Documents on Trash (2)

National Environmental Policy Act of 1969
NEPA is the basic national charter for protection of the environment. It establishes policy, sets goals and provides means for carrying out policy.

Clean Air Act 1970
The Clean Air Act is the comprehensive Federal law that regulates air emissions from area, stationary, and mobile sources. This law authorizes the U.S. EPA to establish National Ambient Air Quality Standards to protect public health and the environment.

The goal was to set and achieve standards in every state by 1975. The Act was amended in 1977 to reset goals (dates) since many areas of the country had failed to meet the deadlines. The 1990 amendments to the Clean Air Act were intended to meet unaddressed or insufficiently addressed problems such as acid rain, ground-level ozone, stratospheric ozone depletion and air toxins.

Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act 1972 The primary focus of FIFRA was to provide federal control of pesticide distribution, sale and use. Anyone using pesticides must take exams for certification, register when purchasing them and follow strict guidelines when using them, so they will not cause unreasonable harm to the environment.

Endangered Species Act 1973
The Endangered Species Act provides a program for the conservation of threatened and endangered plants and animals and the habitats in which they are found. Species of plants and animals are listed and the law prevents any action that results in the “taking” of a species, or adversely affects their habitat. The regulation of pesticides is included in this law.

Safe Drinking Water Act 1974
This act was established to protect the quality of drinking water in the U.S. This law focuses on all waters, whether above ground or underground sources.

Resource Conservation and Recovery Act 1976
RCRA (pronounced “rick-rah”) gave EPA the authority to control hazardous waste from the “cradle-to-grave.” This includes the generation, transportation, treatment, storage, and disposal of hazardous waste. RCRA also sets forth a framework for the management of non-hazardous wastes.

The 1986 amendments to RCRA enabled EPA to address environmental problems that could result from underground tanks storing petroleum and other hazardous substances. RCRA focuses only on active and future facilities and does not address abandoned or historical sites.

The federal Hazardous and Solid Waste Amendments (HSWA) (pronounced “hiss-wa”) are the 1984 amendments to RCRA that required phasing out land disposal of hazardous waste. Some of the other mandates of this strict law include increased enforcement authority for EPA, more stringent hazardous waste management standards, and a comprehensive underground storage tank program.

Toxic Substances Control Act 1976
This act was designed to give EPA the ability to track the 75,000 industrial chemicals currently produced or imported into the U.S. EPA screens these chemicals and can require testing of those that may pose an environmental or human-health hazard. It also tracks the thousands of new chemicals produced every year.

Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (Superfund) 1980 This law created a tax on the chemical and petroleum industries to allow Federal authority to respond to releases of hazardous substances that may endanger public health or the environment. Over five years, $1.6 billion was collected into a trust fund for cleaning up abandoned or uncontrolled hazardous waste sites.

Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act 1986
EPCRA was enacted by Congress as the national legislation on community safety. This law was designated to help local communities protect public health, safety, and the environment from chemical hazards.

Oil Pollution Act 1990
OPA strengthened EPA’s ability to prevent and respond to catastrophic oil spills. A trust fund financed by a tax on oil is available to clean up spills when the responsible party is incapable or unwilling to do so. The OPA requires oil storage facilities and vessels to develop plans for what to do if there was a spill.

Pollution Prevention Act 1990
The Pollution Prevention Act focused industry, government, and public attention on reducing the amount of pollution through cost-effective changes in production, operation, and raw materials use. Opportunities for source reduction are often not realized because of existing regulations, and the industrial resources required for compliance, focus on treatment and disposal. Source reduction is different and more desirable than waste management or pollution control because it gets to the root of the problem.

Pollution prevention also includes other practices that increase efficiency in the use of energy, water or other natural resources, and protect our resource base through conservation. Practices include recycling, source reduction, and sustainable agriculture.

Waste Management and Littering and Illegal Dumping Laws

Laws are made by people at the local level by borough, township, city, and county officials, at the state level by legislators, and at the federal level by Congress. Federal laws affecting the environment, such as water and air quality and waste management, are enforced by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. These laws are like an umbrella covering all 50 states. The states then make laws conforming to the federal laws, but they may be stricter, depending on local issues and environmental concerns of the people.

In Pennsylvania, the legislature enacted the Pennsylvania Municipal Waste Planning, Recycling, and Waste Reduction Act, known as Act 101, in 1988. The act came on the heels of federal regulations passed about the same time that regulate waste hauling, handling of municipal solid waste, hazardous waste, and new laws on the construction of landfills. Those new laws resulted in the closure of many landfills located just outside of individual communities, because they were not lined and did not comply with the new regulations. Numerous landfills were then constructed with liners to better protect groundwater.

Pennsylvania’s Act 101 places the responsibility of collection of municipal waste with municipalities, cities, boroughs, and townships. Counties must adopt waste management plans and provide for disposal capacity for waste generated by people in each county. Typically, capacity is assured through contracts between county officials and landfills or waste-to-energy facilities, which incinerate trash.

The act also set new standards for recycling in Pennsylvania, requiring all communities with 5,000 or more people and a population density greater than 300 people per square mile to recycle at least three items. Schools, institutions, commercial establishments, and businesses in those communities are also required to recycle. The act set 25 percent of the waste stream generated by Pennsylvanians as a recycling goal. When the goal was met, the state legislature then adopted Act 57 of 1997 which set a new goal of 33 percent.

To help communities set up recycling programs, Act 101 imposed a $2 per ton fee on each ton of trash disposed at Pennsylvania landfills or incinerators. The fee, reauthorized by Act 57, is used to fund grants to counties and municipalities for recycling programs. Funding for these Growing Greener Grants, as they are called, was approved again in 2002 by upping the tipping fee to $4 for each ton of trash disposed at Pennsylvania landfills or incinerators.

Communities that are required to recycle, known as mandated communities, adopted local laws, or ordinances, to make local requirements for their recycling programs. Local ordinances also may determine how trash is collected at the curb, may prohibit open burning and dumping on private and public property, may require permitting or licensing of waste haulers, and may provide for contracting with waste haulers.

While some local governments prohibit littering and illegal dumping through ordinances, the activities are also prohibited by a number of state laws. Local police or code enforcement personnel may enforce the local laws. Pennsylvania State Police, Game and Fish Commission officers, or Department of Environmental Protection staff may enforce state laws.

Penalties for violating local, state, or federal laws, may include the following:

Paying fines
Going to jail
Having your vehicle taken away from you
Having to pay for site cleanup or security
Taking ownership of your property
Taking away your licenses or permits
Requiring you to perform community service activities

Some of the fines and penalties collected are used for litter or illegal dumping prevention programs. For example, some fines collected may be placed in accounts used to pay citizens as reward money, or the money can be earmarked for illegal dump cleanups. Sometimes judges require people found guilty of breaking these laws to perform environmental community service projects such as trash cleanups or beautification projects.

PA Department of Environmental Protection