EPA revises rules for reporting hazardous waste
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said it has revised its Uniform Hazardous Waste Manifest regulations intended to standardize the content and appearance of manifest forms, making them available from a greater number of sources.
The revisions also adopt new procedures for tracking certain types of waste shipments, including hazardous wastes that destination facilities reject, wastes consisting of residues from non-empty hazmat containers, and wastes that enter or leave the United States.
'This rule affects up to 139,000 entities in at least 45 industries,' the EPA said in a statement. Industries affected include marine cargo handling, container terminal facilities, trucking and warehousing, construction and excavation, lumber and wood products, food products, coated fabrics, petroleum and coal products, electronic equipment and industrial machinery.
In May 2001, the EPA published a notice of proposed rulemaking to revise the nation's hazardous waste manifest system. The revisions aimed to reduce the manifest system's paperwork burden on users, while increasing the effectiveness of hazmat manifests as tools to track waste shipments.
The EPA proposed reforms of two types: revising the manifest system itself, and revisions aimed at replacing the paper-based system with a nearly paperless 'e-manifest.'
Among the 64 sets of public comments received by the EPA, 'a substantial number' took issue with 'the technical rigor' of the e-manifest proposal, the EPA said.
'We believe that the comments addressing the e-manifest proposal raised significant substantive issues that merit further analysis and stakeholder outreach prior to adopting a final approach,' the EPA explained late last week.
'The comments received in response to the form revisions proposal, on the other hand, raised fewer difficult issues that would deter us from going forward at this time with a final rule. Therefore, the EPA has decided to separate the e-manifest from the form revisions portion of the final rulemaking,' the EPA said.
The new rules, which now affect only the manifest form revisions, adopt 'relatively minor changes in response to public comments. For example, we accepted the great number of comments urging the EPA not to retain any manifest data fields as optional,' the agency said.
As a result, waste code and handling code fields on the forms are now mandatory and must be completed on all manifests.
The final rule affecting hazmat manifest forms goes into effect on Sept. 6. The EPA said it expects to issue its decision on the future direction of the e-manifest by the end of fiscal year 2005.
For more information, visit http://www.epa.gov/edocket or contact either Bryan Groce, (703) 309-8750, groce.bryan@epa.gov, or Richard LaShier, (703) 308-8796, lashier.rich@epa.gov, in the EPA's Office of Solid Waste.