepared statements following that.
In the next 15 minutes, Mr. Lanny Hickman of
the EPA’s Office of Solid Waste will present an overview
of the Act. Following Mr. Hickman’s presentation,
various sections of the Act will be summarized separately.
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After each of these summaries, there will be a 20-minute
period for questions and comment by the audience.
In addition, a period at the end of this
evening’s session has been set aside for open discussion.
We ask that anyone wishing to make a public statement not
exceed the five—minute time limit at the end of the
program.
We request that anyone wishing to raise a
ques’tion or to make a statement proceed to one of the
floor microphones and wait to be recognized by me. Pleas
state your name, your address and whom you are represent-
ing.
Written comments may also be submitted for
inclusion in the official transcript of this meeting.
The comment period will remain open ifor approximately two
weeks, following Friday’s public discussion session.
Written comments should be received at the EPA Office in
San Francisco on or before March 25th, 1977, in order to
be included in the official record of this hearing.
Copies of the record will be available from
EPA’s Office of Solid Waste Management in Washington,
D.C., upon written request.
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An announcement stating the date that the
comment period ends and giving the addresses of the EPA
Offices in San Francisco and in Washington, D.C., is
available at the registration table in the rear of the
room. Copies of the Resource Conservation and Recovery
Act, as well as a summary of the Act and other background
information materials, are also available at that regis-
tration table.
Now, I would like to introduce Mr. Lanny Hickman,
Director of the Management and Information Staff of EPA’s
Office of Solid Waste. Lanny?
MR. HICKMAN: Would someone turn the slide
projector on, please.
We are very happy to have this opportunity to
discuss this new piece of environmental legislation that
was passed in ‘76, and it’s a major step forward in the
national effort to try to deal with the problem of solid
waste management.
I think we should understand that the law is
somewhat different than many other environmental statutes
administered by the Environmental Protection Agency in
that it is not a step forward for the federal government
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to regulate the management of solid waste; it is not
designed principally to be federal environmental protec-
tion enforcement legislation similar to the Air and
Water Acts. Its idea and the scheme behind all of it
is to build a strong partnership between the federal,
state and local government and industry to deal with the
many problems that we all face in solid waste management.
Here in California, a state that’s somewhat
sophisticated in how it deals with the solid waste
management problems, perhaps part of the Act may not be
as germane to the problems that you face as it is to other
parts of the country. But it is a piece of national
legislation designed to deal with solid waste management
at the local and state level principally, without a great
deal of the heavy handed federal enforcement programs
that you may be familiar with in other environmental
areas.
(Slide No. 1.)
Now, the objectives of RCRA are to protect the
public health, protect the environment, conserve valuable
material resources and conserve valuable energy resources.
In theory, this will be achieved by somewhat of
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a three—cornered approach, those three corners being:
1. To eliminate improper land disposal
practices of solid waste management and ensure that solid
wastes that go on the land are disposed of properly and
in such a way as to protect local health and the environ-
ment
To deal with a specific category of waste
referred to or called hazardous waste, which represent
significant increase in health and environmental threats,
in a more controlled manner than might be done with the
rest of the solid waste stream, and
Thirdly, to set the bridge for the long-term
ultimate resource conservation. That is, the maximum
amount of the solid waste that we possibly can conserve,
either through waste reduction measures, through
recycling materials and energy or new conscientious
efforts to minimize the amount of materials that go into
the many products that our affluent society depends upon.
(Slide No. 2.)
Now, these objectives of sound land disposal
practices, hazardous waste management and resource
conservation can be achieved through a variety of
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objectives of the law structured for the federal govern-
ment as a partner with state and local government,
industry, to do certain things through a variety of
objectives.
Some of the provisions of the law allow
technical and financial assistance to state and local
government to prepare plans and implement those plans to
deal with the solid waste management problems.
To develop the necessary manpower to respond to
the demands of RCRA, which is the way -- That’s the
acronym we refer to for the law.
As I mentioned, it will prohibit future open
dumping of solid waste.
The law is designed to convert or close all
existing open dumps and to put all the waste in acceptable
sanitary landfills.
To regulate hazardous waste.
(Slide No. 3.)
The law provides for EPA to develop guidelines
for solid waste management which will serve as a basis to
guide state and local government to improve practices.
These guidelines are mandatory on the federal
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government, and it allows the federal government to try
to set an example by keeping its own house clean before
it asks states and local government and industry to do a
good job.
Provides for research and development to develop
new and improved systems for solid waste management.
To do studies on health and environmental
effects of improper solid waste management.
Serves as a foundation for making sound,
intelligent decisions on what has to be done to deal with
the problems.
It provides for demonstrations of full-scale
solid waste management systems, technologies and practices
to eliminate, or at least relieve, some of the risk
taking of state and local government on unproven or yet
undetermined successful systems and technology.
It provides for a mechanism for us to build a
long-term program for a federal, state and local govern-
ment and industry partnership in materials and energy
recovery.
It recognizes that, in order to do all of this,
an informed public is the first and only foundation by
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which sound governmental decisions can be made. It
provides mechanisms for EPA to support effort to educate
the public on solid waste management problems and on the
solutions or the potential solutions to those problems.
That’s kind of a quick overview of the
objectives and the goals for RCRA. And we have basically
five series of presentations. The first is on public
information and public participation.
We will talk about the hazardous waste provi-
sions, the land disposal provisions, resource conservation
provisions and, finally, the state and local government
development provisions of the law.
I will move on and talk about public informa-
tion and public participation as sort of an umbrella to
give you a feel for why we are here.
(Slide No. 4.)
This meeting tonight, the series of meetings
that -— This is the first of a series of a meetings that
we are holding around the country to inform the public
about the new Solid Waste Disposal Act. We hold one in
each of our ten regional offices. This is about the
eighth one. They have two to go. And we will hold a
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series of other meetings.
It’s the first time that the Federal Solid Waste
Program has made a concerted effort to reach out to the
public in a formal and in an informal way to get feedback
early on before decisions are made. This is sort of the
intent of many of the provisions of the Act.
The Act has specific public participation
requirements that EPA must follow in order to assure there
is adequate feedback from the public on what we are trying
to do
And the intent of the provision is, of course,
to promote a better public understanding of solid waste
management, its impact on the environment and the public
health, and to develop stronger understanding for the
ways it can best deal with problems.
It’s designed to involve the public in all
aspects of the implementation of the law.
It provides the materials and devices, the
mechanism by which we can cooperate with states and the
public can cooperate with states in doing what they have
to do to meet the requirements of the law, at least
respond to the mandates of the law.
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It provides a mechanism for the state and
federal government and local government to describe the
significant data base which will serve as a foundation for
a better understanding of these problems and the impact
of what we are doing and the solutions so that the public
has a better understanding of what it’s going to take to
get the job done.
Then it requires that the EPA disseminate as
much information as possible as quickly as possible and
requires us to set up a library that can be utilized if
anybody has a desire to delve into the problem of solid
waste management perhaps in a more academic way.
We have had a library ever since the office
was established in 1966. And if you are familiar with
library systems at all, you know there is a national
network of library interchanges where you can go to your
library and, if the publication isn’t there, they can
get it from another library anywhere in the country. We
are wired to that system. You can go to your local
library and get something out of Washington on a loan
basis. We have a computerized information system which
will allow you to tap in at no charge on a particular
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abstract or on a series of abstracts or publications in
solid waste management to sort of screen through to get a
feel for what you want to do.
Now, what are the major categories that repre-
sent the public.
(Slide No. 5.)
We find, of course, there are organized groups
that represent various forces at play in the solid waste
management field. It ’s very difficult to find out who
represents the individual citizen, and so our public
participation program is designed to try to tap as many
of the different segments of the public as possible, both
the lay public and the technical public, to try to make
sure that everyone has a chance to know what we are trying
to do.
Of course, you have the consumer, the environ-
mental and the neighborhood groups, which represent
probably the closest to the -- really the lay public as
possible. And we have a longstanding tradition with
certain organizations that represent some parts of the
lay public, which is the League of Women Voters, where we
have tried to build a stronger understanding through their
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membership on what solid waste management is all about.
And, of course, you have the standard trade,
manufacturing and labor organizations that are represented
in Washington by large organizations.
And we have the public health, scientific and
professional societies which have a strong interest in
solid waste management from a practitioner t s standpoint.
And, of course, you have many governmental and
organizations -- and university associations which have
reasons to be concerned and involved in solid waste
management.
As I mentioned earlier, the law itself has
certain mandates on the federal government arid, because of
this, it’s important that the government is equally
involved.
(Slide No. 6.)
RCRA provides a mechanism for the public to
participate in a very formal way in what we are trying to
do and how we are trying to implement the law. We had to
issue procedures by which the public can petition for
changes in any regulation or guidelines that we might
publish under the authorities of the law, a petition for
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regulations or guidelines to be written that have not been
proposed or conceived by the agency, the Administrator of
EPA then must consider these petitions and show cause for
why the agency should or should not respond to that
petition.
The law requires us to provide an information
mechanism by which we can have participation in all
aspects of the planning, development, implementation of
RCRA’. It requires us to hold public, formal public
hearings for the development of our regulations and
guidelines.
It requires us to have the public involved in
talking about what sort of information programs and
knowledge of activities that the citizens should be
involved in, what do they want from the federal govern-
ment in the way of solid waste management information.
And then in just the basic decision on the
budgeting, planning and implementation of our programs,
the public is supposed to be involved.
(Slide No. 7.)
RCRA requires us to publish guidelines on how
the public can do this, what mechanisms can they wire in
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to us to participate in our activity.
And then it provides for citizen suits that
would allow any citizen in the country to sue any other
organization, individual or activity or agency that is
in violation as they perceive it, in violation of any
guideline or regulation that the agency may have pro-
mulgated.
That’s fairly common boilerplate in most of
the new environmental laws, the citizen—suit provisions.
We will carry out this program through a variety
of mechanisms. I mentioned we will have formal hearings
on all the regulations and guidelines that we will be
promulgating.
In addition, we will hold a series of
conferences and meetings around the country, either
directly sponsored by our office or EPA or sponsored
through a variety of interest groups around the country
who have a strong and overriding interest in solid waste
management.
(Slide No. 8.)
And we will hold a series of workshops, small
groups to get together and talk about specific problem
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areas, specific work that we have underway, and try to
get feedback.
Most of the workshops will be directed toward
more the technical type of people who have a broader
foundation in the technical and economic aspects of solid
waste management, but there will be workshops held with
citizens also and the lay public to talk about what we
are doing.
(Slide No. 9.)
Then we will have a variety of review groups
participating with us as we develop any regulation and
guidelines and plans that we will be developing under the
law.
We have in mind to establish a very formal
advisory group for the office, and in the interim while we
are trying to establish this formal group, we will have a
variety of ad hoc groups representing different segments
of solid waste management to sit with us and give us
guidance on what we should be doing.
Then, our public education programs. There
will be a variety of ways to reach out to educate the lay
public: publications, slides, films and exhibits. We
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will work with the newspapers, television, radio, to
provide information.
And then we will have a variety of financial
assistance programs to interest groups who, in turn, will
carry out education programs to their own membership,
such as the League of Women Voters.
In addition to the public participation portion
of the law, Congress recognized that the new mandates
that’ they promulgated, that they passed in this law, will
probably require manpower to respond to the demands of the
law.
(Slide No. 10.)
And they provided a mechanism by which EPA must
make a judgment through a manpower study with a report to
the President and Congress on what needs for additional
personnel may occur because of RCRA and how the programs
that are out there now to develop manpower might respond
to provide that manpower and what we would have to do to
meet any deficit of manpower needs because of the new law.
And they provide grant contract authority to
train personnel to develop programs to develop the sort of
manpower that the various levels of government and industr’
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need to carry out their solid waste programs.
That’s basically now the public participation
provisions and the manpower development provisions. And
after each of these segments of the presentation, we will
hold the floor open for some comments or questions or
discussions from the floor. And we will entertain that
now, I guess.
CHAIRMAN DE FALCO: Would those that have
ques’tions please go to the microphone and identify your-
selves.
MR. LARRY BURCH (California Solid Waste
Management Board, Sacramento, California): Lanny, I gues
this is a question to you, and it does affect the state
programs, but do you plan in the state plan development
guidelines to require the states during the plan
preparation process to have some sort of public input
programs, such as public hearings, public sessions like
this, advisory groups or task forces?
MR. HICKMAN: Well, I don’t know that we have
really zeroed in yet to make that kind of a decision.
It’s come up in almost every one of the public participa-
tion programs like this that I have sat in on, and it seerm
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to me -— We were in Dallas Tuesday night and Wednesday
morning with the same sort of presentation, and the point
was made by, I think someone from one of the state
goverments, that if EPA is trying to set an example of
public participation like we are here in the planning and
implementing of the law, it seems only fit that the states
should do the same thing and it should follow the same
example.
And I am certainly going to make those sort of
recommendations to the office that we provide guidance to
the states on having the public involved in their phase
of implementing this law because it’s just not our law.
It’s really designed for the state and local government
to pick up on.
I think it would be a very valid thing to do.
MR. BURCH: One other related question.
After the state plan is developed and we enter
the implementation phase, do you see that the state and
local government can qualify for some type of program
funds to sustain a public information program?
We find it very difficult to sell this type of
a service to the Governor’s office, this year at least.
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MR. HICKMAN: I think everybody has a hard time
selling public participation programs and training pro—
grams always because it’s so difficult to measure output.
MR. BURCH: That’s correct.
MR. HICKMAN: You know, you can measure how
many cases of litigation you have and how many times the
lawyers go to the -— you know, go to the courthouse very
effectively, but it’s very difficult to measure the level
of a vareness you have created out there with the public
by whatever programs you might carry on.
The way that the law is written as far as the
development and implementation of state plans, the law
is designed so that -- We will talk about this later on,
about state program development, but I probably ought to
make the point here that the law doesn’t visualize that
a state plan’s developed solely by the state. It’s
very specific in that that state and local government,
through its elected officials, must come to an agreement
on the relative share of responsibility for the develop—
ment and implementation of a state plan.
And it provides financial assistance from the
federal government to do the development and implementatjo
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of that plan. Seems reasonable to me that if within
that plan, part of that -- part of that plan included
public participation and the public education program,
that the money would flow as long as there is money from
the federal government to help implement that plan down to
the state and local goverment to carry out those programs.
it seems reasOnable to believe that would occur.
There is nothing to preclude it, certainly.
MR. BURCH: Thank you.
MR. RONALD SCHWEGLER (Los Angeles County
Sanitation District): In understanding the importance
of what you have to do in the drafting of your guidelines
and the presentation of your ability for dissemination,
dissemination of information back to the nation, I wonder
if there is going to be a chance in the future that we
will be able to have assistance from the attorneys in the
drafting of the language so that, as we disseminate this
information back to the public, that we will have a chance,
because this information that goes out in case of sanitary
landfills versus the formidable dumps, we know that the
opposition groups, the special interest groups, whenever
it comes to rest, it has to fall within their confines and
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their back yards, that we will tend to use the law and --
the law of the land as it will be written, and through
your office to their advantage, and they will find ways
of interpreting.
And having stood before many planning directors
and talking about sanitary landfill at the end of that,
one lawyer will get up and say, “What we have been
listening to all this time, they are talking about dumps.”
So all I am saying is I think we have to be
very, very cautious and have assistance in the development
of this dissemination program to realizing that whatever
is being said about sanitary landfills will be used by
the opposition in need, if you will: as we close down
the dump, we are going to need something to take their
place.
And I know you know that, Lanny, and we are
going to need landfills, but they will use that informa—
tion against us.
And then a second type of thought that I know
that you know under the mandates of the law that you have
to have this dissemination program, as in the past EPA
has put out pamphlets and brochures indicating the success
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or the degree of the status of some programs. And we in
the industry many times have to stand before councils and
supervisors and say, “The EPA put out -— They say that
it’s possible to do these systems for X dollars and
everything else.”
There, again, it’s a very cautionary note
prior to approving that we allow these systems that may
take eventually the alternatives to sanitary landfilling,
of the resource recovery alternatives that they would
have us choose, that we don’t go into great dissemination
programs projected on our belieCs as what these costs can
be until these programs have a chance to prove themselves
out.
And in our anxieties, to quickly get information
back to the public and to those little city directors,
city officials out in Spokane or someplace else, so that
they have something to choose from; that we base it on
actual facts rather than our beliefs, Lanny.
You can see it’s a plead. It’s a true plead,
having gone through this so many times, and we need your
assistance and we need it very, very desperately out of
EPA.
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MR. HICKMAN: You aren’t going to make me
respond to that? That wasn’t a question.
I understand what you are saying. It’s
interesting, in the law it does talk about the fact that
we shall have the public participate with us in the
development of our information programs. I’m not quite
sure how we are supposed to do that and what it means.
But we will certainly try. We have always
tried to. No matter how we write the information, it’s
always going to be used to suit the ends and the intent
of whoever is trying to use it.
But we will certainly try to be as factual as
we can always and base it on facts and not wishes.
CHAIRMAN DE FALCO: Any other questions?
MR. SANJOUR: I am Bill Sanjour.
(Blank slide.)
And Mr. Hickman asked me to point out to you
that this picture on the screen is one of our landfills
in Buffalo, New York.
I’m going to be talking about hazardous wastes.
And here we are talking about industrial wastes for the
most part, not household garbage. And while perhaps only
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about five, ten or 15 percent of industrial wastes can be
considered hazardous industrial wastes, as a class it has
a much greater volume of waste than household garbage.
It is probably far more detrimental to the
environment, and yet it’s a subject that most people know
almost nothing about because it’s carried on, part of it,
by private companies behind fences. The people who are
the generators of it and the people who dispose of it are
all private corporations, for the most part, and it never
enters the public arena, so the public is almost corn—
pletely unaware of it until there are outbreaks of acci-
dents and well poisonings and the like. And they almost
never associate this with other such incidents that
happen from time to time.
This was one oi the chief interests of Congress
when they passed this law. The other was that in the
years of active environmental legislation, we have seen
that, through the Air Act and the Water Act through
cleaning up air and water, the materials that have been
coming out of the air and water are now being disposed of
on land.
Congress, by passing the Air Act and the Water
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Act did not ban the generation of these hazardous mater-
ials. It only banned the disposal of them in the water
or in the air without effecting a ban -— and in the
oceans —- without effecting a ban on land.
So they have greatly increased disposal on
land without any regulation. In many cases, Congress
found that, in fact, what it had done was to create a
worse environmental situation than it cured.
For this reason, then, the hazardous waste
provisions of the Solid Waste Act were passed. They
were passed, I might say, largely modeled after what had
been done in the State of California. Once again, the
State of California has been a leader in environmental
legislation in this country, and this Act is largely
patterned after the system that is in use right now in
the State of California.
Let me go through the provisions of the Act
with you.
(Slide No. 1.)
Section 3001 —— I t m dealing now with Subtitle
C. Section 3001 calls for a definition of hazardous
wastes within 18 months. That is, a criteria must be
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established by the Administrator, and then the Administra-
tor has a choice oif two methods for defining a hazardous
waste:
He can either define the characteristics of the
waste, or he can list specific wastes, or he could do
both, one or the other or both.
In defining these wastes, he is charged with
taking into account the toxicity, persistence and
degra.dability in nature, potential for accumulation in
human tissue -- I beg your pardon -— in tissue, and other
related factors, such as flammability, corrosivity and
other hazardous characteristics.
(Slide No. 2.)
Section 3002 of the Act calls for standards
for persons who generate hazardous wastes. And, as I
said before, these are largely manufacturing industries
we are talking about, a very high percent dealing with
the chemical companies.
In California, this would probably include a
lot of oil refineries, petrochemical.
These are also to be done in 18 months, and
the standards for generators would include requirements
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for record keeping, reporting, labeling and, most importani
of all, the manifest system.
This is the system that was developed here in
California to keep track of hazardous wastes under the
philosophythat wastes, hazardous wastes, have to be
treated as a commodity and that the biggest problems
occur with the disposal of these wastes in that
unscrupulous persons will just put them anywhere, just
openS up the petcock and the valve on a truck at night and
just dump them off by the roadside, and it would be
impossible to really monitor all the possible ways these
wastes could be disposed of.
And the best way to do it was to keep track of
it. Therefore, the generators are required to keep
track of what they generate. And when they ship these
wastes, they can only be shipped to an authorized facility
And this manifest system is the bookkeeping system for
keeping track of it.
And this was, as I say, developed here in
California.
(Slide No. 3.)
Section 3003 of the Act calls for a very similar
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33
standard for transporters of hazardous wastes. Again,
record keeping and labeling provisions and compliance
with the manifest system.
(Slide No. 4.)
Section 3004 of the Act are standards for
treaters, storers and disposers of hazardous wastes. And
these could be one of two classes of people: either the
generators themselves, if they dispose of these wastes
on their own facilities, or if they store them for any
length of time, would come under these provisions, or
commercial operations, commercial landfills or hazardous
waste storage treatment facilities who operate to serve a
great number of clients.
Here the regulations call for record keeping,
monitoring, inspection, location and design criteria,
maintenance of facilities, contingency plans for emergen—
des, for spills and the like.
I just heard that we just had a bad one last
week here in California, a nasty situation of generating
some poisonous gas. And it’s precisely this kind of
thing that there has to be plans for in the Act and also
provisions for ownership of the facility, for perpetual
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34
care of the facility, for financial responsibility of
people who operate such facilities.
Now, these are items that are explicitly called
for in the Act. In addition to these standards, there
is this statement in this section, and that is that the
Administrator may write standards as may be necessary to
protect human health and the environment, in addition to
these.
Now, that?s a very broad and vague statement.
Congress conceived, based on the legislative history of
standards, that would protect ground water chiefly.
Probably also surface water. Maybe also air. Perhaps
noise, odors. All of these could be included under that
statement.
But it’s a general —- It’s a discretionary
statement on the part of the law so that the Administrator
can essentially make his own decision about what will be
covered.
Now, this is where there can be a great deal of
public influence. It is just in such discretionary
areas that the public can have the greatest influence
because it is discretionary. If it were mandatory on the
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35
part of the Administrator, no matter how many letters he
got from the public, there is very little he could do
about it. But where it is discretionary, this is pre-
cisely where the public can have its greatest influence
by pointing out where the Administrator should exercise
discretionary authority.
(Slide No. 5.)
Now, the purpose of these standards are shown
in Section 3005 in the Act wherein regulations have to be
written to issue permits for those facilities which treat,
store and dispose of hazardous wastes, and the issuance of
those permits would have to depend on the standards in
the previous section.
Now, Congress conceived that this Act would be
administered by the states. And this permit-granting
facility, then, would be done by the states if the states
assumed the hazardous waste program. It ’s not mandatory
that they do so.
In the event that they do not assume the program,
then the permit—granting program would be handled by EPA
at the regional level.
There are, in addition to the permanent permits
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36
which have to be issued based on the standards of Section
3004, also provision for interim permits which can be
issued to facilities that do not meet those standards on
an interim basis. And basically the way the Act is
written, all they have to do is apply for a permit, and
they can continue in operation with no jeopardy until a
permanent permit is issued.
This is to basically prevent a big backlog of
permit granting. Usually permit-granting agencies cannot
overnight issue hun.dreds or thousands of permits. So
this is to provide for the interim period while they are
being issued.
And, to a large extent, the speed at which
permits are issued is a function of how much money is put
into the program, quite frankly. And if very little
money is put in, that means that permits will be issued
very slowly, which means that interim permits will be the
rule for a long time.
(Slide No. 6.)
Section 3006 of the Act is our guidelines
written by the federal goverrflent. These guidelines inform
the states on what constitutes an adequate state program.
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37
In order for a state to take over the program,
it must apply to EPA, and EPA will then review the state
program against the guidelines to see if the state program
is in keeping with the guidelines promulgated.
Now, again, there is a lot of discretionary
authority in this part of the Act.
In order to assume the program, what the Act
says is that the state program must be equivalent to the
federal program, consistent with other state programs,
and adequate enforcement with Subtitle C.
Now, words like “equivalent,” “consistent” and
“adequate” are vague terms and subject to a lot of dis—
cretionary interpretation on the part of the Administrator.
The phrase “consistent” is in there, I think,
in order to prevent some states from being pristine pure
to the point where they don’t allow any waste at all to be
disposed of in their state, so they end up being taken to
a dump in the nextdoor state, which is the kind of thing
that’s going on right now. And I think this is the kind
of thing that Congress wanted to prevent with the word
“consistent.”
“Equivalent” probably means that the standards
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cannot be much tougher or much easier, but how much is
much is a discretionary call.
In addition to approving state programs, Congres
provided provision for interim approval because there are
many states, including California, which have existing
hazardous waste programs which are not in line with
federal programs in some respects. So Congress provided
that, nevertheless, these states could have interim
authbrization so that their programs could continue with
the federal, as part of the federal program, over a period
of several years while the state and federal programs
came into line.
(Slide No. 7.)
Section 3010 is a requirement that those who
generate, treat, store, dispose or transport hazardous
wastes are required to notify EPA of that fact within
90 days after EPA publishes its definition of hazardous
wastes.
This part of the Act is really no requirement
on EPA. It’s a requirement on a lot of other people.
However, we recognize that most of the people who
generate, treat, store and transport hazardous wastes are
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39
not going to be reading the Federal Register and will not
know, in fact, that if they don’t get the notification
within 90 days, they could be fined, what is it, $25,000 a
day or something, so we are going to take great pains to
notify those people that they have to notify us.
(Slide No. 8.)
Section 3011 is for providing grant money to the
states to run the state hazardous waste programs.
Now, this is purely program grants. This is
not the construction of equipment or anything like that.
It’s basically to hire people and to train them to
administer the hazardous waste program.
These grants have to be allocated on a special
formula that Congress has in the Act, which is based on
the need, hazardous waste need of each state. And there
is authorized in the Act $25 million for this purpose.
However, it has not yet been appropriated.
(Blank slide.)
And this is another landfill in Minnesota.
Sorry about that.
Mr. Chairman?
CHAIRMAN DE FALCO: Any questions On this
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40
section? Please come forth to the microphone and
introduce yourself.
MS, JEAN SIRI (West Contra Costa Conservation
League): I have a great many questions on this subject,
as I have had at the state level.
I ’m not sure whether you are aware what the
cost of enforcement of this kind of program would be,
even Just in a state like California. If you consider
the complicated chemical formulas of the material that is
being dumped in the dumps and the chemist is required to
do the work of enforcement and the fact that there are as
many dumps privately owned and as much dumping on strange
manifests going on in a state like California, the cost
of enforcement is almost prohibitive unless there is
rather tremendous help from the federal government, it
seems to me.
The thing that I find missing in this Act, and
that I find missing in your presentation that was present
in a bulletin issued by the EPA, that was one of the more
superb bulletins you issued, was one on resource recovery
and hazardous waste. I have heard no mention of resource
recovery of hazardous wastes nor a proposal that it shall
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41
not be dumped in the ground and shall, indeed, be
recovered and used as stock for other hazardous waste
development. I found that lacking.
The other thing that I wonder about is public
ownership, the fact that it requires that much more
enforcement with private ownership, and with all this
business being private, might it not, indeed, be a much
cheaper way to go if it were publicly owned, the controls
and the treatment of hazardous waste.
Thank you.
MR. SANJOUR: Gee, I thought you would have a
lot more questions.
MS. SIRI: Later.
MR. SANJOUR: ResOurce recovery, Congress did
not put in any provision whatsoever for resource recovery
of hazardous wastes. They decided on a purely regulatory
program.
I could perhaps go into their motivations if
you are interested in why this was the case.
MS. SIRI: Go ahead.
MR. SANJOUR: Unlike garbage -- Okay. I will
go into it.
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Unlike garbage, which is generated by you and
me in very small units, you and I can’t take advantage of
economics of scale in your processing of garbage. We are
too small. It takes the garbage of hundreds of thousands
of people before it’s worthwhile for building a plant to
recover it. So the recovery of the resource of garbage
has to be handled by a government agency because the
individual generators are too small.
This is not the case with. industrial wastes.
If there is a buck .to be made out of industrial waste,
you can bet that the industries are making the buck.
MS. SIRI: Not necessarily.
MR. SANJOUR: I grant you you will find some
cases where it appears that they aren’t, and maybe there
even are some cases where they aren’t. Any time you look
reasonably close, even when you thought they weren’t, they
are. But even If they do have the capital at the present
time, they don’t have any reason to break loose w&th it
because they have other things to do with it.
MS. SIRI: You can dump it cheaper.
MR. SANJOUR: That’s right, exactly.
MS. SIRI: That isn’t necessarily what should be
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43
done by the government
MR. SANJOUR: Yes. Well, the attitude of
Congress was that the way to handle the problem was to
prevent the cheap, obscene, promiscuous dumping, and if
you can’t dump your waste at ten cents a gallon, then
maybe you will find something better to do with it
without having the government specifically telling people
what to do
Your other point about public ownership of dis—
posal sites, there is nothing in the Act about that,
either. In fact, the Act specifically provides that no
discrimination can be made against private ownership of
disposal sites
I
think you are aware that EPA did a study
several years ago of that question, and we concluded that
it really wasn’t a very efficient way to handle the
problem.
Now, that’s a rather long story in itself.
may have to go into it sooner or later, in any event,
because it’s getting so difficult to get land disposal
sites approved of by any local authorities. That may
come to that
We
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44
The only way we can get anything approved of
is to use the eminent domain process or to use federal
lands. We are getting very close to that point.
That would be done not because it is the
efficient thing to do or the cheaper thing to do. It’s
neither. It’s done because it is the only way to do it.
There is no way for local government to over-
come public opposition to these public disposal sites.
Yes, sir?
MR. J. P. HELLMAN (California Trucking
Association, Burlingame, California): We are here really
not to ask you a question except that what regulations
you propose for transporters of hazardous materials,
whether they be waste or otherwise, when you get to your
definition stage 18 months from now, we will know a little
better about what you are going to say. But it’s sort of
a plea. Please, fellows, go back to Washington, talk to
the Hazardous Materials Regulations Board and coincide
your regulations with theirs, because we have OMO — Now,
you people -- to live with. We have the CHP in
California and the gentleman from the Waste Management
Section of the Public Health Department of California.
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45
We can be had coming and going by all of these
agencies unless the regulations are uniform for transpor-
tation only.
What you do about the landfill, the producer,
that’s none of our business. But for transportation, we
sure would like to see you come up with uniform regula—
t ions.
And along those lines, if you are going home to
Washington, we would hope that you would give the Hazardou
Materials Board a call prior to Monday, March 14th, when
their Docket No. 145 closes on comments regarding
hazardous waste transportation.
Thank you.
MR. SANJOUR: I know this isn’t going to
satisfy you, but we have been talking to those people for
years, along with the Department of Transportation,
because we have been hearing from the truckers for years
and that we are going to be talking to those people, and
we have been talking for years and years.
If our regulations don’t show it, it isn’t
because we haven’t been communicating with them.
MR. HELLMAN Well, we don’t want to be pulled
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46
over by the side of the road by a CHP vehicle saying to
us, “You are not conforming to Title 49,” and go down to
the dump site and told we can’t unload because California
says we don’t have the right dump site or have you tell us
that we didn’t haul it in the right equipment.
MR. SANJOUR: We are trying.
MR. HELLMAN: So we are sort of up a tree unless
there is uniformity.
MR. SANJOUR: We are aware of your concern, and
we are trying to meet it.
MR. H. CLAY KELLOGG (Carson, California): I
just want to make one little statement early.
A couple of people have said here if we get
money from the government, it’s going to be less
expensive. I just don’t understand that. Just because
the government’s going to help California or help some-
body else, it’s not going to be less expensive. You are
still going to pay for it.
But my question is on defining what is that
hazardous waste, I think it would be a big mistake to
include well—processed composted sewage sludge, which
is one of our great natural resources, and stick it with
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47
all these monitoring things. It would be absolutely
impossible.
If there are problems with sewage sludge, they
can be solved. If it’s the pathogens or the odors,
that can be solved. That’s easy through composting.
Talk to the Los Angeles County Sanitation District.
If you have got problems with the heavy
metals, find out where they come from and shut off the
damned source. But I don’t think sewage sludge should be
listed as a hazardous product or waste, and my question
is are you going to —- are you planning on having that
listed as a hazardous waste?
MR.. SANJOUR: You have hit upon a very sensitive
spot, and there is certainly a lot of debate going on on
that issue in EPA right now, and sides are forming. And
I think those of you who have any comments on this subject
I strongly urge you to send them in because this is one
issue that’s going to be very much debated.
MR. KELLOGG: Some of us have done that for
years.
MR. SANJOUR: I happen to personally fall on
the other side of the issue than you do. So since you
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48
gave your arguments, let me give mine, and they are that
the sludge you are referring to is made up largely of
industrial wastes.
MR. KELLOGG: It doesn’t have to be.
MR. SANJOUR: In some communities in America,
the sewage sludge, the municipal sewage sludge, is 90 per-
cent industrial wastes.
Industries have two ways of disposing of their
waste. They carl send it out on a tank truck or they can
send it down the sewer. Okay. If they send it down the
sewer, it ends up in the sewer sludge.
Now, in many large cities in America, the
sewage sludge consists of 50, 60, 70 percent industrial
wastes, no different from the industrial wastes being
generated by industries except it has some household
waste mixed in with it.
MR. KELLOGG: All right. You have those same
industries filling up their tank trucks and disposing of
it on the landfill and not using the sewers as a dump
because they don’t belong there.
MR. SANJOUR: This Act gives no authority over
sewers. This Act gives authority over solid waste
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disposed of in dumps
CHAIRMAN DR FALCO: In response to your question
my friend is right. This Act doesn’t, but there are
several other acts that do, and they are being pursued,
and we would expect to see a good part of the industrial
waste problem in sewer sludge separated out as soon as
the so-called pre-treatment regulations go into effect,
which will exclude the dumping of those kinds of materials
down a sewer.
MR. KELLOGG: Good. I think that is good.
CHAIRMAN DE FALCO: There is a problem.
have to sort out the ultimate disposal places.
MR. KELLOGG: Fine. Fine
CHAIRMAN DE FALCO: And hopefully we will weave
together the various environmental pieces of legislation
and other legislation and provide the kind of answers you
are seeking.
MR. KELLOGG: Thank you. You can sell that
overseas like you do wheat, the deactivated sludge.
CHAIRMAN DE FALCO: I don’t know exactly how
we would market it, though.
Any other questions?
We
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I would like to, if we can, take about a ten-
minute stretch break, and then we will resume.
(Short recess. )
CHAIRMAN DE FALCO: May we reconvene, please,
ladies and gentlemen. Ladies and gentlemen, may we
reconvene, please.
We would like to now get into a review of the
land disposal elements. Lanny, if you will.
MR. HICKMAN: Would someone turn the slide
projector on, please? I can’t talk unless I am on the
screen.
CHAIRMAN DE FALCO: You can’t see what you are
talking about.
MR. HICKMAN: I can’t see what I am talking
about.
I think we should start right now on the basic
premise of the definitions that RCRA has. These are very
germane to the subject of land disposal, as well as the
rest of the law, and in the amendments to the law,
Congress makes the changes from definitions that were in
the 1965 and 1970 amendments.
In the old law of 1965 and 1970,
“disposal” was
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defined in more of the generic term of solid waste
management rather than actual disposal. In the amendments
of RCRA, “disposal” was redefined to basically really zero
in on the placement of solid waste on land
And it means that
The term ‘disposal’ means the discharge,
deposit, injection, dumping, spilling, leaking,
or placing of any solid waste or hazardous waste
into or on any land or water so that such solid
waste or hazardous waste or any constituent thereof
may enter the environment or be emitted into the
air or discharged into any waters, including
ground waters
And then Congress went ahead and defined
“open dump.” And they define that as follows.
“The term ‘open dump’ means a site for the
disposal of solid waste which is not a sanitary
landfill ——“
Which means that there is nothing in between,
Either it is or it isn’t, I guess
“—— which is not a sanitary landfill within the
meaning of Section 4004.”
folks.
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We are going to talk about 4004 in a minute,
so that is nothing to get excited about.
And then they said:
“The term ‘sanitary landfill’ means a facility
for the disposal of solid waste which meets the
criteria published under Section 4004.”
And then the last definition and the one that’s
most revealing, is the one for solid waste. And I am
going to tie all of these together so that you understand
what they mean.
And Congress, in its wisdom -— And only Congress
can do this -— ordained that a solid can be liquid. And
under the definition of solid waste now,. it can be liquid
as well as solid, and everything in between. And,
specifically:
“The term ‘solid waste’ means any garbage,
refuse, sludge from a waste treatment plant,
water supply treatment plant, or air pollution
control facility and other discarded material,
including solid, liquid, semisolid, or contained
gaseous material. . .“
So you tie all these defintions together, and
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what RCRA is saying is that any waste that goes on the
land, RCRA is concerned about, and it’s saying that the
sanitary landfill now has gone one step beyond, beyond
the classic and traditional land disposal site receiving
municipal sludge waste, compacting it and putting a daily
cover on it, because sanitary landfill could, by practice,
be a variety of land disposal practices receiving a host
of different types of waste from the solid to the liquid
and all the super goo that’s in between.
So that’s very important because what the law
is trying to do is, of course, close the ioop that was
created by other environmental laws, such as the Air
Pollution Control, Clean Air Act and the Federal Water
Pollution Control Act, which cleaned up the air and
cleaned up the water and generated a lot of other waste
materials, as well as to close the loop of practices of
our normal everyday life where we discharge a variety of
unwanted materials.
So it’s a very significant step forward in
environmental legislation.
(Slide No. 2.)
Okay. Section 4004, the magic section that is
tied to the definition of open dump and sanitary landfill,
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54
requires the Administrator of EPA within one year of the
passage, the enactment of RCRA, which will be October 21,
1977, must issue criteria for what is a sanitary landfill
and for an open dump, and must consider in those criteria
reasonable probability of adverse effect on various land
disposal practices.
And the law insinuates, although it doesn’t
specifically say so, that there would be types of sanitary
landfills and it requires that the state plans, ones
developed under Subtitle D, will see that all solid wastes
that are not recovered go to sanitary landfills.
(Slide No. 3.)
Now, keep remembering that solid waste is also
liquid now, so we must keep remembering that.
Okay. Section 4005, upgrading of open dumps.
The law requires EPA to, within 12 months after the
Administrator issues his criteria for what is a sanitary
landfill, to conduct an inventory of all the sites that
would fall within the definition of an “open dump” —-
And, by definition, an open dump is anything that’s not
a sanitary landfill —- and publish the list of all those
sites that he finds to fall within the category of an
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open dump.
Now, the minute that list is published, those
sites are, in effect, in violation of federal law. But,
unlike the hazardous waste provisions of RCRA where, if
the state fails or deems not to pick up the program, the
federal government must carry out a regulatory program in
hazardous wastes, there is no such provision for land
disposal, so that there doesn’t appear to be a lot of
incentive for anyone to -— for any state to get involved
in this because there is really no regulatory -- regu—
latory thrust other than the fact that these sites are
in violation of federal law, subject to the citizen suit
provisions of RCRA in the Federal Court system; and if
found on behalf of the plaintiff, court costs may be
returned to the plaintiff.
So there is some motivation. There is also
some motivation for the fact that very little money can
be provided through RCRA authorities to local government
to do anything unless the state is involved in taking
care of these sites.
And the state plan has to provide for a
mechanism over a five—year period after the list is
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56
published, not to exceed five years, for a schedule to
close or upgrade all those sites that are open dumps,
provide a schedule for that.
And by 1983, the law intends for the practice of
open dumping to cease in the United States.
(Slide No. 4.)
Now, under Section 1008 is authority for the
EPA to issue guidelines for various solid waste manage—
ment practices, resource conservation, hazardous waste
practices that might not be covered under some regulation,
land disposal practices or whatever, and it also requires
under Section 1008 to issue criteria for open dumping.
Now, these guidelines are merely guidance
documents, advisory documents, to state and local govern-
ment and industry to provide a mechanism for them to
improve their practices. They are mandatory on the
federal government. The federal government must comply
with guidelines issued under Section 1008.
Now, this is a carryover provision from the
1970 amendments which provided authority for EPA to write
guidelines, and we have issued some seven or eight
guidelines covering a spectrum of solid waste management
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57
practices from land disposal to beverage containers,
resource recovery facilities, collection of commercial,
municipal, institutional solid wastes.
And we now have -— we now have underway the
development of a revision of the existing guideline on
land disposal to accommodate the new provisions of RCRA.
We visualize this guideline as being a suppor-
tive document to the criteria issued under Subtitle D for
open dumps and sanitary landfills, as guidance on the best
way to improve practices, and this guideline will, as
it s developed over the period of time, over the years,
it will be a gradual progression.
We will look at various waste streams and
various types of land disposal practices and try to give
guidance on the best way to sight, design and construct
and operate those facilities.
And we will also develop — - At the present
time, we have under development sludge disposal guide-
lines that will perhaps deal with some of the problems
and concerns that have been raised already tonight about
what s the best way to take care of sludge.
Those are the major land disposal provisions of
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the law. And I realize it’s a brief overview, but the
thing you have to remember now is that sanitary landfill
is no longer sanitary landilhi as you conceive it as
being a place where solid waste goes that gets compacted
and covered, and solid waste is no longer just solid;
it’s also liquid and just sludges, and that there is only,
in theory, two types of land disposal practices as RCRA
views it: either an open dump or sanitary landfill.
Now, I will entertain questions.
MR. STANLEY JUDD (Standard Oil Company of
California): How would you envision, with this new
series of definitions, the treatment of things such as
land farming, land spreading and weathering practices
which are used today for disposal?
MR. HICKMAN: Well, land farming would fall
within the provisions of the land disposal requirements
of the law. And it could be a sanitary landfill by
definition if it fell within the criteria of what was
considered to be a sanitary landfill, something that
did not, in effect, pollute, cause health or environ-
mental problems.
It might also fall outside the disposal
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59
definition, into perhaps resource conservation provisions.
It’s hard to say.
It could fall within the definition of open
dump or sanitary landfill unless it’s a hazardous waste.
And then, of course, it will be dealt with under Subtitle
C rather than Subtitle D.
Subtitle C is the hazardous waste provisions.
Subtitle D is the land disposal provision and state and
loca.l development provisions in the law.
Every time we have this presentation, land
farming comes up. It’s a .
MS. SANDRA MATHIAS (Southern California
Association of Governments, Los Angeles, California): How
do you see the guidelines affecting the 208 process that’s
going on in Southern California and across the nation,
especially as it relates to the residual waste management
program?
MR. HICKMAN: We will talk a little bit more
about this when we talk about state and local program
development.
The interrelationship between 208 agencies and
other planning agencies, not all 208 agencies are doing
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residuals planning where, within the provisions of the
law, there is a requirement that state and local govern-
ment come together and reach an agreement on who is going
to do planning and who is going to do implementation.
At that point in time, the 208 agencies —— And
the law says be sure and consider the 208 agencies; also
the Governor and local elected officials have the oppor-
tunity to make that decision on who is going to do
residuals planning, at least from land disposal aspects,
whether it be done under 208 or under RCRA.
We have been cooperating with the 208 program fri
Washington and, in fact, in the ‘78 budget, part of the
208 budget is provided to our office to do some imple-
mentation work since, in effect, the 208 authority won’t
allow for implementation.
It will be basically within the criteria that
we will establish for identifying regional -- regional
areas for solid waste planning and subsequently imple-
mentation of regional programs will be to call the state
and the local elected officials as to who does that within
the criteria and the guidelines that we will issue.
I don’t think it really makes a difference to us
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as long as the state and local government is satisfied
and the job gets done.
But what’s got to be done is the state and the
locals have got to be happy with the way it’s going to
get done.
MR. RUSSELL PAPENHAUSEN (Supervisor, Plumas
County): I think I can be heard without going to the mike
there.
I am a Plumas County Supervisor, and I attended
a meeting of CECAC down in San Diego, and the big dis-
cussion in solid waste down there was the fact that you
are mandating these programs, and they want to know where
they could get millions of dollars to purchase lands to
do the very things that you want to do, because they have
created more garbage than everybody anticipated. It’s
about twice as much, and we are running out of land.
The discussion was that you mandated a program,
and who’s going to pay for it. They felt they didn’t
have the money to pay for these exorbitant prices that
they would have to pay for land.
MR. HICKMAN: I guess whether we mandated
something or not, you would still be generating solid
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waste. It would have to go somewhere.
We could talk about the financing. We will
talk about the financing programs the last part of the
presentation.
But throughout the law, there are limitations
to what the financial assistance available in the law
can be used for, and in almost all instances, it does not
include the purchase of land.
CHAIRMAN DE FALCO: Any other questions? Why
don’t we go on, then.
MR. HUMBER: I’m Nick Humber with the Resource
Recovery Division.
Concerning resource recovery, I’m sure your
first question is how much are we going to pay for it.
And at first, this is one of the first questions that
Congress struggled with.
First, they were considering a $200 million
grant program, which became a billion dollar loan
guarantee program, and that became a two billion dollar
loan guarantee program. And then the next step, of
course, was to have a zero dollar program, which is what
the law ended up with.
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It concluded that the funding at the federal
level was not necessary, but a program of providing
technical assistance, providing research and development,
would fit the bill.
Let’s talk about some of the more specific
provisions of this bill.
(Slide No. 1.)
We have listed here several sections of the
Act,’ and I’m sure you are dazzled by all the sections of —.
sections of the Act. But the point here is that in this
law, resource conservation and resource recovery have
become legitimized as a part of the definition of solid
waste management. And resource recovery had been in the
Act of 1970, but resource conservation had not been.
So these provisions are the guidelines,
technical assistance and many other sections of the Act,
which you can see.
(Slide No. 2.)
Under resource conservation, probably the most
important part in the Act has to do with the creation of
resource recovery and conservation panels. These are
somewhat misnamed.
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First, they are not confined to just resource
recovery and resource conservation.
And, secondly, they are not panels. So,
therefore, the title is not at all appropriate.
But unfortunately I didn’t have much to do with
that title. Usually in these public meetings, people
say, “How do you get appointed to this panel?” And
there really aren’t any panels, and there is nobody to do
any appointing.
So the idea is that they do encourage that
assistance and guidance to communities and states be given
not just by federal people, but by a wide range of people
with expertise and experience in resource recovery.
And this would include those who are foremost in
other cities and states who had experience in resource
recovery and solid waste management, private industry,
citizen groups, environmental groups, and the resource
recovery industry.
So, therefore, on these, quote, panels, when we
go to a city such as, let’s say, San Jose and San Jose
asked us for technical assistance, we would first
determine what area they were interested in, whether it
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had to do with landfill, collection or resource recovery,
and then we would bring together a group of people repre-
senting different interests, first of all somebody who
would establish a communication between the decision
makers in the city and the citizens.
That t s probably one of the most important
parts is getting that communication, and then the
different technical expertise: lawyers, investment
bankers, bond counsel, technical people, solid waste
management people and solid waste management people -—
and solid waste management people.
The Act does require that of the general
authorization or general appropriation that 20 percent of
it be used for this purpose. That does not mean 20 per-
cent of the total funding under the Act, but 20 percent
of the general authorization.
And I hope that we will go down through all
the funding authorizations at the end so that is clarified
(Slide No, 3.)
Going back to guidelines for plans, require-
ments, this is under state planning, state programs, and
I ’m just giving you information about the resource
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conservation and the resource recovery aspects.
The guidance that we give must reflect resource
recovery, resource conservation and present and existing
and new or future markets for recovered material.
And another very specific requirement is that
no state plan can include —— Well, let me restate that.
It is that the state plan shall reflect that
there are no prohibitions to communities within the
state signing 20—year contracts. In other words, some
states have provisions, for reasons other than solid
waste, I guess, to prevent any kind of illegal activities
or fraudulent activities on the part of municipal
officials of making commitments for 20 years.
The problem is that one cannot finance a
facility that has a 20—year life unless you have the
ability to finance it for 20 years. So, thus, this
requirement was put into the Act.
Several states have come upon this problem and
have changed their legislation in this area.
(Slide No. 4.)
On financial aid, this is for grant aid and
it ’s not grants for construction, but grants for planning
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and implementation in state programs. They are for
public agencies only.
Again, the emphasis is on implementation. We
don t t want to be funding planning studies that are
literally just that, just studies and not implementation.
We are trying, as we have in the past, to
provide funding for activities that lead to decisions on
resource recovery, either to issue an RFP or not to
entel’ into resource recovery. And this includes not only
resource recovery, but resource conservation, hazardous
waste management, sanitary landfill.
(Slide No. 5.)
The Act also requires that the federal govern-
ment set a good example for the rest of the country.
They realize that, although the federal government only
purchases about two percent of the purchases of materials
and goods in the country, that by setting guidelines that
require recycled material content of these purchases,
maybe state and local government - maybe even some
corporations -- will follow that lead and set similar
standards.
That, in two years, procuring agencies —— And
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this is primarily GSA and DSA, which is the DOD purchasing
agency, have requirements for purchasing products with
the highest percentage of recovered materials practical.
And this oniy includes items over $10,000.
That is, purchases over $10,000.
It extends this not only to the purchase of
goods, but users of fossil fuels. In other words,
boilers, federally operated boilers. And it, again,
requires the highest use of refuse as a fuel as possible,
as both technically and economically possible.
And, lastly, the vendors to the federal
government must certify the recovered material content of
the items they purchase.
(Slide No. 6.)
Now, as all laws, there is some issues that
weren’t clear on what to do and, therefore, Congress asked
for some studies, and some of these are quite important;
some are not as important.
The first is very important, the Resource
Conservation Committee. And this is a committee corn—
posed of the head of EPA and the secretaries of several -—
secretaries of several departments.
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it requires them to study several major issues
on resource conservation.
Other studies are listed here. Composition of
the waste stream, setting priorities of our research
efforts, looking at small-scale technologies for resource
recovery, new technologies and systems for source
separation, sludge and mining wastes.
(Slide No. 7.)
Those are the two—year studies, and here are
additional studies that we were required to report on in
three years.
(Slide No. 8.)
A bit more about the Resource Conservation
Committee.
There is a requirement for the committee to
complete its report in two years. As I said, this is
composed of the EPA Administrator as Chairman, and the
Secretaries of Interior, Treasury, Commerce and Labor,
as well as representatives from the Council on Environ-
mental Quality and 0MB.
(Slide No, 9,)
These are the major things that this committee
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will be studying.
See, there are several impediments to resource
recovery. In the past, one of the economic impediments
has been that landfills were really not operated at a
real cost to society. In other words, they weren’t
environmentally sound and, thus, we were subsidizing
inferior landfills.
On the other side, on the sale of materials
and .energy, there is still some discriminatory practices
that discriminate against resource recovery. Depletion
allowances and capital gains favor the purchase of
virgin materials. We are supposed to look at those and
other existing federal policies that discriminate against
the advancement of resource recovery.
In addition, we are supposed to look at new
subsidies or taxes or bounties that might be employed.
These include such ideas as a subsidy for each ton
recycled, a subsidy for each dollar investment in capital
equipment that might be used for facilities for resource
recovery.
And, lastly —- And, thirdly, charges on
products to reflect waste management costs.
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In addition, the committee is to look at the
feasibility of product regulations to reduce the amount of
waste generated.
(Slide No. 10.)
Under demonstrations and evaluations, again, it
runs the gamut across all solid waste management oppor—
tunities. The major change is that we can provide funds
to private organizations. That is, we can provide funds
directly to companies for research. In the past, we
had to fund a city or state, which then issued a contract
or a grant with a company for technology. And that’s
not a very efficient way of doing it. So the law was
changed to provide for that.
The funding can be up to 75 percent.
That’s the end of the discussion on resource
recovery and resource conservation. Do you have any
quest ions?
MR. CLARENCE KAUFMAN (County of San Diego):
Nick, you mentioned earlier in your discussion that the
Act prohibits, or will do something about laws prohibiting
long—term contracts.
As I read this, it only pertained to long—term
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contracts for the acquisition of waste to go into the
sites.
Of equal concern to us, if not even greater,
is state or local regulations prohibiting long-term
contracts for the sale of materials from resource recovery
facilities. Because we are unable to obtain private
financing, it’s very important that we be able to enter
into long-term contracts for the sale of these materials
and, in particular, energy.
MR. HUMBER: I think that provision -- I’m not
sure that it pertains to that area. That is an important
point. But it also does pertain to the contract for
waste disposal services. You were saying on the waste
stream, the whole waste disposal service, not just
acquiring the waste.
CHAIRMAN DE FALCO: Any other questions on
this section?
MS. ARIEL PARKINSON (Member, Berkeley Solid
Waste Management Commission, Berkeley, California): I am
a member of the Berkeley Solid Waste Management
Commission and some other state and regional committees.
Could you clarify that statement in the federal
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73
procurement table about the use of refuse for fuel as the
highest use? Does that —- That’s a rather ambiguous
statement.
MR. HUMBER: I will try to find the exact
statement in the law.
MS. PARKINSON: I will sit down, so I had
better say the other thing.
It seems to me it conflicts with the use of
refu se for its fiber content, or possibly for a fuel.
MR. HUMBER: Okay. It says under Section
6002(B), “Agencies that generate heat,” blah, blah, blah,
from fossil fuel in systems that have the technical
capability of using recovered material and recovered—
material-derived fuel as a primary or supplementary
fuel shall use such capability to the maximum extent
practicable.”
Granted, it’s very ambiguous, but the idea is
to encourage federal agencies to examine the feasibility
of using refuse as a fuel source.
In the other sections of the law, they ask
that the federal government purchases paper, that they
try to set the purchasing requirements that uses the
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greatest recycled fiber content.
So there is not a conflict here.
MS. PARKINSON: Well, I would suggest that the
summary statement is misleading as it’s unlike the clarity
of your other charts.
MR. HUMBER: Okay. Fine. Thank you.
MS. PARKINSON: It is not clear.
CHAIRMAN DE FALCO: Yes?
MS. JEAN SIRI: I would like to ask from here,
if possible.
I was Just curious to know why suddenly this
five percent of the purchase price for tire shredders.
Are there other proposals for tires besides just shredding
them?
MR. HUMBER: I think we all share your con-
fusion. We have no idea how that got in there. That’s
about the size of a sales tax, and I’m not sure why
anybody -— It’s quite a bit less than the cost for
applying for a federal grant and enduring all the
headaches. So. .
MS. SIRI: It’s weird.
MR. CLARENCE KAUFMAN: I still don’t understand
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completely on the long-term contract.
Some people are paying for sewage sludge, and
you mentioned, for example, if a private company was
buying sewage sludge from a district, is there any
limitation on the length of the contract there, because,
if there were, private industry wouldn’t even touch it witi
a ten-foot pole.
MR. HUMBER: Okay. The provision pertains to --
Let’s say that a community wanted to enter into a contract
with a company to provide the disposal service and
resource recovery. In other words, they would pay just
a disposal fee at the resource recovery facility, and
the facility would be privately operated. and could be
privately financed or publicly financed, depending on
whatever. But to get the financing, the system would
require a 20—year contract. In other words, no one
would buy the bonds, either the corporate bonds or public
bonds, unless there was a commitment to pay the disposal
fee by the community for 20 years.
Now, in some states, there is a prohibition for
communities entering into any kind of contract for pencils
erasers, anything, that runs for more than the length of
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the administration or for five years or for some other
period of time. And clearly one can’t finance a recovery
facility in five years.
MR. KAUFMAN: All right. Thank you.
MR. HICKMAN: You know, there are a lot of
states that do have legislative limitations on long—term
contracts that they won’t allow a local government to make
contractor commitments for longer than five years. And
so Congress, OU know, tried to be ecumenical and has
written this section to cover all those states, as well as
those who may be able to enter into long—term contracts
through their permissive legislation.
CHAIRMAN DE FALCO: Any other questions?
We will go on to the next section.
MR. HICKMAN We have reviewed now the RCRA
land disposal provisions and the resource recovery and
resource conservation provisions of RCRA. And the key
concept now within the law, of course, is to develop an
institutional mechanism to build the institutions
necessary to deliver these intents of Congress to state
and local government. So we are going to review the state
and local development authorities that are provided jn
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RCRA on how this is supposed to take place at the state
and local levels and what the federal government’s
involvement is from a financial as well as, as was
mentioned before, a technical assistance standpoint.
(Slide No. 1.)
Okay. Subtitle C, which is the hazardous
waste provisions, and Subtitle D, which is state and
regional plans and implementation, provides a mechanism
for the state to assume a dominant role in ensuring
proper solid waste management.
The RCRA provides a mechanism for local
government to meet planning and implementation, their
planning and implementation needs under •the law. it
requires EPA by April of ‘77, which is next month, to
issue guidelines for regional planning areas. And within
a year after that, guidelines for state solid waste
management programs.
Now, it’s not like we are all new kids On the
block. The 1965 authorities of the Solid Waste
Disposal Act include state planning grant authority.
The 1970 amendments continued that authority, as well as
expanded it to include some authorities for local and
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regional planning.
And, over the years, we have been developing,
providing assistance to state government to develop state
solid waste management plans. The last couple of years,
we have been encouraging the states to do three basic
things with the financial assistance they have received
from us under the Solid Waste Disposal Act.
1. Get ready to have a hazardous waste regu-
latory program.
2. Get ready to have a decent land disposal
regulatory program and
3. Get yourself arranged so that you can bring
resource conservation about in your state.
Notice how nicely all those things fit together
in this new law. That’s just amazing how these things
happen. And so we should not have a big problem moving
from where we are now into carrying out the finishing up
of our plans.
(Slide No. 2.)
Okay. RCRA requires certain minimum require-
ments for an acceptable state solid waste management plan.
Now, the planning provisions for both hazardous and
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non-hazardous waste are included in Subtitle D.
The law must provide a mechanism for —- requires
that the state and local government provide a mechanism
for shared responsibilities for planning and implementa—
tion. It says that the state shall, in concert with
local elected officials, come to an agreement on who is
going to do what.
Now, it doesn’t say what constitutes agreement,
and that will be an interesting exercise that we will all
have to go through here in the next few months as to what
constitutes agreement.
A plan must provide for the elimination of open
dumps and/or the institution of sanitary landfil1s; must
provide regulatory authority to see that open dumps are
eliminated and that sanitary landfills are maintained.
We have already talked about the contractual
freedom, you know, that they have got to set up a
mechanism to review any constraints that will not allow
local government to enter into long—term contracts to
provide solid waste resource recovery facilities, and
it says that all solid waste, therefore, shall, by, you
know, within the plan, either go to sanitary landfill or
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go through a resource conservation or recovery mechanism.
All right. Now, Section 3011 provides
financial assistance for the development and implementa-
tion of state hazardous waste management programs. And
as Bill’s already mentioned, it’s a $25 million authorized
level.
Now, that doesn’t mean an appropriated level.
That means authorized level, for both Fiscal Year 78 and
79. One can start to wonder. All these things are
supposed to be coming out, of course. Our fiscal year
starts in October, and the law was sort of passed in
October, also. And the hazardous waste guidelines for
state programs are supposed to be due out in 18 months,
which is half way through Fiscal Year 78, and the state
solid waste management planning guidelines are supposed to
be out in 18 months, which is mid year ‘78.
You start to wonder, “Well, how can we start to
give money out, or why is there money available in ‘78
for these things if we don’t even have the guidelines out
yet?”
But, you know, as I mentioned, we have been in
the planning business a long time. We expect many program
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to be able to move rapidly into this, and we intend to
be very, very flexible because the intent 01 ’ the law is
to help state and local government do the job of the RCRA.
And we are going to try to do the best we can to help
them get there.
Of course, the hazardous waste portion is
based on the problem areas of where the hazardous waste
problems are rather than on some other formula basis.
(Slide No. 3.)
Okay. Section 4008(a)(1) provides financial
assistance for the development and implementation of a
state plan. Now, the development of and implementation
of a state plan is a shared function between state and
local government.
We have had past experiences where a state
decided this state plan would be all the counties, and
all the counties would write a plan and they would put
them all together and staple them and say this is our
state plan. This is not our concept here. We are
going to watch very closely on how state and local
government come together to do this.
This is strictly a population formula, and it
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flows to the states, and being used by the state govern-
ment, and passed through the states to the local govern-
ment, regional and local level for planning and imple—
mentat ion.
Authorized level in ‘78 is $30 million, and
in ‘79 is $40 million.
(Slide No. 4.)
Section 4008(a)(2) is authorization for the
implementation of solid waste management programs. And
Nick mentioned this under his discussion of the resource
conservation.
This is a concept of bridging the gap between
the development of a plan and the actual implementation
where it takes some catalyzing force to get all the
people together to sign the contract that says we are
going to do it this way. They have got the nice plan,
but there is nobody to sell the plan. And through our
old demonstration grant authorities, we have had some
experience in this concept of trying to bridge this gap.
And this provision allows for this money to flow directly
to state and local government from EPA to do such things
as plans and feasibility studies, get consultants to help,
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do surveys, market studies, analysis, economic investi-
gations, technology assessments, and also to help local
government meet land disposal requirements and the guide-
lines that we might issue.
They have to comply with any guidelines that we
issue, if they receive a grant under this authority. This
is not a formula grant; this is based on need and on
relationships and agreements between EPA and the grantee.
- (Slide No. 5.)
Okay. There is provision for special community
grants. This authorizes two and a half million dollars
in each Fiscal Year 78 and 79 for communities with
populations less than 25,000, 75 percent of the solid
waste that they are treating and disposing of comes from
outside the community, and there are serious environmental
problems resulting from that.
This is a special provision, sort of like the
tire shredders, and we are not quite sure where it came
from, but it’s in there. And it’s not on a formula
basis. It’s a very small grant program, though, and it
also says only one such grant can be given in any single
state. Nobody is going to get rich with two and a half
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million dollars.
(Slide No. 6.)
Okay. Rural community assistance, Section
4009, authorizes $25 million for each Fisal Year 78 and
79. These are grants to assist rural communities to
meet the Land Disposal, Clean Air Act and Federal Water
Pollution Control requirements that might result in some
solid waste problem. It flows through the states down
to the rural communities.
These are communities with a population of
5,000 or less; county population of 10,000 or less, or
less than 20 persons per square mile.
And then there is another caveat in there about
the that the income of the residents in any of these
rural communities not being more than 125 percent above
the poverty level. It’s a very complicated formula, and
I don’t think we have yet figured out quite how the money
is going to flow.
MR. SANJOUR: To West Virginia.
MR. HICKMAN: That’s true, I guess.
This is again to help rural communities, and
only if there is no other regional system available that
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they can go into and there is no existing or planned
system that they can go into the future.
And it’s based on a rural population formula,
will pay for 75 percent of the cost of comp1ying with the
requirements of RCRA, but it will not allow for the
purchase of land.
If you add all these things up and put them
all together, they spell $181 million a year in ‘78
authorized levels for the law, and slightly more than
that in Fiscal Year 79.
None of this, of course, has been
yet because we are not into Fiscal Year 78.
in ‘77. But those are the basic financial
programs to help state and local government
requirements of RCRA.
It’s a mechanism to get maximum assumption of
the hazardous waste programs, the land disposal programs
and the resource conservation programs the law envisions
into the state government, down through the state
government to local government on a partnership basis.
That really sort of completes all of the —-
That covers the formal part of this
appropriated
We are still
assistance
meet the
All right.
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presentation, and I can talk about any questions you have
on this now.
MR. MARK HARRIS (City of Palo Alto): I just
want to ask a basic simple specific question.
Seeing these new guidelines and new plans that
are going to be developed, I’m concerned, are we in
California going to have to reinvent the wheel? In other
words, we have gone through this process. We are ready
to implement, if we can, and don’t want to be slowed down.
MR. HICKMAN: You are not unique in your
concern. Every state has, and every county and every
local government that’s in some process of completing
or implementing the solid waste plan has said, “Gee, are
we going to have to start all over again?”
RCRA does not intend for anyone to start over
again. We have to issue guidelines on what constitutes
a regional planning area for solid waste management. The
draft that I have seen, and the intent of the agency, is
to be very, very flexible and very, very liberal. We
have spent over $60 million in the last ten years with
the state government and local government developing
plans. We don’t intend to flush those down the tubes.
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We are going to try to take maximum advantage of
all the work that’s gone on in the past.
MR. HARRIS: Good. That’s what I wanted to hear
Thank you.
MR. LARRY BURCH (State of California Solid
Waste Management Board): The guidelines for the regional
planning areas that is due out in April of ‘77, can you
give us the status of that? Is it on schedule?
MR. HICKMAN: No.
MR. BURGH: When can we expect to see it?
MR. HICKMAN: I’m not trying to be flippant,
you know. It’s -- I think we have been through about
three drafts basically within the office. We have had
state government and some local government people sitting
with us on developing the drafts. I think that we
anticipate that sometime within the next two weeks a
draft will be made available for comment widely to every
state around the country, and then it will eventually, of
course, go into the Federal Register sometime in April.
But I would imagine that, if you have not seen one as a
state agency, you will be seeing one, a draft, within a
couple weeks.
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MR. BURCH Okay.
MR. HICKMAN: I will have to say that the guys
are doing a good job.
MR. BURCH: I’m prepared to make a statement foi
our Board sometime tonight about what we are planning to
do under RCRA. Whenever that is appropriate, let me
know.
CHAIRMAN DE FALCO: Any other questions on this
sect ion?
MS. SANDRA MATHIAS: You mentioned the total
funding of $181 million for Fiscal 78. How much of that
do you figure will actually be available and especially
for planning stages, state, regional and local planning?
MR. HICKMAN: I will review the ‘78 budget
request as it sets over in the Congress now. The
existing budget request now is for the general authoriza-
tion areas, for those areas not including the planning,
financial assistance program under Subtitle C and SubtitlE
D, the budget request is $42.5 million.
Add on to that $12 million, which is requested
under Subtitle D for purposes of developing and imple-
menting state plans, and another $5 million which is
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allocated out of 208 funds for purposes of implementation
grants for solid waste management, and that comes up to
around a swelling total of $41.5 million, I believe.
There is no money being —— There is no money
in the current budget request for rural community
assistance. There is none for the implementation grant
authorities of Subtitle D. There is no request in the
current budget for Subtitle state hazardous waste
prog ram development grants. There is no request for
training grants, which is another authorization level.
There is none for tire shredders. There is none for
special communities in the current budget request.
MR. SANJOT-JR: May I say a word on that.
This is one area where the public can be
particularly influential, in the area of budget requests.
Just a word here of explanation that the Solid Waste
Act, RCRA, was not an administration bill. It was not.
The initiative for it did not come from the administra-
tion; It came from Congress
And so that these authorizations - these
budget requests are coming from the administration.
Congress itself hasn’t spoken yet. We haven’t heard what
D
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the opinion of Congress on this subject is. And we have
yet to hear from them.
And if you have any interest in the subject, I
suggest you write to your Congressman.
Thank you.
MR. RUSSELL PAPENHAUSEN (Supervisor, Plumas
County): I noticed there was something about sludge there,
and I know that EPA has grants for sewer plants. Now,
you are saying we go into a grant system to take care of
the sludge that comes out of the plants. Is that what I
understood?
MR. HICKMAN: No. I don’t know where you saw
the word “sludge” particularly, on whichpart of the
presentation?
MR. PAPENHAUSEN I thought I saw it in part of
that.
MR. HICKMAN: Was it in mine? Heavens, I never
talk about sludge.
MR. PAPENHAUSEN Well, there is a problem
getting rid of it.
MR. HICKMAN: There was no specific financing
program within the law just dealing with sludge.
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MR. PAPENHAUSEN: Well, the law said that we
have to take care of that, and one of them was sludge.
MR. HICKMAN: Right. But there is no construe—
tion grant program in this law similar to what’s in the
Water Act, there for the construction of waste treatment,
wastewater treatment facilities.
MR. PAPENHAUSEN: Well, I’m just thinking that
all of a sudden there will be some laws banning getting
rid bf the sludge. I know there is some quite extensive
studies going on about it.
In other words, if we are -— I know that in
my particular district, I have applied for an EPA grant
for the Town of Taylorsville, and we are thinking of a
mechanical plant that’s going to displace sludge. And
if we are going to get into a sludge problem, I would
sure like to know it now.
MR. HICKMAN: If you are going to build a
sewage treatment plant, you are going to have sludge.
MR. PAPENHAUSEN: That’s right.
MR. HICKMAN: And whether this law is present
or not has nothing to do with the problem you face with
getting rid of the sludge. But this law does not provide
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construction grant funds for sludge disposal facilities.
MR. SANJOUR: One of the reasons this law was
passed is because Congress wanted people who were building
sewage treatment plants and generating sludge to think
about what they were going to do with their sludge.
MR. PAPENHAUSEN That’s what I am gathering.
MR. SANJOUR That’s part of the process of
building a sewage treatment plant.
MR. HICKMAN: Paul, I guess within a construc-
tion grant program, they can build within the grant
program a good deal of sludge handling and treatment
processes, can’t they, within the construction grant
program up to a certain point?
CHAIRMAN DE FALCO: The water pollution
control construction grant program provides for the
treatment of the sewage and the disposal of the solid
remaining material, or the sludge, in a proper and
appropriate fashion. And there is sufficient f1e j-
bility in the construction grant program to accommodate
those issues.
I think what’s raised here, what the Congress
tried to put on the table was the fact that all too often
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the design of sludge treatment facilities stopped at the
cleaning up of the water, and the disposa.l of sludge was
considered not a part of the process. And what we are
trying to say here is that you have to look at the ultimat
residual management problem that you create as part of
your sewage disposal program.
MR. PAPENHAUSEN: The alpha and the omega.
CHAIRMAN DE FALCO: The alpha and the omega.
MR. HICKMAN: Right on. The alpha and the
omega.
CHAIRMAN DE FALCO Are there any other
questions now in hindsight having gone through the whole
process that anyone wants to raise? Yes?
MS. ARIEL PARKINSON: I notice in Section
8003(g) there is a statement about EPA and lobbying. And
I also read in the National Solid Waste Report that EPA
has been in trouble for its statements on container
reuse legislation in New England.
It seems to me that anybody who goes to a
public hearing and makes a statement is called a lobbyist.
And this disturbs me about the way in which EPA will be
able to present the immensely valuable research that it’s
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done in the proper forum.
MR. HUMBER: Yes. Whenever we speak out on
the subject, we get in trouble. That’s all that meant
because —— In other words, it was an attempt to suppress
the truth and to write that into the legislation, but
that wasn’t done. The policy outlined in the law is
exactly what we have been doing for the last two and a
half years. In other words, we have been testifying at
state hearings on beverage container legislation and
explaining what a national bill would do, what the
implications would mean for litter, the economic impli-
cations, energy and the environment.
And we will continue to do that and we will
continue to get in trouble with industry, but we won’t
be violating the law nor the spirit of the law.
MS. PARKINSON: Thank you.
CHAIRMAN DE FALCO: Yes?
MR. RONALD SCHWEGLER: I would like to just talk
right from here.
In California —— And I cannot speak for any of
the other states -- we have local laws by the states that
you cannot implement a solid waste disposal facility,
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either a transfer station or landfill facility, without
the local approval of the city. So under the mandates of
the state, all the counties throughout the state are
attempting to have state solid waste management master
plans, yet the plan Is as good as -- If you take a county
as complicated as —- 78 cities —— as Los Angeles, where
you have 78 individual jurisdictions saying, “Not in my
community you shall not locate,” to the point where what
happens when eventually 78 cities say “not here,” and
the state does not have the authority to mandate that they
implement this program, and you —- as Lanny indicated
earlier, they have no jurisdiction as in the hazardous
waste portion of the law. How are we ever going to
resolve this problem?
MR. HICKMAN: Slowly.
Well, it’s going to have to go somewhere sooner
or later, and the law is not —— the federal government
can’t come out and solve all the problems. They shouldn’t
even try to in the first place. You know, it’s got to
be dealt with at the state and local level. And sooner
or later rational minds must prevail to find solutions.
MR. SCHWEGLER: You haven’t been In the garbage
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business long enough, Lanny.
MR. HICKMAN: My point is I guarantee that some
dude coming out of Washington on a white horse doesn’t
have any better chance of solving it than you guys do at
the local level. There is just no way. It’s not the
intent of RCRA to usurp or take over the rightful
responsibility of the state and local government to plan
and implement solid waste management programs. It s
really a supportive —- We are in a supportive role. We
can provide information. We can, you know, speak to the
issue and try to show what is rational and what has to be
done from a national perspective, but we can’t make a
community change its zoning patterns any more than anybody
else can. It isn’t proper for us to do that.
MR. SCHWEGLER: If the states do not come up
with a total wide compliance with a state solid waste
management plan, then they are not going to be eligible
for federal funding. Is that the stick that we will
hold over them?
MR. HICKMAN: That t s true.
MR. SANJOUR: May I say something?
CHAIRMAN DE FALCO: Yes.
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MR. SANJOUR: This subject, of course, comes
up at every meeting. Just more or less the question is
what is the now that the federal government has passed
this law, what is the federal government going to do to
create land disposal sites. And just like Lanny., I
share Lanny’s frustration.
Unlike other federal laws, water pollution
law or air pollution law, which you can claim the law
created a waste problem, this law creates no wastes. All
the wastes that this law deals with are being generated
and they are going somewhere.
So r guess as a federal official, I really kind
of am frustrated when people ask me what are you going to
do to create land disposal sites. I come back and ask
you where is it going now.
MR. SCHWEGLER: I don’t think that’s fair at
all. You have now the power of the federal government to
close dumps, and as they should be, but where is the
assistance to get something open?
MR. SANJOUR: We have the power to define what
is or isn’t adequate disposal. That’s the power we have.
MR. SCHWEGLER: I mean get down to the local
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level and try to open a sanitary landfill.
MR. SANJOUR: No. I do know. But what do you
expect the federal government to do about it? What is
the federal government’s role in getting local citizens
to approve of sites in their area?
I don’t know the answer to your question,
frankly.
MR. SCHWEGLER: Neither do I.
CHAIRMAN DE FALCO: Let me try a little to
answer your question.
The statute puts together a total process. It
is not a matter now of a disposal site by itself. It
requires government, state and local, to get involved
from the very beginning precepts of the issue. It
requires the public to be educated and be brought into
the process.
We should not be confronting the issue at the
tail end of the problem, the opening of the site but,
rather establishing the need in the first place, the
relative alternatives that are available to the public
and to the government involved.
it establishes a total process. And I think if
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we were to pursue this process, we would get better
receptivity from the public out there. I don’t think we
have pursued it in the past. I think we have foreclosed
many of the actions and created the confrontation without
public knowledge of what was going on until it was thrust
upon them.
MR. RUSSELL PAPENHAUSEN (Supervisor, Plumas
County): I would like to make a statement on public lands,
trying to get them into county government, but some way or
another, there is some laws that I am told by the Bureau
of Land Reclamation and the U.S. Forest Service that they
will not knowingly give us a piece of land to put a solid
waste dump on. They will lease it to us on a short—term
lease so that they have complete handle On it, and the
restrictions that they put on it are so severe that for a
small county -— We are a large county area-wide, but small
in population - — the expenses are tremendous.
We have one right now they want us to put five
wells on, 150—feet deep, to protect the water that’s
going down to China or Japan or someplace, and the costs
are just so tremendous.
In fact, we have got three lawsuits against us
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right now by the taxpayers because we are trying to
implement what the state told us to do. And the costs
keep mounting and mounting.
And that’s why I asked the first question: is
there any way to help get us a piece of land?
I tried to get a piece close to my community so
we didn’t have to haul it for 25 miles. That was one of
the lawsuits.
Well, when I tried to get it within a close
proximity, then you never saw the biggest fuss. The
town hail was absolutely packed. Nobody wanted garbage
packed in front of their house. They didn’t even want to
see it.
So laws, as this gentleman mentioned, too, that
we have this problem and I really don’t know the answer.
But I was —— the thing that I can’t understand is why the
federal government, if they have got some land, why
wouldn’t they let us trade or something to get possession
of it so that we could do something. But they don’t
trust us. That’s what we assume.
CHAIRMAN DE FALCO: Do you want to speak to
that?
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MR. HICKMAN: The Bureau of Land Management, as
I understand what they perceive their mission to be is
they are holding the national ownership of land in trust
for all citizens and are not allowed under their laws to
sell that land. They do hold it in trust. They can
only lease it since their charter —-
MR. PAPENHAUSEN: They have just made a law
where they can do it for recreation purposes, though.
MR. HICKMAN: They can sell it?
MR. PAPENHAUSEN:
MR. HICKMAN: Maybe you should get a law so they
can sell it for land disposal sites, too, I guess.
I wasn’t aware that they had that, but I do know
that that’s the way they view their mission: they hold
the land in trust for the entire population of the
country.
But as far as land disposal practices on any
leased piece of property you have that’s on the federal
establishment, that land disposal practice has to be in
conformance with the guidelines that we have issued.
Now, that’s the law.
MR. PAPENHAUSEN:
Yes
Well, then, we hired private
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geologists to do a plan that cost something like $7,000,
and then the Forest Service had their geologist, so they
are fighting. They don’t agree with themselves.
So we are at a standstill. We don’t know.
are liable to end up with a lawsuit on that now because
one geologist says the other guy doesn’t know what he is
doing.
We
CHAIRMAN DE FALCO: I can only suggest to you
that’your problem is going to become more difficult in the
next few years because this statute makes the federal
agencies subject to not only the federal regulations, but
also the state regulations. So they are going to be much
more stringent than they have in the past, and they are
going to create some problems.
But in terms of the purpose, the purpose is to,
in fact, protect the public and the public health. And
I think we have to keep that in mind. And just because
it’s federal land doesn’t mean there isn’t a need to
protect the public health on federal land, just as there
is in your community, and no one wants that garbage
dumped nextdoor. The same can be said of federal lands.
We have another question? Yes,. Jean?
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MS. JEAN SIRI: It really isn’t a question,
except insofar as these questions have dealt just with
dumps and, you know, where are we going to put all this
junk. And it seems none of OU up there have given a
response that if you really get into resource recovery,
you may not need as many dumps.
For example, Berkeley now is disposing of 30 per•
cent of its waste not in a dump and assumes that the per-
centage will go up. And with a little concentrated
effort, it seems to me that we could get into something
more advanced than just putting it in the ground.
MR. HUMBER That’s true. But even with a
hundred percent recovery from household refuse, which is
impossible, at least in the foreseeable future, being
20 years or so, there still are other wastes that must be
disposed of. Construction wastes, demolition wastes ——
MS. SIRI: That’s true.
MR. HUMBER: -- still need site fill. There
would still be that problem.
There is also a problem of siting a resource
recovery facility. There was a fairly sound plan for
St. Louis that was granted because they couldn’t site a
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transfer station. They just couldn’t site a transfer
station, which was in an industrial area. There was not
a home within a mile of that area.
So there will continue to be siting problems on
all dimensions of solid waste management.
CHAIRMAN DE FALCO: Yes?
MR. RUSSELL PAPENHAUSEN: On that recycled
bit again, I had to go to the Federal Register to find
out —- I’m trying to get a piece of land from the U.S.
Forest Service. So when I’m reading the Federal Register,
I found out that you can only store recyclable, I guess,
merchandise for, I think it was, either 30 or 90 days.
So the Forest Service says, “Hey, look. After
so many days this cannot be here. It’s got to be gotten
rid of.”
So that threw a stumbling block when we wanted
to put in some way to store this stuff so we could get a
truckload or whatever to take it away or sell it or
dispose of it, see.
So that’s another problem we have got.
CHAIRMAN DE FALCO: I have indications from
six people that they would like to •present short
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statements. I would like to call on them in order now.
Would you please limit your statement to five
minutes. We will take the full statement if you will
submit it to us and include it in the record in its
entirety.
Hi Kellogg?
MR. KELLOGG: I will send my statement to you
in the next two weeks.
The main point I wanted to get across is that
we have been in marketing sewage sludge for 52 years
successfully in Los Angeles County, and it can be done
elsewhere. But we -- the kind of help we need is a
positive attitude and not one of negative. We cannot
live with people saying, “I have no proof it is not
harmful, therefore. .
Now, as far as -- I have no argument with the
EPA because we need them just like we needed OSHA, because
of abuses that have taken place here and there.
But the sanitation districts I think should be
responsible for the compostingof the materials and having
the odor problems eliminated and the pathogens, etc.
That’s the only way to do it.
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Sanitation districts should not be allowed to
go ahead and remove the sludge from the water; then turn
around and have some guy, some trucker somewhere be
willing to take it for X dollars a ton and dispose of it,
because what happens, if it isn’t properly processed —-
And here we have been, as I say, over 50 years success-
fully -- In fact, we have it on allocation in Los Angeles
County. He goes out and maybe it is processed properly,
SO out comes an article in the paper that salmonella is
found in sewage sludge. So that’s a reflection on us,
and it doesn’t exist with Los Angeles Sanitation District
sludge because they process it properly.
Now, back to the hazardous waste. I don’t even
like to call it a hazardous waste. That’s a negative
attitude. It shouldn’t be listed as a hazardous waste,
and those problems that many people feel exist, like on
the heavy metals, we should make a point to see they
aren’t in the sludge. After that’s done, then private
industry in a lot of areas can go ahead with positive
help from you people.
And that’s extremely important. Extremely
important. And, like I said earlier, the -- those three
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problems can be solved, and you could look at this as a
natural resource, which it is, because in 20 to 50 years,
that’s the only place you have got to go, and you just as
well start now.
CHAIRMAN DE FALCO: Thank you.
Mr. Ronald Schwegler?
MR. SCJ{WEGLER: Pass.
CHAIRMAN DE FALCO: Barbara Vincent?
MS. BARBARA VINCENT 1 didn’t want to speak.
Thank you.
CHAIRMAN DE FALCO Jean Sin?
MS. JEAN SIRI: I think I have spoken my share.
Thank you.
CHAIRMAN DE FALCO: Fine.
Larry Burch?
MR. LARRY BURCH: Mr. De Falco, I just wanted to
summarize our agency’s comments very briefly tonight. We
will prepare a written statement and supply this to you.
Al Marino, the Executive Officer, has been in
contact, of course, with the EPA staff at headquarters,
and we have had several EPA regional briefings here.
Basically our agency is pleased to see the new federal
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legislation. It strengthens both the solid waste program
at the federal level and at the state and local level.
We do have some reservations, though, about some
of the methods of implementing this law and, of course,
the finances of this legislation.
The state agencies are now actively looking at
the law trying to figure out what it’s going to do to
California citizens. We are somewhat optimistic that it’s
going to cause a lot of improvements and not be detri-
mental.
We basically —— I’m speaking for the State
Solid Waste Management Board, but also carrying a message
from the State Health Department. Our two agencies are
attempting to correlate our two programs and will be
delivering a single state plan to the federal government.
We are not going to come out with two state plans from
California.
We are going to start with the county solid
waste management plans; also the state program plan that
was developed in 1970, and the policies and standards and
resource recovery program that has been adopted by our
Board in 1974. We will use these as a framework of
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preparing the state plan under RCRA.
We certainly don’t want to either obsolete or
restudy the work that’s been done on the county plans.
There’s been a lot of discussion about the county solid
waste management plans in California, that they aren’t
as perfect as some people thought they would be. We
think that a lot of this has to do with certain oversights
that were in SB 5, California’s enabling law for county
plans. We are attempting to correct some of those
oversights this year with new legislation.
We also think that some of these delays were
due to lack of proper funding at the local level, and
even at the state level. And we see that this lack of
adequate funding in RCRA may cause the same type of thing
to occur in the nation.
We are planning to coordinate our existing
implementation programs with the RCRA program. We are not
just waiting to start our program after we have got the
state plan done.
You should know that AB 2439 was adopted this
Summer by the Legislature and signed by Governor Brown.
This starts us now into one of those phases. That’s
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enforcement of conventional solid waste management
practices.
We have had the hazardous waste program for
several years, and we are fully hopeful that the State
Health Department’s program can be certified as being
compatible with RCRA.
We have another major bill that was passed this
last Summer, and that’s SB 1395. That enters us into a
demonstration program of energy recovery from solid wastes,
and that hopefully can be combined in with the new state
plan.
Some just miscellaneous comments.
We, of course, in California are quite a
diverse state, from big cities to very small counties.
We are hopeful that the landfill standards can be broad,
especially the daily covered type provisions. Perhaps
Alpine County does ot have to have an everyday cover.
We concur that there are financial hardships in
rural counties, and we are glad to see that there is some
money at least authorized in the bill, but sorry to see
there is not more appropriated at this time.
We are concerned that the late deadline for the
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state plan guidelines may impact on the preparation of our
plan. At this moment, we are attempting to put together
an interim document that may be finished by the end of
this Summer so that we can at least get the hazardous
waste programs certified and start to set the framework
up for receipt of monies and channeling that into the
local counties starting next Fall.
We will be interested in many of the special
studies that were listed in the Act. These are programs
that are, of course, of interest to the California
citizens, policy makers, and we do not want to have to
duplicate those.
Basically, it comes down to money. We have
looked at the present appropriations that are in President
Carter’s program. We feel that that is not enough
money. We would like to get on the bandwagon to try to
get some more support. And, of course, I think you
will see our agency get a little bit more involved again.
We in California, just the State Solid Waste
Management Board, over the last two years have plowed
$725,000 just into four areas of the state for resource
recovery planning. That’s just barely the tip of the
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iceberg for attempting to sidetrack that kind of wastes
from landfills.
Basically, 99 percent of California t s waste
goes right into the landfill every day.
Next year we are planning to expend over
$1.4 million just here in the Bay Area to do additional
resource recovery and landfill planning studies.
I just want to leave the message that the
State Solid Waste Management Board fully intends to move
ahead as the leading agency in California to help
implement RCRA, and that we are confident that we are
going to have a good program here in the future.
Thank you.
CHAIRMAN DE FALCO: Thank you.
Daniel A. Cotton?
MR. DANIEL A.COTTON (Sonoma County): I have
some responses here to that issues for discussion that
was in the packet.
The EPA should encourage local environmental
groups involved in recycling education by making grants
available to them for expanding and upgrading their
programs. There is a crucial need for this funding
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because most local recycling agencies do not generate
enough revenue to support extensive education programs
needed to reach the community at large. If funds were
made available by EPA for local recycling entities to
develop community—wide education programs, there would be
a dramatic increase in public participation in resource
recovery.
Without such help, the EPA’s hope of widespread
participation in solid waste planning will not materializ
With it, local groUps will come up with many innovative
education schemes designed to be effective in their
communities. Thus, the EPA, by supporting public
education at the local level, will receive return in:
1. Increased local participation and
2. New ideas that will be converted to
regional, national and —— regional, state and national
education programs.
As far as manpower development, the EPA’s
manpower development activity should be directed towards
creating jobs at the local community level. Being an
environmentally conscientious bureaucracy, the local
jobs EPA develops should be related to environmentally
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appropriate technologies.
The EPA can accomplish this by supporting local
recycling agencies with small developmental grants, small
program grants. A small program development grant can
provide work experience, jobs, plus create or expand
ongoing resource recovery programs without large invest-
ment.
The EPA could identify established recycling
programs throughout the country and give them first
consideration for this grant money, thus assuring
successful use of most of this money granted.
However, the EPA should also help start new
innovative programs where they have not been tried
before to expand recycling and to give new ideas a chance.
Manpower development at the managerial and
operations level can be accomplished by the aforementioned
grant support, grant money for supporting expanded
recycling programs while giving much needed work
experience to the recipients. The EPA would then be
able to identify capable managers and operations experts
by reviewing the success or failure of each grant or
project.
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Resource conservation and recovery issues.
Resource conservation should play a central
role in any solid waste management program. If waste
generation can be reduced by conservation measures, we
will be well ahead of the game.
A series of short-range activities within a
long—range program. The easiest and most environmentally
hazardous waste should be considered first with the
rest following in order of importance. The Resource
Conservation Panel should first identify the materials
which are in crucial need of conservation and then do
the planning work necessary to achieve the conservation.
The panel should be entirely comprehensive in their
identification and planning approaches. We are past
the point where material can be left out, any material
can be left out of the conservation program, and conserve
all materials to ensure the economic health of our
resource—dependent industry.
The Panel’s long—range goal should be to
completely eliminate disposal of reusable materials.
This goal must be set on a realistic timeframe. It
takes a great deal of social, political and economic
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change.
Local programs have -— Local programs should
have complete freedom to accomplish the policy goals
set by state and national agencies. EPA should not
interfere with local programs unless they blatantly
disregard the law.
Recognition for the unique situations must be
fixed for each locality. No two local programs will or
should be alike.
The mandatory regulations —— mandatory regula-
tions should not -- should be avoided and should only be
used as a measure of last resort.
Economic incentives should be used first
whenever possible, extending them to the general public
as well as to industry.
As can be seen from the success of the
aluminum recycling programs, offering economic incentives
to the general public can be successful. Federal, state
and local governments should be leaders in prime con-
servation measures. They should also be leaders in
developing markets for recycled goods by purchasing
recycled products.
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It is important that the government set a good
example in providing the ground for recycling programs,
to be a provingground for recycling programs.
There is a crucial need for leadership in
changing the established practices of our society’s
wasteful use of natural resources.
I was quite impressed by some of the things
it seemed like the federal government is looking to, some
of the issues that I stated here, but I’m concerned
being from a small community that the EPA is not looking
on the small —— on a small enough scale, looking towards
appropriate technologies in recycling, source separation,
and mostly looking towards the large plans, sinking
forty, eighty, hundreds of millions of dollars into
these plans, and most of the ones that have been tried
out so far haven’t been too successful.
Source separation is immediately implementable,
and with small amounts of grant money support at a wide
base, I’m sure that could prove to be much more
successful over the next ten to 20 years than the large
resources plans.
Thank you.
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CHAIRMAN DE FALCO: Thank you.
Are there any other statements?
I would like to make an observation or two
before we bring the meeting to a close.
The process we are going through tonight is
essentially a discussion—briefing meeting of the public.
And by “the public,” we mean the general public, the
vested publics, the special interests, state and local
governments. This is preliminary to our getting
involved in the regulatory process, the spelling out or
defining the interpretation of the statute in a series
of regulations, the first of which I think is due in
April.
MR. HICKMAN: Yes.
CHAIRMAN DE FALCO: I would ask that each and
every one of you representing specific interests go back
to your interest groups and keep a weather eye peeled on
the process.
The statute was developed by the Congress. It
is being interpreted by EPA with public involvement. We
would prefer that your public involvement be in the
formative stages of the process, and as these regulations
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are posted in the Federal Register, they are normally
proposed. There are public hearings held. There are
comments received, reviewed before a final regulation is
actually processed and placed on the books.
That is the place for involvement on the part
of the public so we can, in fact, have a meaningful
interpretation of the statute.
Now, you have heard the statute interpreted by
people who have been involved in this program for a number
of years. That doesn’t make them any more expert in the
interpretation of the work of the Congress than you are
as individual citizens. Yes, they do have technical
competence, but there are implications in the statute
vis-a--vis the citizenry of this country and their desires
as expressed through their Congress. Your role is to
make sure that our interpretations meet some of your
interpretations at least half way.
I would prefer frankly as a Regional Adminis-
trator -— And I think the Administrator of the agency
would prefer -— that we reconcile these differences
before we finalize regulations rather than having the
issues resolved in courts of law after the fact, and
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sometimes on a very constrained view.
We have had an experience in the implementation
of the Air Act and the Water Act where we have wound up
implementing court stipulations, sometimes much more
constrained and less conducive to effective administra-
tion than if we had had a better understanding of the
public’s attitude toward the Congressional mandate.
So I solicit your interest and your involvement
beyo’nd tonight’s meeting to pursue this process. This
statute in particular, although it may be a federal
statute, it’s been pointed out it really spells out a
state—local governmental process. And to be meaningful,
you have got to be involved in the development of that
process. So I would ask your assistance by pursuing
this as we go through the process.
The transcript for the session will be held
open until March 25th. If you have any additional
comments to write into the record, would you please
provide them to the EPA office here in San Franicsco on
or before March 25, and we will be sure that they are
included in the record.
If there aren’t any other comments or any other
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issues, I would like to thank you all for coming and
bring the session to a close.
There will be a repeat of this program tomorrow
morning. It will be essentially the same program of
presentations, so there is no need for a duplication on
your part.
Thank you very much.
(Whereupon the session was recessed at
9:50. o’clock p.m.)
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UNITED STATES ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY
REGION IX
100 California Street
San Francisco, California 94111
---oOo---
PUBLIC DISCUSSION SESSION
on
RESOURCE CONSERVATION AND RECOVERY ACT
PL 94-580
Holiday Inn
480 Sutter Street
San Francisco, California
March 11, 1977
8:45 a. m.
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INDEX
Opening Remarks, Mr. James Channel, EPA Region IX 125
Overview of Resource Conservation and Recovery Act
and Training/Public Information/Public Participat ion
- H. L. Hickman, Jr. , EPA, Washington, D. C. 128
Hazardous Wastes — William Sanjour, EPA, Wash., D.C. 144
Land Disposal - H. L. Hickman, Jr. 180
Resource Conservation and Recovery and Overall
Technical Assistance — J. Nicholas Ilumber, EPA,
Washington, D. C. 196
State Program Development — II. L. Hickman, Jr. 224
QUESTIONS:
Nat Haseltine, Chevron USA 138
Jerome Tarmann, Sutter—Yuba Health Department 141
Wesley Bradford, US Geological Survey 143
Gilbert Bendix, San Francisco Fire Department 155
Terry Harrison, Consulting Engineer 158
Dave Ridinger, Magma Copper Company 159
Daniel Klipper, Zero Waste Systems 161, 177
206, 241
J. P. Valinski, McDonnell—Douglas 165
William Lewis, Arizona House Natural Resources
and Energy Commission 167
Vita Simon, Federal Highway Administration 171
Jean Bahr, W. A. Wahier & Associates 172
Michael Brown, Consulting Engineer 174
Thomas Williams, Engineering Science 175, 212
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124
Jeff Haltner, Environmental Impact Planning
Corporation 178, 209
Thomas Dunbar, State of California Regional
Water Quality Control Board, N. Coast Region 190
Edward Sparks, Garden States Paper Company 205
Keith Mdllouten, Occidental Research Corporation 208
Garrett DeBell, Yosemity Park & Curry Company 215, 219
George Ososke, US Brewers Association 217
Ed Dunn, Haight-Ashbury Recycling Center 222
Anne Bell, Cal—OSHA Reporter 243
John Langford, Mono County 248
Walter Clark, Fresno County 250
Rodney Lind, Edwards Air Force Base 251
James Witt, Pearl Harbor, Hawaii 253
STATEMENTS:
H. E. Knowlton, Chevron Research Company 191
Yvonne San Jule, Association of Bay Area
Governments 235
David Storm, California Department of Health,
Hazardous Waste Management 237
Richard Anthony, SCS Engineers 246
Sandra Mathias, Southern California Association
of Governments 255
---o0o----
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CHAIRMAN CHANNELL: Well, I guess we should
get going now. I want to apologize for the short delay,
but people have still been coming in, and we are getting
off a few minutes behind schedule.
I am Jim Channell. I am the Chief of the
Hazardous Materials Branch in the Regional Office here in
San Francisco. I’m sitting in right now for Paul De Falco
the Regional Administrator, who we do expect to be here
later in the morning.
I would like to introduce the others at the
head table. They are all from the Office of Solid Waste
in Washington.
On the far right is Nick Humber. He’s Director
of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Division.
On my immediate right is Lanier Hickman. He’s
Director of the Management and Information Staff.
And on my left is Bill Sanjour. He’s Chief of
the Assessment and Technology Branch in the Hazardous
Waste Division.
We are here to talk essentially about the
briefing, a briefing on the Resource Conservation and
RecoveryAct. This Act was signed by President Ford on
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October the 21st, and is Public Law 94-580. This
significant new environmental law provides the opportunity
for EPA, the states and local government to develop
comprehensive solid waste management programs which
control hazardous waste, eliminate the open dump as a
principal disposal practice, and increases the oppor-
tunities for resource conservation.
The Act provides for broad public involvement
in the planning and implementation. And the purpose of
this public discussion session being held is to enable the
private citizen, as well as representatives of environ-
mental, industrial, governmental or other organizations
who are potentially affected by the law to offer their
views, attitude and suggestions for EPA’s guidance.
In the next 15 minutes, Lanny Hickman will
present an overview of the Act. Following Mr. Hickman’s
presentation, various sections of the Act will be
summarized separately. These summaries will take about
ten minutes; and after each one of the summaries, we have
allowed a 20-minute period for questions or for comments
on that section.
In addition, a period at the end of the session
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has been set aside for open discussion; and at that time
the audience is welcome to comment on specific sections of
the Act or the Act itself.
The procedure we will follow is that, during
the questioning session after each of the gentlemen have
spoken on the section, people having questions or a
statement should come to one of the microphones and, when
recognized, give us their name and affiliation and make
their statement. It’s very important that we get the
names for the record.
Now, written statements can be entered into the
record, and the comment period for these will remain open
for two weeks following Friday’s public discussion
session. That’s today. Written comments should be
received at the EPA Office in San Francisco on or before
March 25th in order to be included in the official
transcript.
And copies of the official transcript will be
available from EPA’s Solid Waste Office in Washington
upon request. And there is a sheet back there with the
addresses on it.
Copies of the Resource Conservation and Recovery
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Act, as well as a summary of the Act, are also back on the
table if you didn’t get them when you came in.
Well, that finishes the overview. Now, I would
like to present Mr. Lanny Hickman. He will start off
with the overview of the Act, and then he will go on into
the first session on public participation before we have
our first comment period.
Lanny?
MR. HICKMAN: Could I have somebody turn the
slide projector on for us, please. Thank you.
The Resource Conservation and Recovery Act,
referred to by us as RCRA, is the first amendments to the
Federal Solid Waste Disposal Act since 1970 and represents
probably four years of Congressional study and evaluation
and a series of hearings held over these four years
represents a real major step forward in trying to bring
to state and local government the sort of resources and
assistance necessary to improve solid waste management
practices.
(Slide No. 1.)
Now, the objectives of RCRA are to achieve
improved solid waste management practices for the
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protection of public health and environment, to conserve
valuable mineral resources and energy resources. This is
achieved primarily through a three-prong approach within
the law, which is improving land disposal practices,
trying to remove the obstacles and constraints which
prevent increasing resource conservation and to place more
extensive control over that segment of the waste stream
which represents significant health hazards and environ-
mental hazards to the public in general.
(Slide No. 2.)
Now, these objectives will be carried out
through a variety of authorizations within RCRA.
RCRA provides authorization for technical and
financial assistance to state and local government to plan
and implement comprehensive solid waste management plans;
provides for assistance to develop manpower necessary to
meet the requirements of the law.
It prohibits future open dumping of solid waste.
It provides for the conversion or closing of
all existing open dumps, and all the waste, that will
eventually go into sanitary landfills only.
It provides for the regulation of hazardous
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wastes.
(Slide No. 3.)
It provides EPA with authority to issue guide-
lines for solid waste management practices as the
mechanism to provide guidance and assistance to state and
local government
It provides for EPA to conduct research and
development for new and improved solid waste management
systems and technologies.
It provides demonstration grant authority to
construct full—scale demonstration facilities to eliminate
the risk-taking to a certain extent on the part of local
government to adopt new and improved systems.
It provides for a mechanism to set up a federal/
state/local government/industry relationship in materials
and energy recovery.
It provides a wide range of mechanisms to
educate the public on the problems of solid waste manage-
ment and the mechanisms by which those problems can be
solved.
The public education portion, of course, we
refer to principally as public participation, and there
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)
are a wide range of authorities within the Act to get the
public involved in the implementation of this law. This
represents a major step forward in environmental legisla-
tion in that the law itself specifically requires EPA to
do a variety of things to get the public involved.
(Slide No. 4.
One of the most important and significant ways
that the public can become better informed and become more
involved in solid waste management is to have a stronger
awareness of solid waste management through a very strong
and outreach program of information
Now, the intent of the information and public
participation provisions of RCRA, it’s to promote a better
public understanding of solid waste management, to involve
the public in all aspects of solid waste management, so
that the decisions that are made between the federal,
state and local government partnership are made based on
what the public wants, not necessarily what the
bureaucrats want
I
t provides a mechanism for cooperation with
the states, to help state government build their programs.
It allows EPA to develop a significant data base
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to serve as a foundation for a better understanding by the
public on the problems, the impact of those problems and
what the solutions are.
And the law requires EPA to provide a mechanism
to disseminate information that has been gathered in a
rapid way and to establish a library that can be utilized
by anyone who has a particular interest in pursuing solid
waste management in more detail.
(Slide No. 5.)
Now, what are the public sector groups that we
are trying to impact upon and trying to get involved in
implementing this law?
There are, of course, the normal consumer,
environmental and neighborhood groups. These groups
probably represent most of the lay public, and that’s
probably the most viable group to get involved in the
public sector. It’s very difficult to get the lay public
involved because no one really represents the citizen On
the street, but through the environmental, consumer and
neighborhood organizations, those that are basically
tapped into the private citizen, we hope that we can be
more effective in communicating with the public.
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And, of course, the trade and manufacturing and
labor organizations will always have representation,
primarily in Washington, through their own organization to
interact with us.
And the public health and scientific and
professional communities, which by nature are involved in
solid waste management and have organizations that we can
work with.
Finally, you have the government and the
universities, which by nature are involved in solid waste
management.
RCRA requires certain things of the federal
government in improved solid waste management practices,
so they need to be involved also in the decision making
processes that we have.
(Slide No. 6.)
RCRA provides a mechanism for the public to
formally impact on the agency in its decision making
process. The provision within the law in Section 7004
requires EPA to establish a mechanism by which the public
may petition for change of any regulation or guideline
that the agency has promulgated, or to petition for a new
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guideline or regulation to be prepared. And it’s the
responsibility of the EPA Administrator to show cause
why he should or should not respond to that petition.
RCRA provides a requirement that EPA have the
public involved in the planning, development and imple-
mentation of all aspects of its program. It specificall:
requires public hearings and development of regulations
and guidelines under Section 1008, Subtitle C, which is
the hazardous waste provisions, and Subtitle D, which is
the land disposal and date and local program development
provisions.
It requires EPA to sit with the public and
discuss what sorts of information needs to be developed
and what can be most helpful at the level, the local
level, for problem solving, and it requires EPA to bring
the public in to the whole program planning and imple-
mentation portions of the law.
(Slide No. 7.)
EPA is required to publish guidelines on how
the public can participate with us and what mechanisms
will be available. These will be developed and will be
made available within the next four to six months.
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EPA requires, or provides, a mechanism within
RCRA for citizen suits, where any citizen can sue any
organization or individual that that individual judges to
be in violation of any regulation, guideline or rule that
has been promulgated by EPA. This would be within the
Federal Court system.
And the mechanisms that we are trying to get
the public involved in, all these various segments, such
things as meetings such as we are holding here, which is
a series of meetings around the country to brief the
public on the provisions of the law. This is not a
formal public hearing of the type where we are trying to
gain information on a specific regulation or guideline,
but to try to give you a mechanism to have a better
understanding of the law and to give any feedback that
we can get from you now as to how you perceive this law
should be implemented.
The law does require us to hold formal public
hearings on all regulations and guidelines developed under
RCRA. We will hold a series of conferences sponsored
not only by EPA, but by various organizations around the
country where we will discuss various aspects of the law,
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with smaller workshops activities where we really
specifically focus in on one aspect of what we are doing
to get as much feedback as we can.
(Slide No. 8.)
We will establish formal and informal work
groups and review groups to sit with us on all the
regulations and guidelines that we are writing. These
will be not only meetings held in Washington, but around
the country, to discuss particular activities that we have
underway.
We hope to establish a formal advisory group
which will represent hopefully the various segments of
so lid waste management to sit with us on. an annual and
continuing basis to discuss what we are doing.
And then, of course, through our public educa-
tion program, we will try to continue to provide to the
best possible way we can publications, slides, slide
packages of information, films and exhibits to create a
better understanding and bring more information out to the
public. Use media programs of television and radio to
communicate in various ways with the public.
And then we have had a longstanding activity
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with various interest groups with training grants, such as
the League of Women Voters, National Association of
Counties, and other such groups as that, to set up a
mechanism to provide educational training and information
to their membership. And this is another mechanism that
we will try to build the bridge with the public so that
they can give us feedback.
RCRA also provides some requirements on EPA
related to manpower development.
(Slide No. 9.)
Congress perceives that RCRA will require more
manpower of different types in order to meet the mandates
of the law and, therefore, they have required the
Administrator of EPA to conduct a manpower study to try
to make the judgment on what sort of additional personnel
will be needed to meet the RCRA, the ability of existing
manpower development programs to develop those necessary
resources, and any obstacles that would prevent us from
having a sufficient number of personnel of different types
and professional needs that would be necessary to meet
the law, and make such a report to the Congress and to
the President.
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And then they authorize grants and contracts
to train, to provide assistance to train personnel to
meet the requirements that would be identified within the
manpower study.
And these grants, of course, will go to non-
profit groups. The law specifically prevents grants to
profit-making groups, but we can make contracts to profit—
making groups for purposes of providing services.
That is a very quick summary of public
participation, of manpower development provisions of the
law. And, as Jim said, we will entertain discussion for
a short period of time between each of these presentations
And, again, if we don’t get to you or if. you can’t think
of something now and you want to hold off, we will have an
open session at the end also.
Are there any comments now?
CHAIRMAN CHANNELL: Any questions or comments
on this section? Please, your name, sir?
MR. NAT HASELTINE (Chevron USA): I’m not
authorized to make company comments, but I would like to
make a personal comment, being very much interested in
this subject.
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One, I’m concerned about manpower development.
So many regulations that have come through the EPA have
eventually drifted down to where the state operates their
own program, which I believe is the ultimate goal. We
are all concerned about the fast—growing size of the
federal government, and I note that the State of
California is developing rapidly their own guidelines on
this system. And I wonder if the EPA couldn’t work
diligently to develop state manpower now so that they
don’t develop a vast federal organization that they don’t
know what to do with when the state takes over.
It’s so much easier to hire them than it is to
get rid of them.
MR. HICKMAN: Well, of course, the law is
designed to maximize state—local implementation of the
law rather than at the federal government level. The
whole structure of RCRA and the financial and technical
assistance programs that are within the law are designed
to get the state government to assume the planning and
implementation responsibilities of the law. It t s not
something that we take and then pass on to the federal
government -- to state government as some of the other
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laws that EPA administers, but we only take over certain
portions of it, the hazardous waste portion, only if the
state will not.
MR. HASELTINE: I see.
MR. HICKMAN: And the rest of the law, if the
states don’t take it over effectively, no one will take it
over because we can’t, either. And I just do sort of
want to allay some of your concerns about a large growing
bureaucracy to implement the law at the federal level. W
have received a sum total of 35 new positions to implement
the law. And of those, 25 went to the regions to work
directly with the states. And that’s all we anticipate
in the way of increase.
The flow of financial assistance is to develop
state and local government manpower, not federal manpower.
MR. HASELTINE: Splendid.
One more comment. I presume that you all are
well aware of the Department of Transportion regulations
on hazardous materials and that, to sort of make a verbal
cartoon of that half-million word regulation, you can
hardly walk across the street with a hazardous material
in your pocket without an explosive label on your forehead
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This is a needed regulation -— No question
about it -— but I would like to see all of your progress
in the development of disposal regulations tied very
closely to what already is existing in the Department of
Transportation regulations. They have 1800, approxi-
mately, hazardous materials already listed. And it would
be a shame for you to develop an entirely different list
of hazardous materials and to worry a great deal about
how it’s transported since somebody else is already doing
that.
MR. HICKMAN: Well, we are going to cover the
hazardous waste provisions of the law right now. Bill
Sanjour is going to do that. And there.are some very
closely required linkages within the law between us and
what DOT is doing, has done in the past and is doing now.
I think after he gets through his presentation,
you might have a better feel for what we will be doing as
it relates to DOT.
MR. HASELTINE: Thank you very much.
CHAIRMAN CHANNELL: Yes, we have a question in
the back.
MR. JEROME TARMANN (Sutter-Yuba Health
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Department): Just a short question.
A lot of us have programs and ideas that we
wish to have implemented. And I’m just referring to
Section 7007(a) and (b), grants or contracts for training
projects.
The big question is, of course, the money. How
realistic are these grants for small counties, small
departments? What is the procedure and some of the method
we have to go through to get them?
MR. HICKMAN: Well, we haven’t developed any of
the administrative procedures yet that’s necessary to get
these new financial assistance programs underway. We
are just now starting the development of. them:
No authorizations are in the ‘77 fiscal year.
They are all in ‘78, and, of course, the ‘78 budget has
not been appropriated yet.
Our fiscal year starts October 1. We will
have our grant regulations and whatever funding that’s
available in place and well described before that
October date.
Of course, we have been funding the states
anyway under previous authority that the state level,
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and that will continue until we pick up the new authoritie
under RCRA. But it will be -— it will be some time yet
before we get our procedures out where people will know
how they can go about doing it.
MR. TARMANN: Thank you.
CHAIRMAN CHANNELL: Any other questions or
comments on this section of the Act? Yes?
MR. WESLEY BRADFORD (United States Geological
Surv.ey): Can you hear me from where I am?
CHAIRMAN CHANNELL: Yes.
MR. BRADFORD: All right. I don’t need a mike.
I’m Wesley Bradford with the US Geological
Survey, but I’m speaking as a private citizen at the
moment.
Are there any provisions in the Act for manpower
grants or demonstration grants to the private sector?
MR. HICKMAN: Well, the contract mechanisms
that are available under the training programs could be
made available to private -- to the private sector, but
not grants. It will have to be contract arrangements.
MR. BRADFORD: I see. Do they follow a
different procedure from a public agency in obtaining such
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monies and assistance?
MR. HICKMAN: Yes, they would, just because of
the fact that a granting program always has a matching
mechanism. A contract program is normally a hundred
percent financing. Contracting work is done on a
different competitive basis than a grant and a granting
program.
So they do go through different administrative
procedures. But you will still achieve the same purpose,
though.
MR. BRADFORD: Thank you.
CHAIRMAN CHANNELL: Any other questions or
comments?
All right. Then we will move along to the
hazardous waste section of the Act and Bill Sanjour’s
presentation.
MR. SANJOUR: Thank you, Mr. Channell.
The hazardous wastes we are referring to are
largely industrial wastes. We are not talking about
household garbage here; we are talking about chemical
wastes and industrial wastes for the most part, some small
fraction of which can be considered hazardous.
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The disposal problems of these kinds of wastes
are generally in the hands of private persons, and both
the generation and the disposal of these wastes take
place on private property behind fences, and the public
and public agencies are almost never involved in it.
So, as a result, there is really very little
knowledge of the subject on the part of the general
public, and yet there is far more industrial waste
generated in America than there is ordinary household
wastes.
And the environmental problems caused by these
wastes are far greater. To add to this problem, in
recent years, the passage of many environmental laws for
cleaning up waters and the air has caused an even greater
increase in the generation of these wastes because these
laws have not stopped the generation of wastes; they have
merely redirected where they would be going.
And for the most part, they have been going to
the land and there have been no laws or regulations at
the federal level to control this waste disposal.
So, as a result of these factors, Congress
put in this Act Subtitle C for the control of hazardous
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wastes through largely a regulatory program, and the
program was designed to be administered by the states if
they chose to take it over. But if the states would not
take it over, then it would be administered by the federal
government.
And let’s go through the provisions of Subtitle
C of this Act.
(Slide No. 1.)
Section 3001, Subtitle C, defines a hazardous
waste.
The Administrator of EPA is given 18 months to
come up with this definition. That’s 18 months from the
passage of the Act, which was last October.
He is required to promulgate criteria for
hazardous wastes, and he’s given two ways to actually
identify it.
First of all, to give either the characteristics
of the waste, that is, its toxicology or hazardous
properties, or to list the actual wastes.
He could use one or the other, or both of
these techniques, in identifying a hazardous waste.
Let me read to you what the Act says he is to
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take into account.
The Administrator is to take into account
toxicity, persistence, and degradability in nature,
potential for accumulation in tissue, and other related
factors such as flammability, corrosiveness and other
hazardous characteristics.
(Slide No. 2.)
Section 3002 of the Act is for standards -—
for EPA to write standards for persons who generate
hazardous wastes. This would be largely industrial
firms.
These standards, these regulations, will include
standards for record keeping, reporting and labeling of
containers. And the chief part of this provision of
the Act is this manifest system.
The Congress patterned Subtitle C of this
Act largely after the system that’s presently in existence
in California where this problem was recognized and
treated long before most of the other country, the rest
of the country, and this manifest system was introduced
here in California. It’s essentially a bookkeeping
way of keeping track of where hazardous wastes go.
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The generator is required to keep track of his
wastes, to fill out a trip ticket when they are sent
somewhere else, and they can only be sent to an authorized
permanent facility for receiving them. And this trip
ticket, that is mailed back to the state and compared
with the original to make sure that the waste did, in
fact, go where it was supposed to go.
Congress has mandated this system on a national
basis in Section 3002 of the Act.
(Slide No. 3.)
Section 3003 is very similar to the previous
one, standards for transport of hazardous wastes. You
have similar requirements for record keeping, labeling
and compliance with the manifest system.
Congress also, as the gentleman pointed out,
required that we collaborate with the Department of
Transportation so that the paper work, trip tickets,
registration, etc. , that has to go with this, that we
minimize the amount of duplication that’s required between
the Department of Transportation requirements and the
Environmental Protection Agency requirements, that we
try to use the same paper work, the same definitions,
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the same labeling, etc. And to the extent that is
possible, we are collaborating with the Department of
Transportation on that.
(Slide No. 4.)
Section 3004 are standards for persons who
treat, store or dispose of hazardous wastes.
Now, in many cases, this will be the same
people who are generating the waste.
These standards, also due in 18 months, are
for record keeping, bookkeeping, monitoring, location,
design and construction of facilities, maintenance of
facilities, contingency plans in case things go wrong —-
And they very often do at these facilities —— and for
some means of assuring responsible ownership of such
facilities: perpetual care, bonding, etc.
In addition to these explicit requirements,
Section 3004, there is a more general requirement that
the Administrator may write standards as may be necessary
to protect human health and the environment, which is a
very general statement which was meant to include such
things as ground water protection, perhaps surface water
protection, air protection, air pollution, maybe even
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odors, noise. They could all conceivably come under
this section of the Act.
It is discretionary authority which can be
used by the Administrator in a very wide or narrow sense,
as he chooses. And this is one area where there could
be considerable public influence since the authority is
discretionary.
(Slide No. 5.)
In Section 3004, we lay down the standards for
these facilities. In Section 3005, we have to write
guidelines for granting permits to such facilities.
Now, Congress required that facilities that
treat, store or dispose of hazardous wastes must receive
a permit. It did not lay down that same requirement on
persons who generate or transport hazardous wastes.
Now, very often they will be the same people.
However, the different activities, some require a permit
and some don’t. Regardless of whether the permit is
required, the standards must be met.
The permit program would be administered by
the states if the states had an approved hazardous waste
program. Otherwise, they would be administered by the
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federal government at the regional level.
Now, provisions are also made for interim
permits for facilities which are in existence when the
Act was passed and have notified the federal government
once regulations are promulgated in 3001. They can
receive an interim permit to continue operation
essentially as they are without needing the standards
until the permit-granting agency gets around to issuing
them a permit.
So they will continue in business and not go
out of business while the government gets around to doing
its business.
(Slide No. 6.)
Section 3006 of the Act is for guidelines for
the states as to what constitutes an approved program
such that the states can take over the hazardous waste
program.
And Congress provided three ways of measuring
a state program.
It required that it be equivalent to the
federal program, consistent with other state programs
and adequate enforcement must be provided.
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As you can see, these are vague words:
equivalent,u “consistent,” and “adequate,” subject to
considerable interpretation.
The “consistent” provision was put in there to
prevent the practice which is occurring in some states
today of some states almost completely banning any Jdnd of
disposa1 of hazardous wastes so that they are forced to go
to other states which have less stringent laws so that
one state is essentially dumping all their bad stuff in
another state. That provision was put in there to
prevent that sort of practice, of some states becoming
dumps and other states becoming pristine pure at their
expense.
The provision for equivalence has to do with
the stringency of the regulations, and Congress very often
in some acts has requirements that the state program can
be no more stringent; in other acts, they have that it
can be no less stringent, and in this one, they have
something that’s slightly different: it must be
equivalent, which means it can be a little bit more
stringent or a little bit less stringent. And just how
much is subject to interpretation.
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Congress also provided for interim authorization,
recognizing that many states already have, or will shortly
have, hazardous wastes programs, such as California, and
that the laws will not necessarily have been written in
a way that would correspond to the federal laws, since in
many cases they are being written before the federal law.
So Congress provided that states could have
interim authorization, even if their laws did not
correspond to the federal law, to allow for several years
to adjust and bring the laws into agreement, and in the
interim period, the states could continue to administer
their own programs.
(Slide No. 7.)
Section 3010 requires that those who generate,
transport, treat, store or dispose of hazardous wastes
notify the federal government, EPA, of their existence
within 90 days of promulgation of regulations under
Section 3001. That is the definition of hazardous
wastes.
So it’s actually not a requirement on EPA.
However, we recognize that most people who will be in
jeopardy under this portion of the Act don’t read the
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Federal Register and would not be aware of their jeopardy,
so we are going to great pains to notify those people
that they have to notify us.
(Slide No. 8.)
The Act also provides for grant assistance to
the states. This will be program grants, not constructio
grants. This is grants to the states to run the hazardou
waste program.
And there is an allocation formula in the Act
which is based on the hazardous waste needs of the state
rather than on a population basis. It probably isn’t
very different from population.
There is $25 million authorized in the Act for
this purpose. Nothing has been appropriated yet. We
have yet to hear from Congress about how much they are
actually going to appropriate for this purpose.
(Blank Slide.)
I will end my presentation with a picture of
a hazardous waste disposal facility in Buffalo.
Are there any questions? No questions? I’m
getting away free.
CHAIRMAN CHANNELL: Yes?
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MR. GILBERT G. BENDIX (San Francisco Fire
Department): In San Francisco, as in many other local
jurisdictions, the Fire Department is responsible for the
management of any kind of a hazardous spill. Now, in
San Francisco, this is written into our County Emergency
Plan.
Arid I would like to give you some idea of how
this works as it comes in over the Fire Department radio
and as I hear it.
“Engine Company 57 to A and B Streets. Wash
down a chemical spill.” End of message.
This one was phoned in by a truck driver.
Here’s another one. This was. a response to a
box alarm.
“It’s some sort of a poison. We are going to
wash it down the sewer.”
Well, fire fighters do what they are trained
to do, and our people are trained to attack a problem
with a hose, a nozzle and water.
In the light of this, I would like to comment
on a few of the questions that you asked in your dis-
cussion topics.
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You asked what are the manpower development
needs. We need to train fire fighters to handle hazardous
spills.
You asked for parameters in defining a hazardous
waste. Please remember that any hazardous substance is
only one accident away from being a hazardous waste.
In a recent case, there were a number of glass
gallon jugs of TDDVP pesticide stored on a loading dock
in a drayage firm, and it only took time until somebody
was unloading pipe onto that loading dock, and these
jugs got knocked off, and there was a spill of a hazardous
substance, which presumably now was hazardous waste.
So any hazardous substance is a potential
hazardous waste and should be treated with the same amount
of caution as if it were a waste already.
You asked about manifests and labeling.
Manifests should, first of all, be legible and, second of
all, they should be informative.
And I hope you will keep in mind that the lives
of our men are more important than proprietary information
of a shipper. And I think that California area regula-
tions are lacking to some extent on these points.
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Your leaflet that you were kind enough to send
me indicates that you plan to achieve the objectives by
providing technical and financial assistance to state
and local government for developing an implementation of
solid waste plans and providing training grants in solid
waste occupations.
I will submit a written statement from Andy
Casper, Chief of the San Francisco Fire Department,
requesting that funding for training fire fighters and
dealing with hazardous spills be provided and indicating
that the San Francisco Fire Department would be ready to
submit guinea pigs for such a training program.
Finally, I would like to point, out that your
agency is about to fund hundreds of millions of dollars
worth of secondary treatment facilities for the City and
County of San Francisco’s wastewater system. I think it
would be a wise investment for a small training fund to
prevent some sort of poison from being washed into that
wastewater system and knocking out the expensive waste-
water treatment facilities.
Thank you.
CHAIRMAN CHANNELL: Any other questions or
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comments? Yes, sir?
MR. TERRY HARRISON: I’m a consulting engineer.
The emphasis on the program seems to be entirely
toward disposal. Is there any provision for the develop-
ment of techniques for recycling hazardous wastes which
would eliminate the need for disposing of them, or
technical assistance or development of new techniques?
MR. SANJOUR: First of all, the emphasis is not
on disposal; the emphasis is on regulation of treatment
and storage and disposal, all three.
The feeling of Congress is that, in the area of
industrial wastes, the most practical way of encouraging
recycling is by preventing cheap promiscuous disposal.
Once you cannot get rid of the stuff for three cents a
gallon or down the sewer —— As the gentleman from the
Fire Department just pointed out, an awful 1 t of
industrial wastes go down sewers, go onto roadsides,
into canals and ditches, most anywhere. The nearby
woods around cities are just full of hazardous waste,
industrial waste, which is promiscuous disposing.
The feeling on the part of Congress was to
prevent that from happening. And once you have prevented
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that from happening, firms will have to recycle. Then
the proper disposal becomes quite expensive to do it
right.
There are some provisions in other parts of the
Act for recycling in general, which Mr. Humber will
address. But in Subtitle C, there is no specific
provision for recycling. It’s a regulatory program aimed
at prevent ing bad practices.
CHAIRMAN CHANNELL: We have a question in the
back, I believe, before, didn’t we?
MR. DAVE RIDINGER (Magma Copper Company): I
have a question on the definition of hazardous waste.
Under the Act, it was referred. to as a solid
waste. What is the definition of solid waste?
MR. SANJOUR: Well, first of all, it’s not a
solid. Let me read it to you as soon as I can find my
copy of the Act.
MR. HICKMAN: Definition of solid waste?
MR. SANJOTJR: Yes.
“The term ‘solid waste’ means any garbage,
refuse, sludge from a waste treatment plant,
water supply treatment plant, or air pollution
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control facility and other discarded material,
including solid, liquid, semisolid, or contained
gaseous material resulting from industrial,
commercial, mining, and agricultural operations,
and from community activities, but does not
include solid or dissolved material in domestic
sewage, or solid or dissolved materials in
irrigation return flows or industrial discharges
.which are point sources subject to permits under
Section 402 of the Federal Water Pollution Control
Act.
Basically, what that means is that a solid
waste is any waste that is not covered by some other
law, some other federal law. If it is discharged into
a water system, then it’s covered by the Water Pollution
Act, or into the air, by the Air Pollution Act.
MR. RIDINGER: If it is a point discharge,
it’s under 92—500; is that correct?
MR. HICKMAN: That’s right.
MR. SANJOUR: If it’s an air discharge, it’s
also theoretically under 92—500, but no regulations have
been promulgated.
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MR. RIDINGER: Question No. 2. Under 3001,
3002, identifying and setting standards, those are both
18—month periods, but they are simultaneous; is that
correct?
MR. SANJOUR: Correct.
MR. RIDINGER: To identify and set?
MR. SANJOUR: Actually, nothing happens in that
Act until regulations under 3001 -- and promulgated until
the definition of hazardous waste is promulgated.
MR. RIDINGER: The identification?
MR. SANJOUR: Yes.
MR. RIDINGER: But then are the standards set
after that 18 months or before?
MR. SANJOUR: They are all supposed to be done
at the same time. If a deadline is slipped, the
deadlines for all the other sections don t mean anything
until the deadline for 3001 is met. That’s the bottle-
neck area.
CHAIRMAN CHANNELL: The gentleman in the second
row.
MR. DANIEL KLIPPER (Zero Waste Systems): I
am indebted to Terry for bringing up the subject that I
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wanted to raise.
Zero Waste Systems is a hazardous chemical
recycler, and has been so for about three years. And
what I’m curious about is -- And it’s a question partially
to you and partially to Mr. Number -- since Section C
does not mention anywhere within it the concept of
resource recovery, even though it’s the Resource
Conservation and Recovery Act. It’s only l008(a)(l)
and (3) and 1008(b) that makes any mention of it.
And what we found in the field of hazardous
waste recovery, that we are kind of in the position of
the cousin of the family that doesn’t drink and doesn’t
smoke and doesn’t go out with women and doesn’t use bad
language, and everybody speaks very highly of them, but
nobody invites them to the party and no one wants to spend
any time with them.
And this has kind of been something we have
experienced, as we see it, as people who are doing
hazardous chemical recycling.
There’s basically two needs that the field has
to become a viable alternative, and one is in the State
of California already being started, which is comprehensiv
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surveys of generators.
And the other, where we are now, is kind of
where the auto industry was before Henry Ford. We are
operating on a small scale, and we know that what we are
trying to do is theoretically possible on a much larger
scale. The problem is getting from here to there.
And my question addresses is, is this possible
by means of the following vehicle, which would be some-
thing along the lines of a research institute that would:
a. Work with industries on source reduction
and on modifying their procedures so as the hazardous
wastes they produce are most accessible to recovery, and
also will be more acceptable probably to. safe disposal.
2. Simply researching various problems, of
which there are just thousands of things which are
potentially very valuable which could be recovered, but
we just haven’t developed the technique, and there is no
one in the field who’s got the resources to do this, and
3. Working on the marketing, finding a use for
the material that you are recoving, which we have found is
often a very vital item.
And what I am saying is that where under this
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Well, me personally or me EPA?
Act, where under the purview of this Act, would this
kind of research institute fall?
You asked for suggestions on how we perceive
the law should be implemented. This is our perception.
Does it agree with yours?
MR. SANJOUR:
MR. KLIPPER: EPA
MR. SANJOUR: I’m not sure that EPA has an
opinion on the subject as EPA. You will find within
EPA, the Office of Research and Development, which does,
indeed, do research in developing processes for industry,
which is what you are suggesting.
And there is some grant money available in the
Office of Research and Development for that purpose.
The Resource Conservation and Recovery Act
does not specifically address these kinds of plans, so
there is more to the solid waste program, and there is
more to EPA than this Act, and the kind of things you
are suggesting have been going on and are going on within
EPA, but they are not specifically part of this Act, at
least not that I have seen, in any event
One of the chief reasons for this Act is that
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persons like yourself who are responsible treaters and
disposers of hazardous wastes -- I know you are a
responsible treater, because irresponsible treaters and
disposers never show up for these meetings —— have been
telling Congress and EPA for years that, if there are
only laws which prevented the irresponsible disposal of
these wastes, then industry could pick up the ball and
handle it responsibly; we need the laws to prevent the
bad practices; that the technology and the know how were
there, in fact, to do it right and to do it well, but it
wasn’t going to happen until the bad practices were out-
lawed.
We11, Congress has now outlawed the bad
practices, and my attitude would be the ball is now in
your court, Of course, if it’s not enforced, you have
got a case. But if we can, in fact, prevent the bad
practices, I would look to industry itself, which has the
technological know how, to figure out how to solve these
problems.
CHAIRMAN CHANNELL: Yes?
MR. J. P. VALINSKI (McDonnell-Douglas): Indus-
tries that are now under PL 92-500 and operating a
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wastewater treatment system, are they going to be
required to get another permit for that kind of a system
under this new law and, if so, are these permits going to
be completely different requirements?
MR. SANJOUR: Well, my answer is yes, no and
maybe.
A wastewater treatment facility itself does
not require any additional permit to what you already
have.
MR. VALINSKI: But it is a treatment —-
MR. SANJOUR: The residuals generated by this
wastewater treatment, the sludge, in other words, if it
is a hazardous waste, then the operator •of the treatment
plant is a hazardous waste generator by virtue of that
sludge.
If it’s not a hazardous waste, then there is
nothing required. And if he is going to then dispose
of that sludge or treat it in any way, then he needs a
permit for treatment and disposal of that sludge.
We are hoping that the permitting will be
integrated with the NDWS permits so that you won’t have
to deal with two different people and two different kinds
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of permits. How successful we are depends on a lot of
things.
For one thing, these, in many cases, the permits
are handled by the states. I think they are in California
Isn’t that correct?
CHAIRMAN CHANNELL: Yes, sir.
MR. SANJOUR: So it’s really up to the states
whether it be integrated, not up to the federal govern—
men t•.
In those areas where the federal government
will be handling the permit systems, it may very well be
up to the Regional Administrators about how well the
programs are integrated. So we at the federa1, at the
Washington level, can hope and suggest, but I’m not sure
we have that much influence over how it’s going to go.
CHAIRMAN CHANNELL: Yes, in the back?
MR. WILLIAM LEWIS (Chairman, House Natural
Resources and Energy Committee, Phoenix, Arizona): I
guess what I’m going to say is more of a statement and
an observation than it is a question. However, if you
would like to comment, I would appreciate it. But don’t
feel that you have to.
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I notice that one of the things in the law as
you just explained this section of it is that Congress has
once again abandoned its responsibility and, instead of
setting down rules and regulations, have foisted it off
on someone else, which makes it suspect to every John and
Joe and Jane, makes them insecure to foist upon the public
again, or try to, some sort of a regulation that will
ensure their perpetuation in their job by making them
more important and giving us one other thing to put up
with.
I think the main problem that we have had in the
past ten years since I have been in state government, the
main gripe that we have had with the feds, if you will,
has been in this area where Congress has abrogated their
own responsibility and passed it off to the various
agencies and said, “Okay. You set up —— We will set your
agency up and give you broad guidelines. And then you
come down and get to the nitty—gritty, and don’t blame it
on us. That way we can go back to our constituents and
we can say, ‘well, I didn’t do that. I set up the agency,
but I didn’t require you to put up with all these
different regulations.
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I just issue this as a word of caution and
hopefully as a word of pleading to you: Be careful what
you make the states do and industry do and the cities and
towns because we are dealing in a situation here, as I
see it, with hazardous wastes, their disposal and their
recycling, if you will, and I think it’s something that
we have to be very careful about or else we are going to
come up with some regulations which are highly untenable
and are put on Arizona and California and Montana and
the other states from an ivory tower back in Washington
by people who perhaps have not been on the ground and
seen the actual problems as they do exist within the
states.
I pray that you will give us some latitude to
work under when you make your final regulations.
MR. SANJOUR: I would appreciate it if you
would, at your leisure, put your thoughts down in writing
in some detail about more specifically what you had in
mind. It doesn’t have to be today but, you know, think
about it. Your words are nice, but they are rather
general, and if you can get down to specifics. .
MR. LEWIS: I will get down to one specific.
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MR. SANJOUR: It doesn’t have to be now.
MR. LEWIS: I will get down to one specific
right now
Your smelter smokestack regulations, for
instance. We are spending —— The mines, not we. The
mines are spending millions of dollars now to bring their
smelters into conformance. And in our state, all of
them have except for one. That one is so old that it
is almost impossible. Well, it is impossible for it to
be done in a viable way.
Now, we have asked, as a state legislature,
for relief for that particular situation. Phelps-Dodge,
wh&happens to be the operator of that smelter, has asked
for it, and so far, although there have been a couple of
postponements in the date that they have to comply, there
still has been no thought of trying to give any kind of
an exemption or leniency in that case.
And we are talking about a whole city of 15,000
people which will go down the tubes if they do close down
that smelter.
It will also put two mines out of operation,
copper mines.
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And it’s located in a situation where there is
no other town or living creatures anywhere within, or
concentration of them, at least, anywhere within a 50-mile
radius that -— The smoke that’s been coming out for years
certainly is hazardous. I wouldn’t argue with that a bit.
And it certainly is a waste product.
But under those circumstances, there should be
more leniency and it, in my opinion, shouldn’t be somebody
sitting in Washington saying, “No, there is not going to
be any variations and this is it.” I think each case
has to be decided on its own merits.
CHAIRMAN CHANNELL: Any other questions or
comments? Yes, in the far back?
MS. VITA SIMON (Federal Highway Administration):
Under Section 3003, the Administrator of EPA is to
consult with DOT for the addition of hazardous materials
into the existing DOT Act, the way I read that.
MR. SANJOUR: That’s correct.
MS. SIMON: Do you envision separate regulations
or do you intend your regulations to be incorporated into
the hazardous materials regulations and do you envision
separate enforcement, or would that be done by the
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Bureau of Motor Carrier Safety?
MR. SANJOUR: We would prefer in both cases to
use existing DOT laws and existing DOT enforcement
mechanisms. And we are working out with DOT right now
to try to do that. If it cannot be done, then we will
use the authorities we have under this Act.
But we certainly would prefer to use the DOT
mechanisms and DOT would prefer us to do it, too.
But what sometimes happens is that, although we
would both like to do it one way, their laws may not
allow it to be done the way our law would call for it to
be done. We are working that out now.
CHAIRMAN CHANNELL: Yes, we have a question over
here. Yes?
MS. JEAN BAHR (W. A. Wahier and Associates):
have a quick question of clarification of the definition
of solid waste.
You say that it covers mining wastes, which I
would assume would be mine tailings. Does that also
include uranium tailings, or is that covered by the
Atomic Energy Act?
MR. SANJOUR: I believe it does, yes.
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MS. BAHR: It does?
MR. SANJOUR: I believe radio -- Well, it covers
radioactive wastes that are not covered by the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission.
CHAIRMAN CHANNELL: I believe the answer to that
is the existing uranium, existing operating uranium mills
that are under license by the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission, their tailings piles, now and after they close
down, will be under NRC regulation. We have a number,
some 17 to 20, inactive abandoned tailings piles in the
West that have escaped from the license in the past and
really are not regulated by anybody. It’s questionable
who regulates these.
MR. SANJOUR: I doh’t think we regulate those.
CHAIRMAN CHANNELL: No one regulates them now,
but it’s questionable whether they might come under the
Act.
MS. BAHR: Do you anticipate putting down some
regulations during this 18-month period that would deal
with uranium tailings piles?
MR. SANJOUR: No, not really. The whole issue
of how to handle mining wastes is frustrating us.
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MS. BAHR: All right.
MR. SANJOTJR: Congress called for a study in
this Act of mining wastes, and the purpose of that study
was to determine whether or not mining waste really can
be regulated in the same fashion that industrial manu—
facturing wastes are regulated.
So I don’t really think we are going to come
out with any regulations of mining wastes until we have
completed the study on whether it’s even practical to do.
MS. BAHR: That would go for other kinds of
mining wastes, too? Coal mining?
MR. SANJOUR: In general, yes.
The trouble with mining wastes, you know, is
you can’t move the stuff; you can’t bring it to a
hazardous waste facility. It’s half the country, you
know.
CHAIRMAN CHANNELL: Yes?
MR. MICHAEL BROWN (Consulting Engineer): You
said that the hazardous waste management program can be
administered by the state if they have an approved
hazardous waste management program. Does that hold true
for territories as well, territorial governments?
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MR. SANJOUR: I guess.
MR. HICKMAN: By definition of the law, there
are 56 states now. Just by definition of the law, a
solid is a liquid and vice versa.
CHAIRMAN CHANNELL: Yes?
MR. THOMAS WILLIAMS (Engineering Science): I
was wondering, do you make a distinction between stored
hazardous materials, which may be in the form of a large
pile, versus a hazardous waste?
MR. SANJOUR: Well, the law only covers wastes,
not hazardous materials. And I grant you there’s going
to be a fine line between when a material is a waste.
And we are certainly going to have to address that in the
regulations, and it will have to be addressed even further
among those people who have to issue permits and interpret
the regulations.
MR. WILLIAMS: Within the State of California,
I think there is a distinction between industrial
materials storage areas and solid waste landfills.
MR. HICKMAN: I don’t think they can hear you,
sir. That’s why we have a microphone out in the middle.
Don’t feel overwhelmed by it. Feel free to use it.
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That way everybody can hear what you say.
MR. WILLIAMS: One of the problems that I see
is that, in the State of California, there are distinc-
tions made between stored industrial materials which may
be hazardous and solid waste hazardous materials which
are stored in similar types of situations, i.e., an
earthen fill area, that many of the materials, as the
economic situation changes, will, in fact, become
economically viable for source materials. Therefore,
the waste at one place will become a resource for another
industry at a later date when the economies change.
Therefore, some industrial managers may choose
to store their materials as industrial materials rather
than hazardous wastes.
So how would you make a distinction on that?
MR. SANJOUR: Well, on the one hand, we do not
want to give any impediment to legitimate recycling of
wastes, and those we would tend to exclude from the
definition of a waste.
On the other hand, we don’t want to give people
a very easy loophole to avoid the consequences of the
law just by calling a waste a material.
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All right. That’s the philosophical base.
We are not going to have to interpret things a great deal
in that light, and I would hope that people who have
specific examples of these kinds of bordeline cases would
mail them to us. We could write much better regulations
that walk this tightrope if we know what the tightrope
is, if we know the specific cases that we are going to
have to deal with. We could write better regulations by
dealing with them in advance of the regulations than after
we have written the regulations.
CHAIRMAN CHANNELL: Yes, sir, you have another
comment?
MR. DANIEL KLIPPER: I’m still Dan Klipper,
and I am still from Zero Waste.
My comment. It took me a moment to think about
your answer that the ball is in industry’s court now,
and I’m tempted to be very generous and say does that
mean that EPA will no longer be funding pyrolysis
research and landfill research and so on and so forth,
which obviously it won’t.
And really what I am saying is that it is
proof of the cousin theory once again, that EPA spent
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something -— And I may be wrong by a million or so
dollars, but I believe it spent something about $7 million
on a pyrolysis center in Palo Alto.
And I would merely point out that about half
that money would set up this kind of institute for about
five years.
MR. SANJOUR: As I said before, there is more
to EPA and the Solid Waste Office than this Act, and we
have and will continue to fund resource recycling facili-
ties.
And my comment about the ball being in your own
court was largely the attitude of this Act itself. If
I can extend that to your analogy of the cousin,
basically the attitude of Congress is we have taken the
ladies of the evening off the street; now you are on your
own. The competition is out of the way.
CHAIRMAN CHANNELL: You have a question? Yes,
sir?
MR. JEFF JIALTNER: I am with the Environmental
Impact Planning Corporation.
What is EPA’s current feeling in regard to
municipal sludges and incinerator wastes as regards to
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their being included as a hazardous material? Is there
any feeling towards that right now?
MR. SANJOUR: There is a great deal of feeling.
Depends on who you talk to.
This is a very hot issue in EPA. In a sense,
EPA has become both the sponsor of municipal sludge and
the regulator of municipal sludge, and whenever a govern-
ment agency has a vested interest in the very thing it’s
reguLating, it causes all kinds of problems, as we have
seen historically with the Atomic Energy Commission.
There is feelings on both sides of this issue.
We could recapitulate the discussions. I’m not sure you
want to hear that now.
I think what would be best from your point of
view is that, if you have any feelings on this issue, is
to apprise EPA of what your feelings are since this is
an issue that’s being discussed in EPA, and there are
many, many opinions on the subject, and it will probably
ultimately be decided by the Administrator. The more
public input there is to this subject, the better feeling
the Administrator can get about what the consequences of
the decision are.
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Does anybody feel that they want some kind of a
recapitulation on what the arguments are on this hot
issue?
CHAIRMAN CHANNELL: Any other questions or
comments?
Let’s take about a 15—minute break now. Let’s
try to get back at ten after 10:00, please.
(Short recess. )
CHAIRMAN CHANNELL: Well, let’s come back in
session again.
We have got seats in front if there is anybody
standing back there outside. We have got a half dozen
seats or so.
The next section of the Act we will be dis-
cussing, Lanny Hickman will be discussing the land
disposal aspects of the Act for that ten minutes, and we
will have questions and comments on that portion.
Lanny?
MR. HICKMAN: Thank you, Jim.
Could I have somebody turn the slide projector
on, please? That’s part of the public participation that
we are trying to carry on here.
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(Slide No. 1.)
We are going to spend a few moments now and
discuss the land disposal provisions of the law, that’s
basically within the sections of the law, Section 1008
and Subtitle D, which is directed at state and local
program development.
In order to understand the land disposal
provisions, we need to look at four key definitions in
the Jaw and relate to how this has changed the whole
thrust of the solid waste management field, at least as
it applies to implementation of RCRA.
The first definition is “disposal. t ’ Under the
old law that was amended in 1976 by RCRA, disposal was
used more in a generic term of management, covering all
aspects of solid waste from generation to the ultimate,
indeed, disposal in the lands, collection, treatment,
incineration, processing or whatever.
Well, in the 1976 amendments, “disposal” was
narrowed down to be confined primarily to the aspect of
placing waste on the land. I would like to read it to
you, at least part of it, so that you understand what the
definition says.
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“The term ‘disposal’ means the discharge,
deposit, injection, dumping, spilling, leaking,
or placing of any solid waste or hazardous waste ——“
And we have already defined the fact that a
solid waste can now be liquid.
“—- into or on any land or water so that such
solid waste or hazardous waste or any constituent
thereof may enter the environment or be emitted into
the air or discharged into any waters, including
ground waters.”
So RCRA is trying to address the problem of
the disposal of any waste on the lands where it may
impact in any way on health or the environment.
We go on to look at the definition of “open
dump,” which is a new definition that was not in the
old amendments, but are in the 1976 amendments. The
definition itself doesn’t mean much until we talk about
Subtitle D.
“The term ‘open dump’ means a site for the
disposal of solid waste which is not a sanitary
landfill within the meaning of Section 4004.”
That is where we have to define t ’sanitary
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landfill,” so that implies, of course, there is only two
mechanisms of disposal: either open dumping or sanitary
landfill as far as placing the waste upon land.
The third definition is “sanitary Landfill.”
And that definition means:
“The term ‘sanitary landfill’ means a facility
for the disposal of solid waste which meets the
criteria published under Section 4004.”
So Section 4004 appears like it’s a pretty
important section of the law, and we will get to that in
a minute.
And then the last definition which Bill read to
you, the definition of “solid waste.” What you have got
to think about now is sanitary landfill no longer falls
within the classic consideration of municipal solid waste
being compacted on a daily basis and given daily cover at
the end of the day or other intervals of time. That is
no longer what a sanitary landfill is by definition of
the law.
By definition now, a sanitary landfill is an
acceptable method of disposal of solid waste, and that
can be liquid or solid and anything in between.
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Okay. Now, let’s look at the magic Section
4004.
(Slide No. 2.)
What Section 4004 says is that within one year,
the Administrator shall issue criteria for what is a
sanitary landfill, and it implies types of sanitary land-
fills in the terminology, and that criteria would be for
classifying what is a sanitary landfill, what is an open
dump. And, by definition, what is a sanitary landfill
is not an open dump and vice versa, and that that criteria
should consider the reasonable probability of adverse
effects from different land disposal practices.
And it says then that the disposal of solid
waste will be required in sanitary landfills only and
the state plans must provide for same.
(S1ide No. 3.)
Section 4005 goes on to require the Administra-
tor to conduct an inventory within 12 months after the
issuance of the criteria for sanitary landfill or for
all those sites that are open dumps and publish a list of
those open dumps.
Now, this is an inventory of all open dumps
throughout the country. We had discussions about mining
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wastes, and there are a lot of wastes that are considered
now solid waste, and disposal practices that will have to
be inventoried.
So the whole problem in issue of how much can
be done within 12 months, where the resources are going to
come from to do it. Are we really going to include
mining wastes when we are supposed to do a study on mining
wastes, which obviously is supposed to point us in some
direction, but the inventory of whatever sites there are
that we list, those sites on that list immediately become
in violation of federal law, because the law says that
there shall be no open dumping, only sanitary landfills.
And those sites are subject to suit in the
Federal Court system by any individual out there who
wishes to take exception to the practices of that
particular site.
And we talked about the citizen suit regulation
provision which provides a mechanism for any individual
out there to ping into the federal system, Federal
Court system, on a violation.
Now, the federal government itself -— It’s not
an EPA enforcement action. It’s a state/local government/
citizen mechanism to bring these sites into compliance.
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Now, how can we protect these operators and
owners of these sites where all of a sudden one day they
wake up and here is this big list in the “San Francisco
Examiner,!? and their site’s on the list.
Well, the law provides a mechanism for those
sites to be closed or converted within a five—year time
period after the list is published. And that’s in 1983.
And if the state -— And the state is to require
or develop a plan and a schedule for those sites to come
into compliance, be converted or closed.
So this umbrella of planning protects the
site operator for the period of time it would take for
that site to come into compliance or be closed.
(Slide No. 4.)
All right. Section 1008 provides authority for
the Administrator of EPA to promulgate guidelines for
solid waste management. This is an extension of
previous authorities that were in the -— that was in the
law that was amended.
And those guidelines are mandatory requirements
on the federal government. All federal agencies must
comply with requirements for the guidelines issued under
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1008.
Under the old authorities, we issued some
seven or eight guidelines. We had one on land disposal.
We had one on beverage containers. We had one on
resource recovery facilities. Collection of municipal,
commercial and institutional solid wastes.
And the federal government is now beginning to
implement these guidelines, and they are still in effect.
They are merely advisory at the state and local government
or to any grantees under certain -— most of the authoritie
of the law, except for one unique grant program where
they will have to comply with the guidelines.
At the present time, we are beginning work to
take the existing land disposal guidelines that are in
effect and modify these guidelines to reflect the new law.
These guidelines would be used primarily as a supportive
document for the land disposal, sanitary landfill criteria
that we have to issue as guidance to owners and operators
of disposal sites as to ways in which they might upgrade
or convert their sites to meet the requirements.
And as these guidelines develop over a period of
time, they will deal with different waste streams and
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different types of land disposal practices.
We have started the work now as developing a
sludge, municipal sludge guideline, which will be
available in late Fiscal Year 79. So by nature what
we are doing, I guess we are sort of phasing into this
whole activity anyway by developing the inventory.
The theory, of course, is to have the state
government do the inventory rather than the federal
government. The logic to that is pretty strong. In
fact, we want the state government, which they already
are in most states, the regulator and enforcement on
land disposal practices, to continue to do that. And
it’s -- They know where the sites are, and the criteria
are -— we are going to try to design criteria in such a
way that much of the judgment on the acceptability of
that site will be made by state government based on the
unique conditions of that state: its own climatological
and geological and demographic differences rather than
trying to have one uniform standard that Maine and
California and Omaha and Galveston can all have to live
within because it’s just almost impossible to write one
standard. The criteria will allow judgments to be made by
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state government and local government related to their
own unique particular circumstances.
Well, that t s basically the provisions of the
land disposal part of the law. You can see here the
linkages that are starting to be built now between the
various sections.
You have the hazardous waste provisions which
focus in on those waste streams and provide for a
mechanism of controlling them from cradle to the grave.
And whatever is not covered under that umbrella of
hazardous wastes falls within the rest of the requirements
of the law and Subtitle D.
And we see that whatever has not been handled
under the hazardous waste provisions will move to
acceptable land disposal sites regulated or controlled by
state government and operated by local government and
industry.
And I will entertain questions now on these
provisions.
CHAIRMAN CHANNELL: First, before we start the
questions, I would like to introduce Paul De Falco, the
Regional Administrator of EPA, who joined us at the break.
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MR. DE FALCO: Good morning.
CHAIRMAN CHANNELL: Now, any questions? Come
to the microphone, please.
Yes, sir?
MR. THOMAS DUNBAR (State of California Regional
Water Quality Control Board, North Coast Region): The
EPA will promulgate guidelines for sanitary landfill.
Does the EPA anticipate requiring federal permits for
landfills similar to NPDES?
MR. HICKMAN: No, the law does not require that.
That’s not a provision of RCRA. The concept is, of
course, that EPA will issue criteria. The law requires
us to develop criteria for sanitary landfills, and the
law says that all disposal will be in sanitary landfills.
That will fulfill that criteria, but it does
not require EPA and does not permit EPA to set up any
sort of a regulatory program. It places that responsi-
bility on state government.
Now, that’s different than the hazardous waste
part where, if the state doesn’t pick up the hazardous
waste program, the permitting and enforcement program,
EPA must.
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There is no mechanism for EPA and no authority
for EPA to function in this area in the land disposal of
non—hazardous wastes.
The driving force, of course, is to have the
state get involved because the sites that are not in
compliance with the criteria are subject to violation of
federal law. And most of the financial assistance
programs that could be made available under RCRA will not
flow down to state and local government unless the state
has a planning process underway to get these sites into
compliance.
But there is no federal regulatory role in this
portion of the law.
CHAIRMAN CHANNELL: Questions or comments? Yes
sir?
MR. H. E. KNOWLTON (Chevron Research Company,
Richmond, California): We have a statement to make on
land disposal.
I am employed by the Chevron Research Company,
Richmond, California, where my professional responsibili-
ties involve corporate—wide refinery environmental control
activities. Urn also a member of the Solid Waste
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Management Committee of the American Petroleum Institute.
And we are preparing a written statement on various
topics for submission later.
To keep within the five minutes that you
indicated you would allot me on this subject of land
farming, I have this following statement.
We define land farming as —— The land farming
process consists of controlled application and cultivation
of wastes on soil in a properly engineered site and using
soil microorganisms to decompose the organic fraction of
the wastes.
Soil conditions, water runoff, percolation and
odor, if any, are monitored and controlled as appropriate.
The most common wastes supplied are oily
sludges or biological solid wastes, or both.
We have these additional comments, then, on
land farming.
Our refinery experience with land disposal
of solid waste goes back 30 years. In the past two years,
we have been developing resource recovery methods in our
refineries to minimize the oil content in oiiy solids.
Object: recover valuable oil, energy resource, and
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minimize the oily solids that are land farmed.
3. We visited and discussed with various
refiners other than Chevron in various parts of the
United States and Canada their successful use of land
farming of oily solids and biosolids.
4. We have had ongoing research studies on
land farming at the Rutgers University in New Jersey
and at Chevron Research in Richmond for the past several
years. Based on this, we would like to make this
conclusion.
From this extensive background of practical
experience and research, we state land farming of oily
solids and biosolids is the optimum treatment method
available today, both ecologically and economically.
Chevron strives to use the most economic methods
of solving environmental problems so that less energy is
used and the cost we must pass on to our customers is
minimized.
We have additional comments on the other topics,
n your other topics that you have listed for this
session, and we will contribute them directly to the
EPA.
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Also we will contribute indirectly through the
API Solid Waste Management Committee.
Thank you.
CHAIRMAN CHANNELL: Thank you, sir.
MR. SANJOUR: May I ask the gentleman a
quest ion?
CHAIRMAN CHANNELL: Yes.
MR. SANJOUR: Do you mind if I ask you a
quest ion?
MR. KNOWLTON: Go ahead, Bill.
MR. SANJOUR: Is it Chevron’s intention to
grow crops on these land farms?
MR. KNOWLTON: No, Bill, there is no intention
to grow crops.
MR. SANJOUR: Good answer.
MR. KNOWLTON: It is our intent, though, Bill,
to do a good job on resource recovery so that we minimize
the area which is used for land farming and keep it
tightly controlled.
MR. HICKMAN: Do you consider land farming a
disposal method? That’s me asking up here.
MR. KNOWLTON: Oh. Yes.
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MR. HICKMAN: By definition of the law that we
have here, do you consider that a disposal technique
falling within the purview of the definition of disposal
as the law here defines it?
MR. KNOWLTON: You have onily one topic called
land disposal. You do not talk at any point in your
written material of land farming, which we feel is a
different type of thing.
MR. HICKMAN: But do you view it as a disposal
technique?
MR. KNOWLTON: Oh, yes. A treatment and
disposal because we will convert —- All the oil that does
remain after we have recovered what is economically
recoverable, we will treat the rest of it to biodegrade
it into CO 2 and water, in which case we have solved the
problem very ecologically and, as far as we can tell at
this point in time, better than any other competing
process.
CHAIRMAN CHANNELL: Any other questions or
comments? Any others?
We will go on to the next section of the agenda
on the resource conservation and recovery aspects of the
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at meetings
the federal
separat ion
like to go
histpry of
Act.
Nick Humber.
MR. HUMBER: Usually the first question I get
such as this on resource recovery is what is
funding.
The bill includes resource recovery, source
and resource conservation systems. I would
over a little bit about the progress or the
this with the Congress.
It started off with a $200 million grant program
and then became a billion dollar loan guarantee program,
and that shortly became a two billion dollar loan guaran-
tee program, and then some people asked the question,
“Well, why is there a need for federal financing? Can
these projects be financed locally?”
In fact, several had been financed locally,
about $300 million by my count, and they were financed
without federal funding, and thus the final law has no
construction grant provisions for resource recovery.
Instead, they have a program that I will outline with you
here.
(Slide No. 1.)
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Resource recovery and resource conservation are
mentioned throughout the Act in several areas. And this
is a listing of the major areas. I will discuss each of
these in a bit more comprehensive manner.
(Slide No. 2.)
Now, this section, which calls for technical
assistance in solid waste management problems, it’s a
complete misnomer because it’s —— first of all, it is not
conf i ned to resource recovery and resource conservation.
Our efforts will cover the full gamut of solid waste
management activities, including collection, disposal and
treatment and disposal of hazardous wastes. So that’s
not correct.
And, secondly, we are not having panels. That’
a word which was used for some reason that escapes me.
Several people have asked me, “How do you get
appointed to these panels?” And there really is no
appointment process because there are no panels to be
appointed to. The idea is that we will bring together
expertise from several groups, and we will be more the
manager of this technical assistance activity to local
government.
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Let’s say, for example, the City of San Jose
wanted some help in source separation and they asked us
to provide this help. Well, we would bring together,
first of all, people in the area who might be buying the
secondary materials; we would bring together citizen
groups that would help support participation, bring
together the solid waste management people in that area,
both the public and private people, and possibly consul-
tants who might have expertise in this area.
The idea is to bring together quite a wide
range of expertise and to help communities help them-
selves.
The legislation calls for 20 percent of the
general authorization for the Act. And that term
“general authorization” is a confusing one because you
have to see the full funding of the Act, and that will
come at the end.
But the general authorization can be as high as
$35 million, so that would say that $7 million could be
spent for technical assistance efforts.
(Slide No. 3.)
The sections in the 4000 series have to deal
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with the establishment of state plans and for state
program activities. And the important thing to notice
in the resource recovery area is that the state plans
must call for resource recovery or call for addressing the
issue. It must address the resource conservation issue.
It does not mean that they have to include
plans for resource recovery or resource conservation,
but they must determine if this is appropriate or not;
must also include an evaluation of existing and probable
future markets for recovered materials in the state.
And this must be a part of the state plan.
Now, there is one provision that the law
requires that state plans eliminate, if it exists, and
this is a provision in some state constitutions or
legislative rules that there is a prohibition against
20—year contracts or long-term contracts.
In other words, a community —- Letts take
San Jose again -- cannot sign a 20-year contract for a
service, in this case being a solid waste management
service. In the case of building a large solid waste
management system that will operate for 20 years and
maybe cost some $5 million to $50 million, there is a
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need for a 20-year contract between the city and a private
organization in order to finance the system. And because
there are these prohibitions, at least in some state
activities, the state plans must require that these be
removed, at least in pertaining to solid wastes.
(Slide No. 4.)
Now, the financial aid that comes under the
state section, that is the 4000 series section in the law,
calls for financing of implementation grants to public
agencies only. And the emphasis is on implementation
rather than planning.
That is putting together a technical -- a
market and a financial package that leads to an action,
whether it be a collection system or new disposal system
or new source separation system. These funds are not
to be used for construction.
(Slide No. 5.)
Now, the Act calls for the federal government
to take an active role in resource recovery and resource
conservation. And the most prominent way that it can
do this is through the federal procurement process. And
it requires that EPA issue guidelines for recommended
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practices and that within two years, that procuring
agencies —— And this is essentially the General Services
Administration and the Defense Supply Agency, who do most
of the procuring for the federal government -- purchase
the highest percentage of recovered materials in their
items that they buy.
And this is highest in the sense of being
economically and technologically feasible.
This pertains only to items of purchases that
are greater than $10,000.
It also requires that the federal government,
in purchasing fuels for the operation of its boiler
systems, use the highest percent of refuse—derived fuel,
again to the extent that it’s technologically and
economically feasible.
And this provision also provides —- pertains to
vendors of the federal government. That is that they
have to procure products that contain recycled materials.
(Slide No. 6.)
This section calls, and the next slide will
call, for a series of studies for issues that are not
quite resolved as far as the Congress is concerned. The
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most prominent is the Resource Conservation Committee,
and I will talk a bit about that in the subsequent slide.
There are other studies that pertain to
composition of the waste stream, setting research
priorities within the EPA, looking at small scale, looking
at source separation systems. There are quite a range
of studies.
(Slide No. 7.)
And this is an additional four studies. These
have to be done over a three—year period.
(Slide No. 8.)
Now, back to the Resource Conservation
Committee. It’s a cabinet-level committee. The
Administrator of EPA is the chairman.
And it should be noted that most committees are
out of the day—to—day operations of agencies. That is,
they are blue ribbon committees or citizen advisory
committees that report possibly to the White House, but
they are not a part of a major department or major agency.
And this is an exception. I think it’s an important
exception, and it’s very important.
It’s a two—year study, and it requires ——
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Getting back to the participants, they are the
Secretaries of Treasury, of Interior, Commerce and Labor.
And these are the departments that would be most affected
by any kind of actions that were taken to stimulate
resource recovery, such as regulatory or economic incen-
t ives.
(Slide No. 9.)
And these are the areas that are to be studied
by this group of people.
The first is the effect of existing federal
policies on resource recovery and resource conservation.
There are policies that really are disincentives for
recovery, and some of the policies that have been accused
of being this are the capital gains treatments and
depletion allowances that are, it is accused, to encourage
us to use virgin resources vis—a—vis secondary resources.
In other words, the government is subsidizing the pro-
duction of virgin resources.
It is to also look at new taxes or regulations
or bounties. And some of the ideas that have been
proposed are subsidies for each ton recycled, subsidies
for each new dollar investment in facilities that would
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utilize recovered materials or would produce recovered
material. And, lastly, charges on products to reflect
waste management costs.
And the third major area are product regula-
t ions.
(Slide No. 10.)
We have in the past had demonstrations and
evaluation -— demonstration capabilities under the law.
This is additive evaluation. It is felt it is cheaper
for the federal government to evaluate a system that’s
been privately constructed than to construct it and pay
for the construction itself. So we are switching to do
more evaluations and fewer demonstrations.
It also emphasizes the importance of doing
demonstrations in the source separation area and the new
area of resource conservation or techniques that would
reduce waste generation.
Okay. That summarizes the resource recovery
and conservation activities. And I would like very much
to discuss with you your feelings on these issues.
CHAIRMAN CHANNELL: Yes? Any questions or
comments? Yes, sir, the gentleman in the back.
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MR. EDWARD SPARKS (Director of Procurement
Logistics, Garden States Paper Company): I have a comment
Nick.
Our company is the world’s largest consumer of
recycled newspaper. My company consumes more than
500,000 tons of old newspapers each year. A substantial
portion of this supply comes to us through contracts with
over 40 municipalities having source separation programs
to recover this valuable resource.
I am also a member of the Executive Committee
concerned with paper stock conservation of the American
Paper Institute. This group represents recycling and
converting mills which consume almost 14,000,000 tons of
waste paper annually.
Garden States’ 15 years in the recovery and
recycling of waste newspaper on both a national and
international basis has given us a hands—on knowledge
and experience of the dos, don’ts and pitfalls of resource
recovery. We feel it important for the Environmental
protection Agency to draw on the experiences and expertise
of companies such as Garden States and associations such
as the American Paper Institute to achieve a successful
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implementation of this Act.
While we are not looking for a position on your
non—panel, I am here to offer the assistance and exper-
iences of both Garden States Paper Company and the Paper
Stock Conservation Committee of the American Paper
Institute to the Environmental Protection Agency, and
specifically Region IX, in the implementation of the
Resource Conservation and Recovery Act of 1976.
MR. HUMBER: Thank you.
CHAIRMAN CHANNELL: Yes?
MR. DANIEL KLIPPER: Just a question of
clarification.
You were discussing Section 4008, and that was
aid, financing of implementation, and this is
public agencies only in the field of resource
conservation, hazardous waste management. And
said not for construction.
And how do you define implementation of a
program separate from, say, construction of a transfer
facility? I didn’t understand that.
MR. HUMBLE.; I can see that ambiguity. The
idea is -— The original intent was to distinguish
f I nan c i a 1
grants to
recovery,
then you
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implementation—oriented activity from planning activity.
In other words, I think the first problem is
the planning activities have a bad name in Washington. It
seems to be a way to make consultants rich, but not to
take any action.
But try to go a step further, and let’s go back
to the example of a source separation system. It would
be the activity, whether it would be a staff activity of
a government or the hiring of a consultant, to develop
the final implementation activity, let’s say, to define
the contract for the recycled materials, to set up the
routing system for the collection vehicles, to enter
into —— to develop the contracts to hire the legal
expertise to develop the contracts and if any financing
were required, to hire the financial advisors.
But it all leads to a proposal to the decision--
making body to say, “Yes, let’s go ahead with it.”
I guess if you see the end result as a final
proposal, to say, “Let’s go to him.” That’s what we are
aiming for.
MR. KLIPPER: Thank yOU.
CHAIRMAN CHANNELL: Yes? Yes, sir, in the back?
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MR. KEITH MC HOUTEN (Occidental Research
Corporation): In the past, the agency’s work, and much
of the interest of people interested in resource recovery,
has been aimed at some of the technical aspects of
resource recovery. I should like to urge that, in the
new life that we have got ahead, that the agency addresses
itself, gives priority to some of the institutional
aspects that you touched upon in your talk: the legal
aspects of the institution of resource recovery, the
financial problems involved, such things as regionaliza-
tion, to get the economic tonnage.
I should just like to see that they are given
priorities in your plans.
MR. HUMBER: Thank you.
I think his comment is well talken. We are
really moving. Although there is a great deal of
technological work to be done, the major problems right
now are moving into some of the institutional arrangements
and that prohibition against or the elimination of pro-
hibitions against 20-year contracts is an institutional
problem that some communities have faced.
That’s an example, and the marketing and the
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financial issues are also other institutional problems.
Now, we worked for about the last three years
in communities in overcoming some of these, and in some
cases, we have helped communities to get financing. In
other words, just to prepare a proposal that was sound.
CHAIRMAN CHANNELL: Yes? Yes, sir, in the
back?
MR. JEFF HALTNER (Environmental Impact Planning
Corporation): I’m still trying to get a handle on some
of your defintions.
In regards to our resource conservation, I’m
interested in the potential for recycling solid wastes
to land as a fertilizer or soil conditioner.
And do I understand by your term “sanitary
landfill” here that this will also now pertain to
agricultural lands upon which solid waste may be used as
a fertilizer or soil conditioner; and, if so, will the
same regulations that apply to a sanitary landfill now
apply to agricultural lands?
MR. HICKMAN: Well, this has been a goal of
discussion within the agency, and with people who are
involved in the application of waste on the lands for
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disposal or for beneficial purposes. As to where that
falls, when is it disposal and when perhaps is it a
beneficiation of soil as a soil conditioner or whatever.
Frankly, at this point in time we don t t know where it
ought to fall ourselves.
I would appreciate what you think it ought to
be. Do you think it ought to be outside the purview of
the definition of disposal and sanitary landfill?
If you read the definition of disposal, it
would imply, indeed, that if you put waste on lands, it
must fall within the definition for disposal.
And there is only two types of disposal: open
dump or sanitary landfill. But there is certainly no
intent on the part of the agency to try to put an umbrella
over every activity that goes on in the agricultural
field as it relates to the utilization of soils and
organic products.
We just don’t know where it falls yet. It’s
an area of real concern and consideration right now by
the agency and the outside people who are working with us
on it.
CHAIRMAN CHANNELL: Yes, sir?
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MR. HALTNER: I just have one more comment on
that.
One of the reasons I am concerned is that there
is a -- there seems to be a tendency toward regulation
which seems to be occurring to almost go towards an anti-
septic approach to this whole thing, and I am afraid if
things come down from just strictly a national level,
that we will just sort of end up sort of burying
everything and getting rid of it and, you know, not
take into account some of the, you know, site localities,
special things that may occur on a much smaller level
so that that was why I was addressing that.
MR. HICKMAN: I made the point, earlier about
the fact that, in writing the criteria, we want to try to
be as flexible and broad as possible to allow states and
local government to take into consideration local con-
ditions that there is no way that we can do on some kind
of a broad national basis. Common sense has got to
prevail sometime, and we hope that we will try to do that.
(Laughter.)
You don’t believe that the feds can exercise
common sense, do you?
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CHAIRMAN CHANNELL: Yes?
MR. SANJOUR: Let me just comment on that
comment.
As you recall, I asked the gentleman from
Chevron whether they are growing crops on their land
farms.
FROM THE FLOOR: I can’t hear you.
MR. SANJOUR: You recall that I asked the
gent.leman from Chevron whether they are growing crops on
their land farms, and he said no. There is a little
method in why I asked that question. The advocates of
sewage sludge seem to be saying that, if they are growing
crops, they are doing something beneficial and, therefore,
should not be a disposal.
Now, if the Chevron was to grow crops on its
farms, does that also exempt it from the provisions of
the Act? That’s also the other side of the coin.
MR. C. THOMAS WILLIAMS (Engineering Sciences):
A comment on your comment.
We are presently under contract to treat
approximately 40 acres of artichoke and lettuce land down
in Monterey with treated sanitary effluent. Would you
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consider that an open dump since it’s not a sanitary
landfill?
If the pilot project is successful, it would
have rather broad implications, both ifor the Monterey
area and other areas for the use of treated sanitary
effluent on agricultural croplands for human consumption.
MR. HICKMAN: Hey, you don’t know that that’s
not a sanitary landfill. Now, if that’s effluent, you
know, if that’s just straight sewage, that’s a different
issue. That’s got to be covered under FWPCA.
You remember I started out the discussion on
land disposal problems to stop making every sanitary
landfill as a compacted municipal solid waste site with
daily cover. It is now an acceptable environmental
method of disposal of solid waste which, by definition,
now is a solid or a liquid.
MR. WILLIAMS: So it would be a controlled
landfill?
MR. HICKMAN: No. I don’t know what it would
be. But it might, indeed, be a sanitary landfill if it
met the criteria.
MR. SANJOUR: The issue is this: Should we
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exempt utilization of slude ——
MR. WILLIAMS: Or treated sanitary sludge.
MR. SANJOUR: -- period, or should we regulate
or define what is adequate and inadequate utilization.
That’s the issue.
MR. WILLIAMS: That’s right.
MR. SANJOUR: We can include sludge utiliza-
tion in the definition of disposal and define what is
environmentally sound and unsound utilization. All right?
That’s one road.
The other road is to completely exempt the
utilization and not even consider it under this Act.
That’s the other road.
Now, I pointed out that, if you were to go the
second road, that would bring in certain illogical
inconsistencies, such that people who are land farming
wastes would have to be considered as a waste disposal;
but if they grow something on it and people eat those
crops, then they are exempt from the law.
That’s the kind of dichotomy that first road
brings about.
CHAIRMAN CHANNELL: Yes? Other questions or
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comments? Yes?
MR. GARRETT DE BELL (Yosemite Park and Curry
Company): We operate the prime concession in Yosemite,
and we are very happy to see the direction of this Act
furthering the direction of resource recovery and
recycling.
Over the past couple of years, we have operated
a recycling program aimed at recycling the different
types of solid wastes. We have been extremely pleased
with our relationship with the Environmental Protection
Agency.
Over the past year, as we implemented a pilot
beverage container deposit program which upped the return
rate of the beverage containers from about four percent,
which it was the year we had a voluntary recycling progran
to approximately 70 percent after we put the nickel
deposit on it. And we haven’t found anybody who didn’t
believe in recycling, but the nickel incentive talked a
large number of believers into practitioners, which we
were very happy to see.
We feel that this may have broader applications
as the Act stipulates in that some sorts of economic
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incentives of one sort or another will be very helpful in
getting people to move from the more old fashioned,
less environmentally sound means of waste disposal into
the future of recycling or other means of resource recover
For instance, we have some energy recovery in a
fairly strange system where our solid wastes in our
larger restaurants go down the garbage disposal, down the
sewer into the sewage treatment plant, then ups the
BTU content of the sludge, reducing the amount of fossil
fuel they need to incinerate the sludge.
And we feel that this is the kind of thing that
needs to be looked at very much case by case because
that happens to be a beneficial situation in our case,
and in many other cases it would not be beneficial.
And there is a very important need to tailor
these things to the particular circumstances.
One thing we think would be interesting to
businesses that are considering going this way is that,
in spite of the various labor costs and handling costs
and a modest amount of capital equipment, that this
system, subsidized in part by the salvage value of the
materials, is coming extremely close to being a break—even
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operation, and we intend to continue extending it until
we virtually eliminate the waste stream. We anticipate
we can do this at very close to a break-even operation
throughout.
In the same spirit of the Garden States
Company, we would be happy to have representatives of
EPA continue to work with us or try out ideas or experi-
ments that are appropriate to our operation with us. And
we would be happy to invite people from industries that
operate retail or hotel or similar type facilities come
take a look. We would be happy to show them how it works
with a very low technology type approach to recycling
solid wastes.
Thank you.
MR. HUMBER: Thank you.
CHAIRMAN CHANNELL: Thank you.
Any other questions or comments on the resource
recovery? Yes, sir?
MR. GEORGE OSOSKE (United States Brewers
Association): I just would like to make a comment
relative to the message that the last speaker gave
concerning Yosemite on the matter of return of containers.
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As we should realize, Yosemite Park is a
concentrated area with almost a monopolistic situation
where the stores and all are controlled by the Curry
Company.
Our industry is deeply concerned about
recycling, and our industry, of course, is doing a con-
siderable amount of work in recycling. But I just feel
that we cannot actually accept a captured tourist group
based upon a deposit system that would stand up as a, let
us say, image of what other industries, or rather what
other communities should do.
I think that it would be very difficult to
induce that type of a system in large cities and large
communities.
There are other answers that are available and
I think could be used.
But Yosemite, in the controlled area, was
responsible for 70 percent, as they say, of a return of
the containers, now, it should have been a hundred percent
in a controlled area.
Now, we must remember, too, that the individual
consumer would be paying, for example, on a six—pack of
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beer, $1.85 compared with Los Angeles and San Francisco
of $1.55. But the Yosemite pack would be plus 30 cents
on a deposit.
And you must also consider that there were
30 percent of the people who did not reclaim their
deposit and that deposit, of course, was captured by
the Curry Company operating the facility there.
Thank you very much.
MR. HUMBER: Of all the comments today, I think
the US Brewers’ comment is unique, and it’s telling us
why we can’t do something. And fortunately most of the
people in resource recovery are trying to figure out ways
to achieve recovery and reuse. And, unfortunately, you
are telling us why we can’t.
I guess I disagree with your philosophy.
CHAIRMAN CHANNELL: Yes?
MR. DE BELL: Obviously, the beverage container
issue is a very serious one and -needs to be debated and
discussed in public forums before a decision is made.
Our situation is, of course, unique, as every
situation is unique.
People have brought up the fact that we have a
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controlled situation where we operate all of the stores,
which isn’t exactly true, but it’s fairly close to true.
We feel that this further proves or not this, but the
fact that we are in a national park with a visiting
population -— The average person stayed there two and a
half days, and over that time period, had to learn about
the deposits and decided to participate in it. This,
we i el, made it a particularly stringent test, and still
we a.chieved a 70 percent return rate, which is comparable
to states which have a more stable population.
Part of our population is controlled in the
sense they live there all the time. We have checked the
return rate in our employee dining facilities, for
instance, and it does range very close to a hundred
percent, which shows, I think, that it’s easier to
operate a beverage container thing with a stable
population than a visiting population.
But, again, these are issues that neither I nor
anybody in this room can dictate the answer to. They
need to be discussed and debated in public forums. And
we thought that experiments in this would help to
determine the viability of the program.
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The public acceptance by the park visitor was
extremely high. The most frequent comment we heard all
Summer was, “This is great. They should do it every
place.”
We generated a spinoff economic industry in
Yosemite. The people who used to panhandle in previous
years decided that their economic return on their labor
was higher if they went out scavenging containers and
picking up papers. The phenomenon of panhandling was
virtually eliminated.
These are just the factors as I perceive them
in this case. The argument to the -- to the point that,
if people had a choice, they would go to. the store across
the street, that’s nothing we can comment on in great
detail, but we do have one case in the Wawona area where
there are two stores about a mile apart.
A store operated by Jane Nester and the Wawona
Pines market, which is about a mile down the road. Jane
Nester did not notice any drop in sales or preference of
people going to the other store. She indicated to me
that maybe three percent of the people had some sort of an
adverse reaction to the program, but a similar number of
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people, mainly local residents from the Wawona area,
which is a private in—holding within the park, pre-
ferentially shopped at her store because they felt this
was a good environmental program and they wanted to
participate in it.
If there are other further questions, I would
be happy to entertain them.
Again, the issue will be different in different
places. But the aluminum can versus returnable bottles
with regard to relative merit does have some geographic
meritability, and I think these need to be further dis-
cussed as decisions are being made.
CHAIRMAN CHANNELL: Yes, sir? The gentleman
in the back.
MR. ED DUNN (Haight—Ashbury Recycling Center,
San Francisco): I happened to see today on the Morning
Show describing the success of your program in Yosemite.
And at the tail end of the program, it said something
that the government was going to extend this program to
all their installations, federal buildings and Army
bases and Naval bases.
Is that true?
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MR. DE BELL: Let the EPA comment on that.
MR. HUMBER: I can comment on that.
That is correct. All beverages sold in federal
facilities will, as of a certain implementation date,
within roughly a year, contain deposits. And, in addition,
the Park Service, because of the success in Yosemite, has
decided that by April 1st, all of the Park Service
activities throughout the country will have -- require
deposits on beverage containers.
And this is something they did independently of
the guidelines to some extent.
MR. DE BELL: One other thing. Just with a
room full of environmentally aware people, I would just
like to see the hands raised of all those people who
would participate in recycling stuff in their own house-
holds.
CHAIRMAN CHANNELL: Yes. Other questions or
comments on recycling?
We will move on to the last section of the
Act, and this is on state program development, by Lanny
Hickman again. He’s also going to talk about money, so
this ought to keep your interest.
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Lanny?
(Slide No. 1.)
MR. HICKMAN: RCRA provides a variety of
technical and financial assistance programs to help state
and local government develop and implement comprehensive
solid waste management plans.
Subtitle C, which is the hazardous waste pro-
vision; Subtitle D, which are the state and local program
development provisions of the law, are designed to provide
a mechanism for the states to assume the dominant role in
assuring proper solid waste management, to pass down to
the state government the sort of tools and financial
capabilities to take on a comprehensive resource conserva-
tion, land disposal and hazardous waste regulatory pro—
gram.
And then BCRA provides, through a variety of
mechanisms, ways for local government to meet the planning
and implementation needs that RCRA asks of them.
In order to get this underway, there are certain
things that EPA must do, and then there are certain things
that state government is invited to do.
State government doesn’t have to play under the
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law. There is no mandate that the state does a thing.
There is no mandate that the local government does a
thing. They can walk right away from the law and not do
a thing about it.
We have to issue within six months of the
enactment of the law, which will be April of this year,
April ‘77, guidelines for how regional areas for -- solid
waste management areas will be established, and then
state government must take those guidelines and, in
concert with local government, come to some decision on
how they are going to share the planning responsibilities
and what will constitute a regional solid waste planning
area.
Within 18 months of the enactment of the law,
which will be April ‘78, we are to issue guidelines for
what is a state solid waste management program.
Now, this is similar to what is required under
Subtitle D, of course, for hazardous wastes. These two
combined will define in clear terms what the federal
government considers to be acceptable for a state —-
comprehensive state solid waste management program.
(Slide No. 2.)
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Then the law goes on to require certain things
as minimum requirements for an acceptable state program.
And one of the first things that the state government must
do, must get together with local elected officials and
determine the relative roles and responsibilities for
each level of government for purposes of developing and
implementing a state plan.
Now, the law does not say what constitutes an
agreement between state and local elected officials. And
this is going to be a very interesting area as time moves
on here as to how state government and local government
will come together and agree on how state solid waste
plans will be developed and implemented..
Now, this implies, of course, that a state plan
necessarily must not be done by a state. It could be
done in cooperation, part of it done by local government
and part of it done by the state government. There is
nothing that demands that all planning for the state be
done by the state.
The plan must include mechanisms for the closing
or conversion of all open dumps and for the establishment
of only sanitary landfills in the future.
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The plan must provide a regulatory authority
program which would allow for the open dump and sanitary
landfill provisions to be met.
Nick mentioned earlier about the elimination of
any contractual constraints that would prohibit long—term
contractual arrangements between local government and
resource recovery facilities for the provision of solid
waste to that facility. Although this may not exist in
California, there are states that the state legislator --
state legislators and permissive legislation of state
government prohibits cities from entering into contracts
beyond five years.
This, of course, is very prohibitive when you
are starting to finance a large-scale capital facility
that would take 20 to 30 years to pay off over some sort
of a financing program. And if you can’t guarantee a
waste stream to that facility, there is just —— it is just
not going to get financing.
And, last, the law says that the state plans
shall provide that all solid waste that is not covered
under the hazardous waste provisions shall either go
through some mechanism for resource recovery, resource
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conservation, or shall go to sanitary landfills.
Okay. There is a financial assistance pro-
vision to the state and local governments for purposes of
developing and implementing state plans. Section 3011,
which Bill has already mentioned, provides for financial
assistance to develop state hazardous waste programs. And
there is $25 million authorized in each of the fiscal
years 78 and 79.
Now, the federal fiscal year starts October 1
each year, and so we are in Fiscal Year 78 -- Fiscal
Year 77. Fiscal Year 78 starts this coming October.
So there is no money yet authorized within the law for
this fiscal year’s activities under these authorities.
(Slide No. 3.)
Section 4008(a)(1) provides financial assistance
for the development and implementation of state plans.
It authorizes $30 million in Fiscal Year 78 and
$40 million in Fiscal Year 79. And this money goes
to states for state and local use for the development and
implementation of the state plan on a population formula
basis, strictly a very formulized basis based on the
1970 census of population.
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(Slide No. 4.)
Section 4008(a)(2) Nick has already discussed
to some degree. That provides for implementation of solid
waste management programs. This is for assistance to do
planning and feasibility studies, plan feasibility
studies beyond the original planning, bridge the gap,
consultation, surveys, technology assessment. This is
to local and state governments. It has to meet the land
disp?sal requirements in the guidelines issued by EPA, so
there are certain restrictions to the guarantees of this
money.
It is not on a formula basis. It is on a need
basis and a negotiated basis.
And there is $15 million authorized in each of
the Fiscal Years 78 and 79.
(Slide No. 5.)
Section 4008(e) is a real strange little section
of the law that authorizes special community grants,
two-and-a-half million dollars each year, ‘78 and ‘79,
for communities who have populations of less than 25,000;
75 percent of their solid waste comes in from outside
their boundaries and serious environmental problems that
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they can’t deal with.
This is a no-formula grant, also. It’s
obviously a special —— It was written especially for some
Congressional district that we don’t know about.
And -- Well, you know, I talked to the
Congressman’s administrative aide that put this in, and
I told him that, “Gee, you know, there is not any money
in the ‘78 budget for this.”
And he got very excited that the pork barrel
wasn’t being filled.
(Slide No. 6.)
Rural community assistance. This is money to
go to rural communities, which are basically community
populations of 5,000 or less, or a county population of
10,000 or less, or that have less than 20 persons per
square mile.
And there is another little twist in this about
the economic income level can’t exceed 125 percent of the
poverty level established by someone, and we don’t quite
know how all this goes together to formulize the money
out, but it goes to grants, it goes to states to assist
these rural communities. And there is $25 million
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authorized in each of the Fiscal Years 78 and 79. And
this is to assist rural communities to meet the open
dumping restrictions of RCRA; any demands that the Clean
Air Act would have, which is basically the elimination of
open burning, any demands from FWPCA where open dumps
may be causing water pollution problems, and only if there
is no regional system available that they could get into
or none in the planning stages, and it could go up to
75 percent of the cost, but you can’t buy land with the
money.
And those are the limitations on that authoriza—
t ion.
Okay. If you add all these numbers up, you
say how much do they really authorize for Fiscal Year 78
in all different aspects of the law. And if you include
the general authorizations as well as the financial
assistance programs, the state and local government and
the demonstration grant authorities, they authorize for
Fiscal Year 78 $181.25 million. That’s FY 78
authorization, and it goes up a little bit in ‘79.
Now, the law has some wording in there that
money cannot be funded for purposes of implementation of
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state and local programs. That money cannot be used for
salaries after December 1, 1979. So it would imply that
the Congress intended for a lot of this money to stop
very early.
And we have gotten a lot of feedback from
people that say, “Well, I’m not going to get involved in
a program. It’s just like so many federal programs. You
get us started, and then you cut the cord before we have
had a chance to stand on our own feet.”
And there is an interesting article prepared by
Senator Randolph that addresses this particular issue,
and he states in that article that it is not the intent of
Congress to let everybody sit around waiting for the other
shoe to drop; that they intend to do something with this
provision, but it was —— it was an expedience at the
time to make sure that the law did not get vetoed, because
there was strong resistance to this law on the part of
the past administration, strong resistance toward con-
tinuing financial assistance programs that never stopped.
There is some rationale over a period of time
trying to wean away so that you are not depending on the
federal dollar and the whims of the federal bureaucrats,
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so that provision will probably be modified.
We are already thinking about the next year’s
amendments to the law, and it’s just been passed almost
six months.
That covers the financial assistance programs
and the state and local program development. I will be
happy to entertain questions about any of the provisions
or how they should apply, anything about the budget or
any other aspects you have an interest in talking about.
CHAIRMAN CHANNELL: Yes. Questions or
comments? Yes, sir?
MR. L. HOLGREN (Mendocino County): In this
state, there’s been quite a push in recent years, which I
am sure you are familiar with, to get rid of open and
burning dumps, and yet the funding in the provisions for
rural communities are for getting rid of open dumps, so
it looks to me like it’s about three years late.
And I’m wondering if there is any provision
made for how that could be stretched to say we are still
having problems because three years ago, we got rid of an
open dump. Do we still have any line on some of the
funding?
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MR. HICKMAN: Well, you have to recognize the
law wasn’t written just for California. A lot of you
folks might not think that problem exists, but there is
a lot of places that are still open dumping.
MR. HOLGFtEN: You misunderstand. Because we
were three years ahead of the rest of the country, you
are then spending the money on the rest of the country
and not here.
• MR. HICKMAN: Well, you will get your share of
it on a formula basis, because it is based on population.
And the state, in concert with local government, will be
able to make judgments on how that money can best be
spent.
It may be that there are still communities here
in California that do have land disposal problems, rural
communities that would still qualify for assistance.
And, of course, there may be a tendency to try
to help some of these rural communities move toward a more
regionalized basis, helped by this assistance.
You are going to get your share based on a
formula, if any is appropriated.
CHAIRMAN CHANNELL: Yes, ma’am?
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MS. YVONNE SAN JULE (Association of Bay Area
Governments): I am representing the Association of Bay
Area Governments, a comprehensive regional planning agency
that has been planning for solid waste management for the
Bay Area under HUD 701 and comprehensive planning certifi-
cation and under Clean Water Act 208 designation.
I want to thank you for the opportunity to make
some suggestions about modifying the draft guidelines for
implementation of Public Law 94—580, specifically to
suggest that the guidelines for identification of regions
and of states and regional agencies to carry out solid
waste management planning recognize and take advantage of
the state—regional—local solid waste planning structures
that are already well established in some states, as well
as the existing nationwide strong substate comprehensive
planning framework that’s been fostered by the federal
government ever since 1962.
Pursuant to legislation related to the
Department of Transportation, to the Department of Housing
and Urban Development, to the Clean Water Act and
administrative acts of the Office of Management and
Budget, more than 44 states have designated substate
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districts in consultation with local elected officials in
order to identify one common set of uniform planning areas
for comprehensive planning, transportation planning and
water quality planning.
There are more than 600 multifunctional agencies
which have been formed pursuant to these acts, and 90 per-
cent of them have the governing bodies consisting of a
majority of locally elected officials, which are in some
of the criteria that are cited in this act.
To repeat the process for purposes of this act,
except under most extraordinary circumstances, would be
redundant, time consuming and costly. To repeat it in
states which have an established statutory state—regional-
local solid waste management planning and implementation
structure would compound the duplication and inefficiency.
ABAG recommends that the guidelines for desig-
nation of regions and state and regional solid waste
planning agencies be flexible enough to provide for a
shortened and simplified designation process for regions
which have already been recognized under federal planning
programs and for state solid waste management agencies
established by statute and for existing multifunctional
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regional planning agencies formed pursuant to federal
legislation.
Thank you.
CHAIRMAN CHANNELL: Yes, sir?
MR. DAVID STORM (California Department of
Health, Hazardous Waste Management): I guess this is
as good a point as any to make a prepared statement about
hazardous waste management.
The California State Department of Health is
pleased that the federal government has enacted the
Resource Conservation and Recovery Act of 1976, or RCRA.
This law will strengthen at least two aspects of our
present hazardous waste management program.
First of all, resource recovery, indirectly
resource recovery and also our enforcement efforts.
California’s Hazardous Waste Control Act, a pioneering
piece of state legislation enacted in 1972, places little
emphasis on resource recovery, and it establishes no
significant penalties for disobeying the law. The
requirements specified in RCRA have already enabled the
Department to initiate state legislation proposed to
correct these deficiencies.
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Under the authority of this legislation, the
Department of Health plans to assume leadership in resourc
recovery of hazardous wastes and to expand and vigorously
enforce its present statewide program. Implementing thes
plans will require the expenditure of considerable time
and manpower, and California is unable to provide the
total necessary funds.
The Department is concerned that Congress will
not appropriate all of the funds authorized by RCRA to
start or upgrade state hazardous waste management programs
If these funds are not appropriated, Congress may be
compelled to establish a prohibitively expensive ongoing
national hazardous waste management program to carry out
the will of the people.
And I would like to reiterate also what was
said previously, that I think that many states, talking
with the persons from other states, that other states are
going to be very hesitant to get into this hazardous
waste control effort if there is any possibility that
funds may stop in 1979. I think that this has been one
of the greatest detriments or problems involved in getting
state programs established is money. I know that the
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California Hazardous Waste Act was passed, just barely
squeaked through in 1972, because there was a provision
put in that law that the program had to be self—supporting.
We had to support ourselves on fees. Otherwise the prograr
never would have flown, and I know that in other states
their program or the legislation has been in some cases
very restricted because the state governments have been
hesitant to start funding of rather very ambitious and
expensive pollution, environmental protection programs.
In regard to the enforcement provision, this is
probably one of the most expensive aspects of state
hazardous waste management control. You need your
planners, you need your policy makers, but the program
simply won’t exist unless you have field people in the
field, either local and state, probably both, and regional
enforcing the regulations. To put an inspector in the
field with the equipment and backup, travel, will cost
you as much as a high—pay planner or manager in the
of lice.
So it does cost money, and the states are going
to need some kind of guarantee that they are going to have
the proper funding one way or the other past 1979.
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MR. HUMBER: Okay. I have a question for you.
I have heard the comments several times that our
hazardous waste program does not have any provisions or
incentives or inclusion of resource recovery, and you are
saying -— I have heard it said that the California
program did not originally, either.
Could you be specific on what changes are
proposed to the original legislation to include more on
recovery?
MR. STORM: Well, first of all, as was stated by
Mr. Sanjour, we believe that more stringent regulations,
No. 1, are going to encourage more recycling. As dis-
posal is proper, environmentally sound, disposal becomes
required and more practiced, it’s going to encourage the
industry to seek alternatives to very expensive land
disposal. I think that’s going to be one of the big
items right there. That’s the stick, so to speak. The
carrot we are still working on.
We would like to encourage and work with the
industry to inform them to find alternatives to land
disposal, providing or working with other -— with industry,
maybe providing lists of recyclable wastes. Perhaps one
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possibility, again going back to the stick, is to, once
the waste has been —- a market for a hazardous waste has
been well proven and established, restrict, severely
restrict, if not prohibit, disposal of that waste on the
land.
MR. HUMBER: Okay. Thanks.
MR. HICKMAN: I want to make clear one thing
about the financing. The limitation on the December 31st,
‘79, applies only to thos programs funded under Subtitle D,
which is the state-local program development, not Subtitle
C, the hazardous waste program. It’s only those programs
funded under Subtitle D.
I would also point out that, in the current
time, in the FY 79 budget funds, there are no funds
requested under Subtitle C, the hazardous waste program.
CHAIRMAN CHANNELL: Do we have any other
questions or comments on the last section before we get
to the general comment and discussion period?
MR. DANIEL KLIPPER: Could you clarify your
last statement on the fact that there are no funds under
Section C and also give just an overview on which funds
you expect to be appropriated rather than simply authorize ?
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MR. HICKMAN: The current budget request you
can break into three categories.
The first one is a $24.5 million budget request,
which covers all the general authorizations sections of
the law, demonstrations, technical assistance, etc.,
etc., etc.
Under Subtitle D, there is a budget request of
$12 million, and that money will be to state government
for -- and to local government for the development and
implementation of the state solid waste plans, which
will include all aspects of solid waste management, and
for the conduct of the inventory.
And then there is designated $5 million in the
208 budget, which will be used for solid waste implemen-
tation, and basically to fund implementation grant fund
programs under Subtitle D, that implementation section of
the law.
So you add $24.5 million and $12 million, and
another $5 million is $17 million, and it ’s $41.5 million
will be available in ‘78 under the current budget requests
for solid waste management from the federal government to
implement RCRA. That’s out of $180 million roughly.
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Now, that’s up from the Ford budget some. The
Ford budget was $5 million less than that.
CHAIRMAN CHANNELL: Yes? Any more questions on
program and development funds?
MS. ANNE BELL (Cal—OSRA Reporter): Does that
mean the balance of $180 million for Fiscal Year 78 is
for hazardous waste?
MR. HICKMAN: There is no balance. That’s all
there is. There is no more.
MS. BELL: You mean there is no money allocated
for Subpart C?
MR. HICKMAN: That’s right.
MS. BELL: How peculiar. Why is that?
MR. HICKMAN: That’s the way the budget came
out.
MR. SANJOUR: I think we ought to clarify what
numbers we are talking about here. What we are talking
about is what the administration is asking Congress for.
MR. HICKMAN: Right.
MR. SANJOUR: We are not talking about what
Congress has voted upon. This is a big distinction.
MR. HICKMAN: The logic prevails that you
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develop the plans before you implement the programs. Now,
within that $12 million, the current federal level of
support to state government for their programs is
$3 million. That $3 million is still in that twelve.
So that any program in theory that’s receiving financial
assistance now at the state level now will receive no
less, but they will probably receive no more for purposes
of implementing more intensified hazardous waste programs
unless the Congress installs more money in the budget.
MR. SANJOUR: In other words, the President
has not asked specifically for any funds for hazardous
wastes Congress may very well have its own opinion on
the subject since Congress originated this bill, not the
President, not the White House.
This was a bill where the initiative came
from Congress, not from the administration. So that’s
why the administration probably hasn’t asked for much
money. And I think the place to influence the funding
of this bill is in Congress, not with the administration.
CHAIRMAN CHANNELL: Any more on the funding?
Well, this is the period for those that wish to
make prepared statements that have not already done so to
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do so. I would like to make a couple of announcements
before we start.
One is a reminder that written statements can
be included in the record if they are received at our
office here in San Francisco by the 25th, two weeks from
today.
And also the records of the transcript can be
received from headquarters, when they are available,
upon request. There is an announcement back on the
table outside that gives the particulars, the individual
and the mailing address for this.
Although we haven’t announced it before, we are
incorporating a mailing list for solid waste materials
and for notifications of various regulations, proposed
rulemaking, etc., of the Act. Anyone that would like to
be on the mailing list for this can sign up at the
registration table before you leave.
Now, we have some 15 cards here that indicated
a desire to speak, or possibly speak. A number of these
have done so already. We will run through the ones that
have not spoken yet, and then the ones that have spoken
and see if they have any more to say, and then any others
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can be included.
Mr. Bill Lewis, do you have any further comment?
MR. LEWIS: No, sir. Thank you.
CHAIRMAN CHANNELL: Thank you.
Garrett De Bell, do you?
MR. DE BELL: No.
CHAIRMAN CHANNELL: Michael Anderson from
Santa Rosa Recycling. Michael Anderson?
J. 0. Frize, I believe it is, from Watson
Energy Systems? Prize?
Keith McHouten from Occidental Research?
MR. MC HOUTEN: No. Thank you.
CHAIRMAN CHANNELL: Richard Anthony from
SCS Corporation?
MR. ANTHONY: Yes.
CHAIRMAN CHANNELL: Mr. Anthony?
R. Burke from California Manufacturing
Associat ion?
Oh, Mr. Anthony.
MR. RICHARD ANTHONY (SCS Engineers): I really
don’t have a question or anything. I just have a state-
ment.
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I would just like to invite the people to come
here to San Luis Obispo on April 4th where you can witness
an implementation program in action in the field of
resource conservation. It is the implementation of
Project Source, which is the separation of office and
residential trash. It will be a source separation,
public participatory program where bottles, mixed metals,
mixed glass and newspaper will be put out on curb sides
for separate collection.
The whole town is participating in it. And
after five months of planning, we look forward to our
implementation date of April 4th, and it looks like it
will be a very successful program.
Thank you.
MR. HUMBER: Yes, thanks for mentioning that.
I encourage people to take a look at it because it will
be unusual in that a lot of the source separation, at
least as I understand it, will be from apartments; is
that correct?
MR. ANTHONY: Multiunit dwellings.
MR. HUMBER: Right.
CHAIRMAN CHANNELL: Daniel Klipper, do you have
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anything further?
MR. KLIPPER: No.
CHAIRMAN CHANNELL: H. E. Knowlton from Chevron?
MR. KNOWLTON: Nothing more.
CHAIRMAN CHANNELL: Nothing more.
Edward Sparks from Garden State?
Gilbert Bendix from the San Francisco Fire
Department?
Nat Haseltine from Chevron?
Yvonne San Jule from ABAG?
David Storm has already spoken.
Are there any people in the audience that would
like to make a statement that are not ——
Yes, sir?
MR. JOHN LANGFORD (Mono County): Yes, I have a
question.
Not too much has been said about source
reduction. It seems like this will minimize a lot of
problems if we could minimize waste generators, if we
can stop the wastes from being generated before they are
generated. We don’t want to eliminate that all together
because you will be out of a job.
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CHAIRMAN CHANNELL: No danger.
MR. HUMBER: How do you suggest we compromise
that?
MR. LANGFORD: One possible suggestion. Manu-
facturers and corporations, that kind of thing, indi-
viduals, is it possible —- Maybe it’s too much problem
involved -— that they be responsible for the waste they
eventually generate? They would be responsible them—
selv es for disposing of it.
MR. HUMBER: I’m not sure why they should be
any more responsible than you and I are for the waste we
generate. That’s an idea, I suppose.
MR. LANGFORD: I just wondered.
MR. HUMBER: I’m not sure why they should be
more accountable than you or I should be.
But the general question about the waste
reduction aspects of the bill, we have got current
activities implementing the federal guidelines for
beverage containers deposit systems. And I should add
that these are not just to encourage reuse, but to also
encourage recycling. And we see in Yosemite that that’s
quite a possibility. And the Resource Conservation
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Committee is looking at other approaches for waste
reduct ion.
MR. LANGFORD: The other thing I was thinking,
though, is a lot of wastes are eventually -- a lot of
wastes come from expensive materials and that maybe they
wouldn’t be —- maybe that would encourage producers to be
a little more selective in their methods of manufacturing
and packaging and that sort of thing.
MR. HUMBER: Yes, I agree. The same would be
true for you and me.
Yes, sir?
MR. WALTER CLARK (Fresno County): Fresno County
along with the other seven counties in California who
have gone through a two— or three—year period of developin
county plans for solid waste management working in conjunc
tion with the state, how does California’s program fit
in the program that you have mentioned briefly?
MR. HICKMAN: Well, of course, this question
comes up in any state that’s well into a regional planning
mode or finishing up their plans for some, you know, for
the state and at the local and regional levels.
The lady back in the back from ABAG made a
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comment about the draft guidelines that we have to issue
identifying regions for purposes of planning. And our
intent, of course, is to make those guidelines flexible
enough so that we can utilize to the maximum possible
extent any planning that’s been done in the past and is
underway now.
We are not new in the solid waste planning
field ourselves. The original act of 1965 provided
state planning grant assistance. The 1970 amendments
included state planning grant assistance as well as
regional and local planning grant assistance, and we
don’t want to go back and start all over again because
there is no reason to.
We hope the way we write the guidelines and
with the state and local government coming to agreement on
how they are going to do it, we will not duplicate or
repeat anything. We will take maximum possible
advantage of whatever is presently in place. That’s our
desire and wish and intent.
CHAIRMAN CHANNELL: Yes, sir?
MR. RODNEY LIND (Edwards Air Force Base): My
personal understanding of the bill is that the state
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requirements would be leveled on federal reservations.
My question is is this correct?
MR. HICKMAN: The law says that the Executive
Branch, which means the federal government Executive
Branch, will comply with all federal, state and local
regulations and standards, both substantively and pro-
cedurally. That’s what it says.
MR. LIND: All right. Has your department
discussed this with the Department of Defense?
MR. HICKMAN: We have discussed it with all
the departments, not only DOD, and there is a lot of
discussions and consternations about which standard or
regulation has precedent, you know, in an area where,
let’s say, a state regulation might be more stringent
than a federal requirement, what are our guidelines, or
vice versa, which one applies.
We don’t know. That’s an area of real strong
concern for us and the federal establishment and state
government, too. We are trying to work out all these
things so we can satisfy the intent of the law.
MR. LIND: This will be specifically addressed
in the ——
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MR. HICKMAN: It will be addressed somewhere in
some sort of a mechanism for us to state exactly how it’s
going to be done. We just don’t know yet. We are still
cogitating over it.
CHAIRMAN CHANNELL: Yes, sir?
MR. JAMES WITT (Pearl Harbor, Hawaii): I work
for the Navy, but do not represent the Navy.
I have a related question. What is the appli-
cability of this Act to federal facilities located on
foreign soil, such as in Philippines and Japan, and also
for the Island of Midway?
MR. HICKMAN: Well, I can’t remember exactly
what’s in the law. Under the old law and the way we
wrote our guidelines, we excluded federal installations
on foreign soil. We figured that they should comply with
whatever is going on over there.
Now, the law includes, for purposes of planning
and implementation, as I mentioned earlier, 56 states
now. It will apply in 56 states, and I don’t know where
Midway falls in that, if it’s part of the Marianas or the
trust territories or whatever it is.
MR. WITT: It’s all by itself.
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MR. HICKMAN: If it’s all by itself, it probably
is excluded then. I don’t really know then where it
would fall. Is it considered a trust, commonwealth, or
how does it belong to us? Do we own it?
MR. WITT: It’s a military base.
MR. HICKMAN: We OWfl it as what? Just a piece
of real estate like Yosemite?
MR. WITT: It is a military base right in the
middle of the ocean.
MR. HICKMAN: Is it like Yosemite Park? It’s
owned by the federal government?
MR. WITT: I would say so.
MR. SANJOUR: Are the natives citizens of the
United States?
MR. WITT: There are no natives.
MR. HICKMAN: I don’t know. I am going to
write that one down and find out. Thank you very much
for bringing that to our attention.
MR. SANJOUR: There is a nasty disposal problem
going on there. We have gotten some anonymous letters
from some of the military personnel living there sending
us pictures of all the bad disposal practices that are
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going on at Midway. Some people are concerned.
CHAIRMAN CHANNELL: Yes, ma’am?
MS. SANDRA MATITIAS (Southern California
Association of Governments): I hate to beat a dead
horse, but I also want to urge that whatever guidelines,
regulations, that come out of this Act do not duplicate
any effort that’s going Ofl in the State of California,
and particularly the Southern California region since we,
too, have 208 designations, AQMP designations, 201
facility plants and related programs.
And also I would like to say that usually at
meetings such as this, an elected official would be here
to give this presentation, but we are now in the midst of
holding our general assembly, and they regret they are
not able to be here to represent their areas. But they
will be sending their comments the next couple of weeks.
And, of course, as the guidelines come out and the
regulations come out, we will be making comments also.
Thank you.
CHAIRMAN CHANNELL: Thank you. We are looking
forward to receiving those.
Any further comments? Questions?
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MR. JAMES CUTLER (Contra Costa County); I would
just like to comment a little differently.
I’m speaking for myself now as an individual,
but there are a lot of designations. The regional
agencies have some prerogatives in solid wastes, local
government has others, in the State of California. Every
state is mandated to come up -— every county in the state
is mandated to come up with its own solid waste management
program. And in most of the counties this has now been
completed and is undergoing state review and they have
set up enduring institutions to Continue that on.
And I just think it should be one of the things
considered when guidelines are formulated on who’s going t
do the work.
CHAIRMAN CHANNELL: Any other statements?
Well, if there are no other statements, then we
will adjourn the meeting now, Thank you for coming.
(Whereupon the session concluded at the hour of
11:43 o’clock a.m,,)
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STATE OF CALIFORNIA )
0 SS.
City and County of San Francisco )
I, ThOMAS R. WILSON, hereby certify that the
proceedings in the Public Discussion Sessions on Resource
Conservation and Recovery Act, PL 94-580, held by the
United States Environmental Protection Agency, Region IX,
San Francisco, California, at the Holiday Inn, 480 Sutter
Street, San Francisco, California, on March 10—11, 1977,
were taken down in shorthand by me, a Certified Shorthand
Reporter and a disinterested person, at the time and place
therein stated, and that the proceedings were thereafter
reduced to typewriting under my supervision and direction.
I further certify that I am not counsel or
attorney for either or any of the parties to the said
proceedings, nor in any way interested in the event of
this cause, and that I am not related to any of the
parties thereto.
IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand
and affixed my seal of office this 15th day of March,
1977.
OFF AL SEAL __ __ ____
THOMAS R. WILSON NOTARY PUBLIC in and for the
NO1ARY PUULIC CALIFORNIA City and County of San Francisco,
j f- RlNCIPAL OFFICE IN
o ’ SAN FRANCISCO COUNTY State of California
My Commission Expires February 28, 1978
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