United States Environmental Protection Agency            
Solid Waste and Emergency Response
Office of Solid Waste, OSW (Note:  Office of Solid Waste, OSW, was renamed Office of Resource Conservation and Recovery, ORCR, on January 18, 2009)(5305W)
November 1998
                                               
EPA530-F-98-029


Environmental Fact Sheet: Final HWIR-MEDIA Rule
 

What is the HWIR-media rule?

The HWIR-media rule is a final regulation that is part of
President Clinton's March 1994 environmental regulatory
reform initiative. The rule sets new requirements under the
Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) for hazardous
remediation wastes that are treated, stored, or disposed of
during cleanup actions. Specifically,  the rule 
 
   - Makes permits for treating, storing, and disposing of   
     hazardous remediation wastes faster and easier to       
     obtain

   - Provides that obtaining these permits will not subject  
   the owner and/or operator to facility-wide corrective     
   action

   - Creates a new kind of unit called a "staging pile" that 
    allows more flexibility in temporarily storing           
    remediation waste during cleanup 

   - Excludes dredged materials from RCRA Subtitle C if they 
    are managed under an appropriate permit under the        
    Marine Protection, Research and Sanctuaries Act or the   
  Clean Water Act
       
   - Makes it faster and easier for States to receive        
     authorization when they update their RCRA programs to   
     incorporate revisions to the Federal RCRA regulations.
 

What is the background for this rule?

On April 29, 1996, EPA proposed new regulatory provisions
entitled "Requirements for Management of Hazardous
Contaminated Media" (61 FR 18780). That proposal, also known
as the "Hazardous Waste Identification Rule for Contaminated
Media" (or HWIR-media), included a broad range of potential
reforms. Among those reforms, EPA proposed options for
excluding contaminated media and other remediation wastes
from Subtitle C. For the reasons described in the following
paragraph, EPA is not finalizing those broad reforms in the
HWIR-media final rule, but instead is finalizing only the
reforms listed at left. EPA has already finalized the 1996
proposed provisions for standards for hazardous soils. These
provisions were in the May 26, 1998, Phase IV final rule (63
FR 28556).

Although EPA conducted a lengthy outreach process before
developing the HWIR-media proposal and tried to balance the
concerns and interests of various stakeholder groups, it is
clear after reviewing public comment on the proposal that
stakeholders have fundamental disagreements on many
remediation waste management issues. EPA has concluded that
pursuing comprehensive regulatory reform would be time- and
resource-intensive and would most likely result in a rule
that would provoke additional years of litigation and
associated uncertainty. This uncertainty would be
detrimental to the program and would have a negative effect
on ongoing and future cleanups. Therefore, EPA is
withdrawing the proposed options for broad reformsțsuch as
those that exempted remediation wastes from Subtitle Cțand
is, instead, finalizing only those reforms listed.  

One of the 1996 HWIR-media options proposed was the
withdrawal of the Corrective Action Management Unit (CAMU)
rule because its flexibility would be replaced with the
proposed broad reforms. However, because EPA is not
finalizing those broad reforms, the CAMU rule will be
retained as it currently exists in 40 CFR Section 264.552
 

Does the HWIR-media rule apply new mandatory requirements?

No. Adoption of the requirements of this rule is optional
for authorized state RCRA programs because these
requirements are less stringent then the existing
requirements. Even after these new regulations are adopted
and authorized for state programs, facilities may choose not
to take advantage of them and may choose, instead, to comply
with the traditional requirements for hazardous waste
management.  
 

Is EPA changing policies that currently provide flexibility
for remediation waste management?

No. Existing areas of flexibility for the management of
hazardous remediation waste such as the "contained-in" and
"area of contamination" policies and site-specific land
disposal restrictions treatability variances continue to be
available. 
     

What impacts does EPA expect the HWIR-media rule to have?

EPA anticipates that the HWIR-media rule will 
   - Eliminate existing regulatory disincentives to          
     remediation

   - Make site cleanup faster and easier 

 and thus 

   - Provide increased protection to human health and the    
     environment.


For More Information

The Federal Register notice and this fact sheet are
available in electronic format on the Internet through the
EPA Public Access Server. The notice is available 
http://www.epa.gov/rules, regulations,and legislation. This
fact sheet and other documents related to this rule are 
available under "EPA Offices and Regions."  Write to the RCRA Information Center
(5305W), US EPA, 401 M Street, SW, Washington, DC 20460.