Prospects for an Electronic Hazardous Waste Manifest

The Uniform Hazardous Waste Manifest (“Manifest”) is the cornerstone of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (“RCRA”). A manifest must accompany almost every shipment of hazardous waste in the United States and it tracks the waste from “cradle to grave”.  The requirement for a manifest has been around since 1981 and throughout this 26 year period the manifest has always been a paper document. However, this may be about to change as EPA and company’s like Safety-Kleen are trying to move manifesting into the 21^st century.

This effort to modernize manifesting started on May 22, 2001 when EPA issued a proposal to revise the paper manifest and proposed the creation of an electronic manifest, or “e-manifest” (http://www.epa.gov/fedrgstr/EPA-WASTE/2001/May/Day-22/f11909.htm ). In this original proposal, EPA outlined several possible formats for an e-manifest and paper manifest. However EPA quickly learned that it was too difficult to tackle both of these issues simultaneously and shortly after this proposal was published they decided to work on the paper and e-manifest separately (FYI - on March 4, 2005 EPA published its final rule for the paper manifest).

To address the possible approaches to an e-manifest the EPA held a two day public meeting in May of 2004. Stakeholders from the EPA, States, generators, transporters, and RCRA permitted facilities participated in this meeting. EPA followed this meeting up on April 18, 2006 when they published a Notice (“NODA”) (http://www.epa.gov/epaoswer/hazwaste/gener/manifest/pdf/noda-06.pdf ) that outlined the preferred approach devised in the 2004 meeting, and requested comments on this approach. This approach had three key elements:

1. The proposed e-manifest system would be centralized at the EPA with information flowing from the regulated community (generator, transporter, and RCRA permitted facility) to the EPA, and the EPA would disseminate the information to the respective State(s).
2. The proposed system would utilize a “Share in Savings” approach that would have an independent contractor build the system and charge a user fee to the regulated community to use it. The user fee would be based on the cost of the system and not be a revenue source for the Federal budget.
3. EPA would need to get legislation approved by Congress and signed by the President to move forward with the system.

Shortly after this Notice was published, a Bill, S. 3871, the “Hazardous Waste Electronic Manifest Establishment Act”, was introduced in the Senate. Hearings were held in the Senate on this Bill in September of 2006.  Fred Florjancic, CEO and President of Safety-Kleen Systems joined representatives from the EPA, States, and technology industry to testify at this hearing (a copy of his testimony is available at http://epw.senate.gov/public/109th/Florjancic_Testimony.pdf). All parties testifying generally supported this Bill. Unfortunately, it was too late in the Congressional session and no further action was taken on it by Congress.

EPA has continued work on moving legislation forward in the new Congress. At the time of this writing, no Bill for e-manifesting has been introduced. However, it is likely that one will be introduced soon. As noted earlier, EPA will be unable to move forward with their preferred option for e-manifesting without the legislative authorization to do it.

If legislation is enacted, EPA believes they can have enabling regulations published within a year and a contractor designed system available within another one to two years.

So what are the chances we will see an e-manifest in the future? They appear to be very good – it is just a matter of when. The U.S. is rapidly embracing electronic methods for previously manual tasks. It is hard to believe that the EPA will leave a core RCRA program with a paper system, when a better e-system is available. However, predicting when the moment will be right to move the required legislation through Congress is impossible.

Safety-Kleen will be publishing updates to this developing issue on its website as they occur.

If you have questions about the e-manifest, please contact Safety-Kleen’s Mike Fusco at (610) 558-3186 or mike.fusco@safety-kleen.com. The next topic to be addressed on the safety-Kleen website will be on the EPA’s efforts to modify the Definition of Solid Waste.  The draft proposed rule has been published in the Federal Register and the public comment period is open.