Dangerous Wastes
Pope, Samuel S. Epstein, Lester O. Brown, and Carl
Dangerous Wastes HAZARDOUS WASTE IN AMERICA by Samuel S. Epstein, Lester O. Brown, and Carl Pope Sierra Club Books. 592 pp. $27.50. Samuel Epstein, Lester Brown, and Carl Pope have written what...
...This is also why what Hazardous Waste in America says (and fails to say) is so important...
...Ultimately, the authors believe that this regulatory framework is insufficient because long-range protection from hazardous wastes can be ensured only by eliminating their production and use...
...The appendices include EPA's state-by-state listing of potentially hazardous sites, EPA's top 115 Superfund sites, technical information about various wastes, organizations with information on the hazardous waste issue, and a description of the "Hunt the Dump" campaign run by the Sierra Club and Environmental Action...
...Unfortunately, the authors neglect the quiet revolution in state regulation of hazardous waste...
...Everyone knows (or should know) that there is a problem, but not many people know what to do...
...Unfortunately, the EPA under the Carter Administration delayed the required regulations and then issued others that did not control many of the problems RCRA addressed...
...It is this transition that Hazardous Waste in America fails to address...
...As a Michigan Congressman, David Stockman once criticized toxic materials legislation because much of the stuff that gets us through daily life is highly toxic...
...In order to get the law passed, however, its sponsors agreed to reduce the size of the clean-up fund, financed by a special tax on the chemical industry, and to drop provisions making it easier for injured persons to recover in court...
...For existing problems, the authors want more government funding for research on clean-up technology and the effects of improper disposal, more money for the Super-fund, and a national "superfund corps" of clean-up experts...
...As RCRA provides, it is the states, not the EPA, that are to control hazardous waste...
...The authors describe the passage of Federal legislation for controlling and cleaning up hazardous waste and the development of regulations by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to implement them...
...These are important studies, but they cover the same ground Michael Brown did in a poignant volume in \%Q {Laying Waste...
...They contaminate ground and surface water and the soil, and they pose increasingly greater risks to more and more people...
...They endorse a California plan to impose a higher fee on land disposal of certain wastes to encourage alternative treatment methods...
...The law provides for a $1.6 billion clean-up fund for hazardous waste disposal sites, and it also imposes clean-up responsibility on those who operate or use such sites...
...These wastes, many of them long-lived, are often carcinogenic or otherwise highly toxic...
...They also want Congress to prohibit certain uses of toxic chemicals unless manufacturers can demonstrate their efficacy and the absence of less harmful alternatives...
...They also provide clear explanations of the technical issues concerning ground water contamination and methods of disposal...
...Hazardous waste disposal and transportation have been suddenly subjected to intense regulatory scrutiny after decades of sleepy neglect...
...This is precisely why control of hazardous waste will require fundamental changes in how our economy and society operate...
...Hazardous Waste in America is comprehensive and compelling, although there are a few important omissions...
...The authors' argument is that the "improper disposal of hazardous waste is now America's number-one environmental problem...
...The last half of the book, including its fourteen appendices, is a citizen's guide to the legal and technical issues...
...Against this background, Hazardous Waste in America provides readers with some basis for taking action...
...Samuel Epstein, Lester Brown, and Carl Pope have written what is easily the best book on the dangerous-waste issue for a general readership...
...RCRA also allows EPA to let states continue regulation of hazardous waste if they make their programs at least as stringent as the Federal regulations provide...
...Some seventy-six billion pounds of hazardous wastes from organic and inorganic chemicals, primary metals, and other materials were generated in 1978 alone...
...A technical issue such as soil porosity, for example, may form the legal basis for a state decision to approve or deny a disposal site permit, or to take enforcement action...
...The issue itself is becoming more complex and technical...
...The most basic law, the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act of 1976 (RCRA), requires EPA to set out criteria for identification of hazardous wastes, to establish record keeping, labeling, and transporting requirements for firms generating such material, and to publish standards for hazardous waste transportation and storage...
...There are still midnight dumpers, but the generators and haulers are now a highly regulated (if not always effectively so) industry in most states...
...The long-term stability of disposal sites or the development of all necessary disposal technologies are simply too uncertain...
...The early chapters are devoted to case studies, including Love Canal, which involved families or communities whose drinking water suddenly began to taste and smell bad, whose cattle began to keel over, whose family members or animals became inexplainably ill...
...Just as state courts are taking a leadership role in the protection of individual rights as the 3urger Court abdicates that role, so are state regulatory programs gearing up to control hazardous wastes as the EPA drops out...
...The first half of Hazardous Waste in America is an accurate but fairly standard attack on a thoughtless and irresponsible industry, a Congress that compromised away significant parts of new hazardous-waste legislation, and an agency that fudged even more because of intense political pressures...
...The states are the focal point for this issue...
...Under the Reagan Administration, the EPA is even worse, with its budget and staff cuts, relaxed regulations, and reduced Federal enforcement...
...Reduction or nonuse of hazardous materials, they conclude, will require a mix of regulatory and market incentives...
...Only 10 per cent of these wastes were properly disposed of, while the rest were dumped in sewers, unlined lagoons, casual landfills, the oceans, and everywhere in between...
...They describe, for example, the strengths and weaknesses of pretreatment disposal techniques, deep-well injections of wastes, incineration, and plain burial...
...John Dernbach (John Dernbach, a lawyer, has written extensively on environmental issues...
...The authors also describe how the Federal Superfund law was passed in the 1980 lame-duck Congressional session...
...They also believe that Congress should make it easier for persons to sue &nd be compensated for their injuries...
...Epstein, Brown, and Pope outline both common-law and statutory liability for hazardous wastes, problems in hazardous-waste litigation such as causation and latent injuries, and what people can do to investigate and force the clean-up of hazardous waste sites...
Vol. 47 • January 1983 • No. 1
