Abstract
At the moment, formal risk assessment plays only a small role in hazardous waste management: Superfund remedial sites are ranked in accordance with risk assessments, for instance. Before the Superfund Amendments of 1986, the present Administration made some efforts to use formal risk assessment and management techniques to set the boundaries of cleanup at Superfund sites. As is well known, these efforts were abandoned as impolitic and impractical, and Congress closed this door by adding Section 121 to Superfund, setting a target of national environmental quality standards for cleanup, with only a narrowly drawn variance procedure for risk assessment to creep back in.1 That action seemed to end the last important use of risk assessment in the hazardous waste program. (I speak only of risk assessment for regulatory purposes, and not the assessment of claims exposure that may be needed for insurance purposes.)
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Notes
Holmes, O. (1881) The Common Law 1.
The United States Public Health Service provided assistance of about $5,000,000 per year to local governments for solid waste disposal research from the early 1950s under authority of the Public Health Service Act. 42 U.S.C. §§ 241 and 261(a) (public health research and vector control); see Kovacs and Klucsik (1976), The New Federal Role in Solid Waste Management: The Resource Conservation and Recovery Act of 1976, 3 Colum. J. Envtl. L. 3:205. Modern statutes begin with the Solid Waste Disposal Act of 1965, Pub. L. No. 89–272, tit. II, 79 Stat. 997 (assistance to states to develop solid waste disposal plans), amended by Resource Recovery Act of 1970, Pub. L. No. 91-512, 84 Stat. 1227 (guidelines and grants for demonstration facilities), completely revised by Resource Conservation and Recovery Act of 1976, Pub. L. No. 94-580, 90 Stat. 2795 (comprehensive regulatory scheme for waste disposal), amended by Quiet Communities Act of 1978, Pub. L. No. 95–609, § 7, 92 Stat. 3079; Solid Waste Disposal Act Amendments of 1980, Pub. L. No. 96–482, 94 Stat. 2334; Used Oil Recycling Act of 1980, Pub. L. No. 96-463, 94 Stat. 2055; Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980, § 37, Pub. L. No. 96–510, tit. III, § 307, 94 Stat. 2767; Hazardous and Solid Waste Amendments of 1984, Pub. L. No. 98–616, 98 Stat. 3221.
Bok, E. (1921). The Americanization of Edward Bok. pp 255–256.
See Gilliam, A. (1979). Voices for the Earth: A Treasury of the Sierra Club Bulletin xix–xxi, pp 499–500.
See, e.g., Novick, S. and D. Cottrel (Eds). (1971). Our World in Peril, an Environment Review.
See, e.g., Anderson, F., A. Kneese, R. Stevenson, and S. Taylor, (1977). Environmental Improvement Through Economic Incentives, pp. 4–6, 41–45; Thompson, D. (1973). The Economics of environmental protection, pp 8–11.
Commoner, B. (1971). The Closing Circle, pp 295–296.
See, e.g., Federal Water Quality Administration, Department of Interior (1970).Clean Water for the 1970s: A Status Report, pp. 16–17, 23.
Id. See Wilkins (1980), The Implementation of Water Pollution Control Measures — Section 208 of the Water Pollution Control Act Amendments, Land and Water L. Rev. 15: 479, 480 (1979) (ineffectiveness of Section 208 attributable to Congressional naivete); Comment, Enforcement of Section 208 of the Federal Water Pollution Control Act Amendments of 1972 to Control Nonpoint Source Pollution, Land and Water L. Rev. 14: 419, 446 (section 208 not effective to control nonpoint source pollution due to EPA unwillingness to compel production of state programs); but see Mandelker (1976), The Role of the Comprehensive Plan in Land Use Regulation, Mich. 1. Rev. 74: 899 (Section 208 is a useful planning tool).
Ruckelshaus, W. (1985). Risk, Science, and Democracy, issues in sci. and tech., Spring 1985, at 19.
Clean Air Act § 112, 42 U.S.C. § 7412; see Ruckelshaus, supra note 48, at 21–22. For a brief account of EPA’s vacillations, see Smith, (1982) EPA’s Permitting Requirements for Land Disposal Facilities, Nat. Resources L. Newsletter 15:1.
The Reagan Administration effort in 1981 and 1982 to reorganize EPA and to conserve funds for hazardous waste cleanup produced a spectacular confrontation with the Democratic majority in the House of Representatives. EPA Administrator Anne Gorsuch was forced to resign and hazardous waste program chief Rita Lavelle served a prison sentence for perjuring herself before a Congressional committee. The scandals attracted public attention and gave irresistible force to Congressional proposals for strict regulation of hazardous waste. See, e.g., Lash, J., K. Gillman and D. Sheridan (1985), A Season of Spoils; Burford, A., and J. Greeya (1986), Are You Tough Enough?
Levine, A. (1982). Love Canal: Science, Politics, and People, pp. 2, 16–21.
See Stever, D. (1986). The Law of Chemical Regulation and Hazardous Waste § 6.02.
See generally, S. Novick, D. Stever and M. Mellon (eds.) (1987). Law of Environmental Protection 1: § 3.
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© 1990 Kluwer Academic Publishers
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Novick, S. (1990). An Environmental Perspective on an Integrated Waste Management Strategy. In: Kunreuther, H., Gowda, M.V.R. (eds) Integrating Insurance and Risk Management for Hazardous Wastes. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-2177-1_9
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