HWIR-Media Rekindles Corrective Action Management Unit Rule

Abstract

Recently, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) made a decision to change the general framework of the proposed regulations for the Hazardous Waste Identification Rule for Contaminated Media, or HWIR-Media. The EPA now plans to promulgate only targeted elements of the HWIR-Media proposal rather than go forward with a more comprehensive approach as described in the original proposal. They also plan to leave the corrective action management unit regulations in place, rather than withdrawing these regulations, as proposed in April 1996. After receiving fundamental disagreements from the public on many remediation waste management issues, the EPA concluded that pursuing comprehensive regulatory reform would be a time and resource intensive process that would most likely provoke additional years of litigation and uncertainty. This uncertainty would negatively impact ongoing and future cleanups. Based on these conclusions, the EPA decided that a regulatory response would not solve the remediation waste management issues that HWIR-media was designed to solve. The targeted elements EPA plans to promulgate include: alternative land disposal restriction treatment standards for hazardous contaminated soil; streamlined permitting for cleanup sites that would eliminate the requirements for facility-wide corrective action at cleanup-only sites; options for remediation piles that resolve issues raised in the public comments; and a Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) exclusion for dredged materials managed under Clean Water Act or Marine Protection Research and Sanctuaries Act permits. The EPA is not planning to finalize the portions of the HWIR-Media that distinguish between lower- and higher-risk contaminated media and would have provided the flexibility to exempt lower-risk contaminated media from RCRA requirements. Existing areas of flexibility for the management of hazardous remediation waste such as the “contained-in” and area of contamination policies, and site-specific land disposal restriction treatability variances, continue to be available.