Once considered the “third pollution” after air and water, hazardous waste is taken very seriously today. These byproducts of modern life may be liquid, solid, or sludge, but they are always either inflammable, corrosive, chemically reactive, or toxic, and often all of the above. While the idea of handling and disposing of them properly sounds like common sense, this wasn't always the case. For decades, Americans were oblivious to, ignorant of, or simply disregarded the threats posed by mishandled waste products. Heavy industries are not the only culprits; hospitals, universities, research facilities, and small businesses such as dry cleaners and service stations are also potential offenders. The United States' incredible industrial growth after World War II was matched by a surge in demand for new chemicals and products, including plastics, nylon, and coated paper goods. Our appetite for material goods also created the problem of how to manage the stupendous amounts of waste byproducts. Most of it was dumped where it was generated, often into a water body or simply on the ground. The larger the industrial site, the more likely it was to have a “back 40”, with pits or trenches for waste disposal. The nastier it was, the more likely the stuff would be discarded as quickly and quietly as possible. Individuals followed suit, pouring motor oil, paint thinner, pesticides, and other wastes onto the ground and into storm drains. We can only estimate the environmental damage, and much of it is probably long-lasting. The Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) of 1976 was the big brother of the Superfund law I discussed last month. “Rick-rah” was enacted to make fundamental changes in how the US manages and disposes of the huge volumes of municipal and hazardous waste its industries produce. It helps identify those who generate, treat, store, or dispose of such waste materials. In signing the law, President Ford called hazardous waste disposal “one of the highest priority environmental problems confronting the nation”. RCRA is administered by the US EPA's Office of Solid Waste and, by specific authorization, various state agencies. In essence, it details the EPA's comprehensive waste management and pollution prevention programs. Manifestly different from early pollution control programs that focused on reactive, “end-of-pipe” regulations, RCRA established a regulatory structure for managing hazardous waste from the moment it is generated to its ultimate treatment, storage, or disposal at new “TSD facilities”. It also established a system for managing non-hazardous solid wastes, such as household garbage, as well as regulations regarding underground tanks that store petroleum or hazardous substances. In contrast to backward-looking laws like Superfund, RCRA is proactive – it tells you what must be done now and can or cannot be done in the future. Decades in the making, RCRA was also a prescient law, in force almost 4 years before Superfund and over 2 years before the first Congressional hearings on Love Canal. For several years before its passage, the EPA had testified in Congress on the horrific state of hazardous waste disposal; by 1978, the agency had collected a dossier on over 600 hazardous waste disaster sites around the country. Ironically, environmental regulations led to many of the problems that RCRA now addresses. New pollution-control technologies produced unexpected and sometimes concentrated hazardous wastes. Air pollution control devices such as scrubbers capture large amounts of particulate and gas wastes. Wastewater treatment plants produce hazardous sludge, and use tons of activated carbon to clean water every year. Municipal incinerators produce huge volumes of ash laden with heavy metals. For years, these byproducts of environmental protection went straight to dumps and landfills. As our knowledge about the health and environmental impacts of waste disposal improved, Congress vastly expanded RCRA. The first set of amendments, in 1980, dealt with “midnight dumping” – haulers who disposed of hazardous waste as cheaply as possible, in sewers, alongside roads, and other accessible, out-of-the-way places. The solution was to track waste “from cradle to grave”, from generator to disposer. That same year, a Los Angeles company was allowed to build the nation's first waste disposal facility, a solvent storage facility in Henderson, Colorado. Amendments in 1984 established systems for classifying what qualifies as hazardous waste and, starting in 1990, for controlling the materials' fate even further, especially in land disposal cases. The amendments also dealt with solid (primarily non-hazardous) waste, and set the stage for the comprehensive jurisdiction, in 1988, of regulated substances stored in underground tanks. In almost 30 years, RCRA has become a shining regulatory success story for the EPA. The agency reports that in 1980, nearly 50 000 businesses generated hazardous waste in countless different forms, and over 30 000 other businesses qualified as TSD facilities. (Disposal ran the gamut from dumping in landfills to converting coal tar waste into shampoo ingredients.) Today, less than 20 000 facilities generate hazardous waste, and there are fewer than 1000 permitted TSDs in existence. Douglass F Rohrman