You are here:
FIELD TEST OF THE PROPOSED REVISED HAZARD RANKING SYSTEM (HRS)
Citation:
OSWER, U. E. FIELD TEST OF THE PROPOSED REVISED HAZARD RANKING SYSTEM (HRS). U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, DC, EPA/540/P-90/001 (NTIS 90-222746), 1990.
Impact/Purpose:
to inform the public
Description:
The Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act of 1986 (SARA) requires the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to revise the Hazard Ranking System (HRS) so that, to the maximum extent feasible, it accurately assesses the relative risks associated with actual or potential releases of hazardous substances from a site. The Conference Report on SARA (H. Rep. 962, 99 Cong., 2d Sess. at 199-200 (1986)) makes clear that this mandate does not require detailed risk assessments, but directs EPA to rank sites as accurately as feasible based simply on information available from preliminary assessments and site inspections consistent with the goal of "expeditiously" identifying candidates for response actions. In addition, SARA specifically directs EPA to: • Assess how surface water contamination affects the human food chain and recreational use of surface water. • Consider potential contamination of ambient air as well as actual contamination. • Give a high priority to sites which have contaminated principal drinking water supplies. • Consider the quantity, toxicity, and concentrations of hazardous constituents in wastes generated primarily by combustion of coal or other fossil fuels (e.g., fly ash, bottom ash, slag waste). In response to these mandates, EPA proposed HRS revisions for public comment on December 23, 1988 (53 FR 51962). The HRS is used to assess the relative risks posed by releases or threatened releases of hazardous substances from a site, and as a means of identifying releases as national priorities for further investigation and possible remediation. The HRS assigns numerical values (according to prescribed rules) to factors that characterize the potential of any given release to cause harm to public health or the environment. The values are then combined and used to yield a single score that is designed to indicate the potential hazard posed by each site relative to other sites. EPA initiated a field test of the proposed HRS revisions1 to help assess the costs and implementation concerns associated with the modifications. The field test had several major objectives: • To test the feasibility of implementing the new and expanded proposed revised HRS factors. • To determine the resources required (i.e., costs and technical hours) for specific tasks under the proposed revised HRS. • To assess the availability of information that would be needed for the evaluation of sites with the proposed revised HRS and to identify difficulties with its use. The Agency tested the proposed revised HRS by performing inspections at 29 sites nationwide. Sites were not randomly selected, but were primarily selected with characteristics that would help evaluate the proposed new components of the HRS.'In actuality, a "draft" version of the proposed revised HRS was tested. Differences between the "draft" proposed revised HRS and the proposed revised HRS are slight, and essentially all components of the proposed revised HRS were tested. The differences are described in Section 1.5.