In what should be welcome news to industry and others who generate hazardous waste in California (including contaminated soil), the California Environmental Protection Agency (CalEPA), through the Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC), released a Draft Hazardous Waste Management Plan: A Modern Approach to a Circular Economy (Plan) on March 15. As provided in the Plan, DTSC proposes to potentially simplify the characterization of hazardous waste, provide for alternative management standards for certain hazardous wastes, and adopt certain existing U.S. EPA recycling exemptions and exclusions.
The Plan is DTSC’s first statutorily required triennial statewide hazardous waste management plan, required to provide recommended goals to reduce the amount of hazardous waste generated or disposed of, and recommendations for changes to statutes and regulations that may create impediments to waste reduction, and regarding the criteria used to identify hazardous waste.
Serving as a comprehensive planning document for the management of hazardous waste, a source of useful information to guide state and local hazardous waste management efforts, and a guide for implementing DTSC’s hazardous waste management program, the Plan itself has no regulatory effect. It is organized into 10 goals, each with specific recommendations intended to address the challenges of California’s hazardous waste management system. The recommendations include:
- To ensure generators can utilize all aspects of the hazardous waste management hierarchy in support of a circular economy, amend California’s lower tier permits (permit by rule, conditional authorization, and conditionally exempt) for onsite treatment.
- Evaluate how to incentivize protective hazardous waste management facilities in California to facilitate progress toward the state’s circular economy goal, including consideration of whether DTSC should adopt any federal recycling exemptions or exclusions available under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA).
- Revise DTSC’s hazardous waste code identification system, including modifying California Waste Codes 611 (contaminated soil from site cleanups) and 181 (other inorganic solid waste) to be more descriptive (e.g., clarify that not all contaminated soil comes from cleanup projects).
- Evaluate and identify protective alternative management standards for non-RCRA soil identified as hazardous due to the solubility of inorganic constituents to be disposed of in nonhazardous waste landfills.
- Conduct an evaluation of the aquatic toxicity test method, including determining whether an aquatic toxicity criterion is currently necessary and considering whether wastes identified as hazardous, solely based on the aquatic toxicity, are candidates for alternative management standards.
- Evaluate the Waste Extraction Test (WET) to ensure the relevance of WET to modern landfills.
- Conduct an evaluation of non-RCRA metals to ensure comprehensive management for environmental safety; analyze whether the reasons California identified non-RCRA metals as posing a potential threat still exist.
- Continue evaluating existing and new test methods and standards for the identification of hazardous waste.
- Determine if increasing fees on certain waste streams could result in a negative overall impact on human health and the environment, including researching to what extent fees for contaminated soil generation could discourage site cleanups, or other construction-type projects, which could increase risk to nearby communities.
- Establish a DTSC hazardous waste reduction program that emphasizes source reduction and other pollution prevention (P2) tools like alternative technologies; the program could promote legitimate recycling and treatment as additional options within the P2 framework.
The Board of Environmental Safety (BES) will hold three public hearings across the state to gather feedback on the Plan. After making any necessary revisions, BES expects to vote on approval of the Plan in July. More information is available at Hazardous Waste Management Plans | Department of Toxic Substances Control.