Hazardous Waste and Superfund : Few Changes and Little Progress

This book chapter, which appears in John C. Dernbach, ed., AGENDA FOR A SUSTAINABLE AMERICA (Environmental Law Institute, 2009), assays the ways in which U.S. domestic laws that pertain to hazardous waste have or have not conformed to norms of sustainable development in the years since 2002. After defining sustainability as it pertains to hazardous waste, and after exploring some critical features of current U.S. law and policy respecting the remediation and management of such waste, the chapter argues that, notwithstanding past progress, significant legal changes are need to move the U.S. toward sustainable development in this critical area. Specifically, the chapter contends that new legislation is needed to mandate phased decreases in the volume of hazardous waste generated at industrial facilities. Needed reforms must also encompass replenishment of the Superfund trust fund through renewal of the Superfund petroleum tax and modification of the statute's secured creditor exemption. The chapter also advocates U.S. ratification of the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movement of Hazardous Waste, along with the enactment of new amendments to the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act to clarify that Act's definition of hazardous waste, and to expand its regulatory coverage to include both hazardous waste-bearing domestic sewage and irrigation return flows