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1976 RCRA and 1980 CERCLA
  • RCRA of 1976 established a regulatory system to manage hazardous wastes from the time they are generated to their final disposal.
  • CERCLA’s passage in 1980 launched the Superfund program, which gave the federal government, authority to take direct action to respond to emergencies involving uncontrolled releases of hazardous substances.

1976 RCRA

Passage of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) was the first comprehensive federal effort to deal with the hazardous waste problem. RCRA established a regulatory system to manage hazardous wastes from the time they are generated to their final disposal. RCRA also imposes standards for transporting, treating, storing, and disposing of hazardous wastes. It is designed to prevent the creation of new hazardous waste sites by authorizing the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to take administrative, civil, and criminal actions against facility owners and operators who do not comply with RCRA requirements.

1980 CERCLA

Many hazardous waste disposal sites were created prior to the passage of RCRA. These sites were often abandoned and contained unknown quantities of unknown wastes. The discovery and subsequent publicity of hazardous waste sites such as Love Canal and Valley of the Drums made it acutely apparent that existing regulatory requirements were not enough.

The federal government sought to obtain the authority needed to deal with threats from hazardous substance sites to human health and the environment. The Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) was designed to provide this authority. CERCLA’s passage in 1980 launched the Superfund program. This Act gave the federal government, for the first time, authority to take direct action or force the responsible party to respond to emergencies involving uncontrolled releases of hazardous substances. The statute also required the federal government to develop longer-term solutions for the nation’s most serious hazardous waste problems.

CERCLA gave authority to the President who, in turn, issued Executive Order 12316 delegating primary responsibility to EPA for managing activities under the Superfund program. The activities under the Superfund program include:

  • Identifying sites where releases of hazardous substances had already occurred or might occur and pose a serious threat to human health, welfare, or the environment;
  • Taking appropriate action to remedy such releases; and
  • Ensuring that parties responsible for the releases pay for the cleanup actions. This payment could be either the initial funding of cleanup actions or the repayment of federal funds spent on response actions.

To pay for federal response actions, CERCLA created a Trust Fund, or “Superfund,” of $1.6 billion. This Trust Fund was financed primarily with a tax on crude oil and 42 commercially-used chemicals. The tax supports the concept that those responsible for environmental pollution should assume the cost. Thus, even though the Superfund program may finance the response action, recovery of these federal funds is sought from those parties responsible for the hazardous release.

It should be noted that in November of 1990, Congress extended Superfund’s statutory authority through 1994 and the taxing authority through 1995. However, these taxes expired in 1995 and have not been reauthorized by Congress since.