Corrective Action in the United States

Corrective Action in Environmental Law

The Resource Conservation and Recovery Act governs, among other things, permitting at facilities that treat, store, or dispose of hazardous waste. To ensure that permitted facilities are not breeding grounds for new hazardous waste sites, the law requires not only state-of-the-art engineering from the date of the permit forward, but also cleanup of current or previous releases. This is called corrective action.

Any part of a treatment/storage/disposal facility may be considered a discrete unit for the purposes of managing hazardous waste; it is called a solid waste management unit (SWMU). Units include lagoons, tanks, waste piles, landfills, and other types of containments. Permits must require corrective action for any unit from which hazardous waste or hazardous constituents have been released. All hazardous waste treatment/storage/ disposal facilities must have a permit to operate, whether they already existed when the law took effect or are built after the requirements for facilities were enacted. Existing facilities were generally defined as those in existence on November 1980.

New facilities need a permit before construction begins; existing facilities submit an application and then operate as an “interim facility” until a permit is issued or the interim status is revoked. Two different sets of regulations apply to interim facilities and permitted facilities, but they are the same in the important details, such as monitoring, reporting, training, emergency response, and corrective action. Major modifications of a facility or its activity must go through the permitting process as well.

Basically, the government will conduct an assessment when a permit application comes in, and in many ways the process is similar to a Superfund assessment [see Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act]. The permit itself will require corrective action for future releases and a plan to correct any current problems with a schedule for compliance. It will also require financial assurance from the permittee.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has finalized some regulations on corrective action. One of them deals with a corrective action management unit. This regulation is important not only in treatment/storage/ disposal facilities, but also at Superfund sites. Prior to the regulation, wastes could not be moved or consolidated on a site, even if that proved to be the wisest action, because placement of hazardous waste on land is prohibited by the land ban. Now, though, a site may be designated by the EPA regional administrator as a corrective action management unit. Placing waste within that unit does not constitute land disposal. However, a corrective action management unit can only be used to manage wastes from the remedial action. Design, site monitoring, groundwater monitoring, closure, and post closure procedures must be approved by the EPA.
Based on “Environment and the Law. A Dictionary”.