The Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) Essay

The Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) - Essay Example It is, however, not far from criticisms. The major problem with the RCRA is that the implementation of RCRA rules and regulations requires huge amount of paper work which sometimes become quite frustrating for the corporate managers Introduction The Resource Conservation and Recovery Act was enacted in 1976. This act was introduced as an amendment to the then existing Solid Waste Disposal Act. Household as well as hazardous solid wastes are regulated by RCRA. Since its initiation, this act has been amended by a number of times. The years which experienced amendments to this act are 1978, 1980, 1984, 1988 and 1996. Most of this amendments caused significant coverage areas of the act. Most of the programs under RCRA have been designed to offer risk-free handling of hazardous as well as non-hazardous wastes. This paper seeks to offer a detailed discussion on the history, coverage, current status and shortcomings of the Resource Conservation and Recovery act. At the end, it will make an attempt to provide some solutions to the problems associated with RCRA. (Dennison, 1993). History of RCRA Earlier, state and local governments use to assume the responsibilities of regulating solid wastes generated by households and industries. Particularly, .before 1965, there was no such regulatory authority for that could handle the issues relating to solid wastes. During this time, most of the solid wastes were deposited through the method of open dumping. This kind of open dumping had not at all been environment friendly. In 1965, the Solid Waste Disposal act was enacted to deal with waste disposal methods. It started to look for environment friendly options of waste disposals. In order to reduce negative impacts of open dumping of wastes, it provided financial aids to local and state governments to appropriate waste disposal methods. In 1970, the Solid Waste disposal Act was amended to become the Resource Recovery Act and then in 1976, it was further amended to form the Resour ce Conservation and Recovery Act. (Dennison, 1993). The goal behind the enactment of RCRA was to eliminate all the remaining loopholes in environmental regulations with respect to disposal of hazardous and non-hazardous wastes on land. Through the enactment of this act along with the subsequent amendments, federal government tried to address a set of requirements. First of all, through this act the government placed its focus on the importance of systematic management of households and industrial wastes. Second, the government made an attempt to recognize the requirement of special arrangements in dealing with wastes of hazardous nature. Finally, the act took into account a number of provisions for encouraging conservation of resources as well as their reuse or recycling. (Teets et al, 2003) Coverage of RCRA RCRA comprises of four different types of programs in order to implement the goals that as set up at the time of its initiation and subsequent amendments. The first program has been designed for encouraging states to build and promote plans for managing household non hazardous wastes. The second program has been directed towards setting up of a ‘cradle to grave’ mechanism in order to monitor and control the deposition of hazardous non-household wastes. The third program has been introduced to regulate storage in underground tanks with the help of a program known as the Underground storage Tank program. The fourth