Applicable Or Relevant And Appropriate Requirements

Applicable or Relevant and Appropriate Requirements in the United States

Applicable or Relevant and Appropriate Requirements (ARARs) in Environmental Law

Standards used to determine the extent of cleanup necessary at a Superfund site. Superfund sites are hazardous waste sites that are so badly contaminated that the federal government has put them on a list (the National Priority List) because they pose a danger to human health or the environment. At these sites, the government forces the individuals or companies that may have contributed to the problem to clean up the mess. Once the actual work begins, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) must decide what results will be satisfactory. A crew cleaning up large amounts of lead in the soil, for example, must know when they can stop that is, how much lead, if any, will be allowed to remain in the soil? The EPA may determine that the site will be considered clean when the excess is removed, neutralized, or contained. A number of guidelines are used to decide cleanup goals, such as the nearness of the site to populated areas, use of the groundwater in the presence of intercepting water bodies, and the federal and state statutes and regulations that make up the ARARs.

The first word in the acronym ARARs is the word “applicable.” It refers to legal requirements that apply precisely to a problem at the site. For example, if the groundwater is part of a public water supply, the maximum contaminant levels found in the Safe Drinking Water Act and the associated regulations must be met. If surface water is being treated and discharged, it has to meet the requirements of the Clean Water Act. Air emissions must comply with the Clean Air Act. If the state where the Superfund site is located has stricter standards, the applicable requirement will be based on state law.

Applicable standards may also pertain to the type of pollution control used during the cleanup, if a law or regulation exists that specifies it. For example, if hazardous waste is being burned in a cleanup, the EPA regulations may require that the incinerator have a particular piece of control equipment to ensure that hazardous substances are not released during the combustion process.

“Relevant and appropriate requirements,” the second part of the ARARs acronym, describes standards that do not specifically apply to the conditions at a Superfund site but should be used because a similarity exists. For example, if the groundwater is not used as a public water source, the Safe Drinking Water standards are not applicable, but the government could use them because they are relevant.

ARARs are used in the Superfund program’s cleanup process to determine what type of remediation and control technology must be used. The Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act (SARA) of 1986 added ARARs to the statutory list of items that had to be included in the regulations for cleanup of Superfund sites. Those regulations, revised many times since 1980, are called the National Contingency Plan (NCP). They provide a blueprint for dealing with remediation of hazardous waste sites. According to statute, remedial actions cannot be inconsistent with the National Contingency Plan.

When the EPA began using ARARs as standards for cleanup prior to the Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act it left itself a way to escape the harshness of strict compliance. The rigid use of ARARs at Superfund sites could result in costly and possibly unnecessary cleanup, so the EPA used what it called an alternative concentration limit (ACL) in those situations. In order to justify using an alternative to ARARs, the EPA had to be convinced that the contamination on site would not impact a drinking water source or cause a health or safety problem.

When the Superfund law was amended, Congress shrank the EPA’s ability to use alternative concentration limits. Since then, they have practically disappeared. SARA requires the use of ARARs. An exemption from their use may be obtained, but only if the president determines that it is merited based on specific conditions.

Superfund sites are the worst of known environments. Each site is unique, and the EPA must evaluate every one individually. The process of determining how the site should be treated is called Remedial Investigation/ Feasibility Study (RI/FS). It is during this procedure that the ARARs are identified.
Based on “Environment and the Law. A Dictionary”.


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