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HANDBOOK: STABILIZATION TECHNOLOGIES FOR RCRA CORRECTIVE ACTIONS
Citation:
METCALF AND EDDY, INC. HANDBOOK: STABILIZATION TECHNOLOGIES FOR RCRA CORRECTIVE ACTIONS. EPA/625/6-91/026 (NTIS 92-114495), 1991.
Impact/Purpose:
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Description:
On November 1984, Congress enacted the Hazardous and Solid Waste Amendments (HSWA) to the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA). RCRA requires a corrective action program that prevents hazardous constituents from exceeding concentration limits at the compliance point (i.e., the boundary of the waste management area) if any contaminant level exceeds the groundwater, surface water, air, and soil protection standards. Among the most significant provisions of HSWA are §3004(u), which requires corrective action for releases of hazardous waste or constituents from solid waste management units (SWMUs) at hazardous waste treatment, storage, and disposal facilities seeking final RCRA permits; and §3004(v), which compels corrective action for releases that have migrated beyond the facility property boundary. Under Subpart S of the RCRA regulations, requirements for corrective action at SWMUs are currently being drafted. The final Subpart S rule will establish the basic direction and goals for the program.
The overall goal of the RCRA corrective action program stabilization initiative is to, as soon as possible, control or abate imminent threats to human health and the environment from releases from RCRA facilities, and to prevent or minimize, the further spread of contamination while long-term remedies at facilities are pursued. Using sound engineering judgment, stabilization actions, implemented under the interim measures authority of the RCRA corrective action program, could achieve rapid source control, stabilization, containment, or other results to significantly reduce the severity of a problem at a site. By setting priorities based on the environmental severity of sites, the U S Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) plans to include more sampling appropriate to technology selection during the site investigation phase of the RCRA correction action process to allow development of specific corrective action provisions in permits and orders, particularly for interim measures. Guidance is provided herein on identification of the types of environmental settings that should be the focus of stabilization actions, on technical approaches to accelerate data gathering in support of decisions on appropriate stabilization measures, and on phasing the RCRA Facility Investigation process to gather the necessary data to make timely decisions within the framework of the existing corrective action program.