Hazardous Waste

HAZARDOUS WASTE is industrial waste that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) designates as dangerous to the environment or the public health. The EPA mandates that hazardous waste be managed and disposed of using specific methods. There are five methods used to treat hazardous waste including being deposited in a deep well, a pond, a landfill, the ocean, or in an incinerator, detoxified, recycled, or reused.

Unfortunately, 68 percent of the hazardous waste in the United States is managed by disposal, 5 percent is burned, and 5 percent is recycled. Industrial facilities that produce hazardous waste are required to handle and store the waste properly and either treat it themselves, or transport it to other sites with legal permits to treat or dispose of the waste. Between 700,000 and 1 million hazardous-waste generating facilities exist in the United States.[Page 388] These facilities produce 1.1 trillion pounds of hazardous waste. The EPA reported in 1990 that approximately 211,000 of these hazardous waste facilities were in direct violation of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act.

Congress enacted the Resources Conservation and Recovery Act in 1976 to regulate hazardous waste generation, management, and disposal. Toxic waste-generating facilities or manufacturing companies are greater than the 2,025 facilities that exist to dispose or treat the waste. Additionally, it is quite common for many of these waste-generating facilities to perform illegal operations, such as the 22-percent of hazardous wastes that are discharged into streams and sewers. Facilities that specialize in the management, but not the generation of hazardous wastes, are called treatment, storage, or disposal facilities, or TSDFs, but they handle only about 2 percent of the hazardous waste produced. Most research examining hazardous waste has focused on these TSDFs that are under much more stringent legal standards than the facilities that generate the waste. Research examining TSDFs reveals that such facilities are more likely to be placed in areas with poor households or in predominantly minority areas.