Resource Conservation and Recovery Act

Goals

Gerald Ford signed the RCRA shortly before losing the 1976 U.S. presidential election to Jimmy Carter. Originally, it looked as though Carter was going to ask for the act's full funding in his budget. His Presidential Urban Policy Program (PUPP) grants provided a funding mechanism for the RCRA budget. The new act still provided funding for new technology, but it also focused on providing administrative help to cities considering the new processes. The goal was to assist cities with all of the legal and financial issues involved in establishing a resource recovery plant. A total of 63 cities received PUPP grants to build plants. Unlike the RRA, this money was only given to cities using an already-tested technology, rather than to those demonstrating a new type of method. Carter proposed to give over $2 billion [Page 749]to fund research for resource recovery techniques that could produce synfuel, which could be used for transportation (oil was the most pressing resource shortage at the time). After he lost the 1980 presidential election, however, those plans were abandoned.

Shift to Hazardous Waste

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had always felt that hazardous waste disposal was a more appropriate federal issue than the highly localized and ubiquitous issue of solid waste management. When the Love Canal disaster began to receive a great deal of media attention in late summer of 1978, the U.S. Congress began to shift its concern to hazardous wastes, passing the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA), also known as the Superfund, in 1980. The idea of resource recovery had been very popular with Congress, but by the end of the decade, politicians wondered why more cities were not building resource recovery plants. It had funded the demonstration of technologies and it had helped cities navigate through the legal and financial obstacles, but the only places that tried resource recovery were the ones getting paid to do so. Congress had expected the federal funding to give cities a boost into resource recovery but not to be a continuous source of financing. Furthermore, federal support for MSW management did not mesh with the funding priorities of the Reagan administration, which cut the Office of Solid Waste Management down to one employee in 1981. By the 1982 Senate hearings to reauthorize RCRA, nearly all of the discussion focused on hazardous waste management.

Even though RCRA stopped funding resource recovery efforts and shifted its focus to hazardous wastes, the act permanently changed solid waste management in the United States. It finally banned all open dumps, and it required all new disposal sites to be approved and permitted, as well as to meet state and federal regulations. Subtitle D landfills, named after Subtitle D of the RCRA, were the new standard. Landfills had to be located in areas where they would not likely affect any nearby sources of water. Additionally, they had to be lined with layers of clay and plastic. In some cases, it took over a decade for cities and states to develop the new required solid waste management plans and implement new landfill laws. Even though the new landfills were far safer than the old open dumps, their expense made them larger and more centralized. Consequently, they met with increasing resistance from people who did not want to live near other people's trash. A common solution to the problem became the exportation of MSW. By the 21st century, all states were importing or exporting waste. Some worked with a neighboring state toward a regional solution, but others sent their waste to open areas across the country. This phenomenon is at least partially a result of RCRA regulations.

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