ABSTRACT

The Solid Waste Disposal Act (SWDA) of 1965 was primarily the first federal attempt to manage municipal solid waste (Title 40 CFR Parts 240-257). Those regulations were primarily directed at the management of municipal solid waste (Subtitle D facilities) and established the initial framework for future solid and hazardous waste management. The Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) was passed in 1976 and established statutory requirements and the basis for the management of “hazardous” wastes. This Act was actually an amendment to SWDA and imposed requirements for tracking solid and hazardous wastes from generation through final disposal (i.e., cradle-to-grave). The Hazardous and Solid Waste Amendments (HSWA) of 1984 amended RCRA and corrected some of its initial shortcomings. Some important programs developed as a result of the HSWA amendments, including (1) Land Disposal Restrictions (LDR) program; (2) Underground Storage Tank (UST) regulations; and (3) a switch in the testing of certain “toxic” wastes by the Extraction Procedure to the Toxicity Characteristic Leaching Procedure (TCLP).