Legislation Comprehensive Environmental Response

Two pieces of legislation that address tlie growing concern about tlie accumulation of liaztirdous and toxic chemicals are the Resource Consen ation and Recovery Act (RCRA) of 1976 and the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability. Act (CERCLA). 

In the U.S., three pieces of federal legislation that were passed from 1969 to 1980, and the implementing rules and regulations that followed, initiated a series of fundamental changes in the management of waste and byproduct materials. They presently affect the way in which regulatory agencies address waste and byproduct material use. These acts include the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA, 1969), the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA, 1976, 1980), and the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liabilities Act (CERCLA) or Superfund (1980). 

The public and legislative debate which led up to the Enactment of the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980 ("Superfund") focused extensively on assessing the risks from old hazardous waste dump sites. Indeed, much of the controversy and difficulty in enacting the bill was a result of greatly differing perceptions about the risks posed by old dump sites and exposure to minimal levels of hazardous waste. 

This chapter focuses on RAP for waste management, primarily that required under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) but also, to a lesser extent, that conducted under the authority of the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA). Many of the principles discussed herein are also applicable to RAP under other environmental laws, including the Clean Air Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act, the Clean Water Act, and state-specific environmental legislation. 

With the passage of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act in 1976 and the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (i.e., Superfund) in 1980, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) entered a new era in regulation. Due to these key environmental legislation acts, the EPA s list of hazardous compounds expanded, which placed additional burdens on the EPA s Contract Laboratory Program. Turnaround time from the contract laboratories was typically greater than 30 days [108] and this was not acceptable for the many critical and timely decisions that had to be made for the remediation of contaminated sites. Consequently, field-analytical methods were developed to supplement laboratory-analytical methods. 

From the start, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has been inescapably involved in this problem through the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act and earlier legislation, but since 1979 it became evident that EPA s normal resources were quite inadequate to deal with the overall problem in a timely way. Therefore in late 1980 the Comprehensive Environmental Compensation and Liability Act of 1980 (the Superfund Act) was passed. The Act revises a more limited National Contingency Plan to permit response to hazardous substances and to provide extra funds for EPA to tackle the problem. 

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