Letter from ORCR's Director
Dear Colleagues and Friends of the Office of Resource Conservation and Recovery,
Our mission in ORCR is to protect human health and the environment by promoting the conservation of resources, ensuring proper waste management, preventing harmful exposure, and overseeing the cleanup of land for productive use. I’ve highlighted just a few of our accomplishments below and strongly encourage you to read the full Office of Resource Conservation and Recovery FY24 Accomplishments Report (pdf) .
The newly rebranded Hazardous Waste Cleanup Program, formerly called the RCRA Corrective Action Program, provided program and technical support for regions and states — work with a huge economic impact. Our latest annual study found that business activities occurring at 126 facilities where cleanups have been partially or fully completed employ more than 112,000 workers, with estimated sales of more than $45 billion and an aggregate income of more than $10 billion.
Our international work advanced equities on numerous fronts, ensuring hazardous waste moved safely across borders and that solid waste management was adequately addressed in international agreements.
In FY24, we continued work on a comprehensive funding strategy to support Tribal Nations’ waste management systems. We conducted six site visits, gathering the data needed to estimate funding needs for all 574 federally recognized Tribes across the nation. We also continued our collaboration with Tribes and the Indian Health Service to address open dumping. To date, we have assessed over 150 open dumps and uploaded our data to the Operations and Maintenance Data System so that these sites become eligible for Indian Health Service funding for cleanup or closure.
In October of 2023, we released a new Wasted Food Scale. The new scale replaces our previous Food Recovery Hierarchy — dating back to the 1990s! — and reflects the latest science. Decisionmakers can use this tool to understand the best options for managing food waste in terms of environmental impacts.
In December of 2023, we improved the scientific rigor behind the Waste Reduction Model by releasing version 16 for public comment, as well as a data quality analysis and a peer review of the model. WARM provides high-level comparisons of potential greenhouse gas emission reductions, energy savings, and economic impacts when considering different materials management practices such as recycling, composting and landfilling, among others.
In April of 2024, we published the final denial of a petition to classify discarded polyvinyl chloride, a type of plastic commonly known as PVC, as a hazardous waste under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. In the final denial we concluded that the petition did not provide sufficient information to justify listing discarded PVC as a hazardous waste.
In May of 2024, we published the final approval of a variance petition from the U.S. Department of Energy for the Hanford Site in Washington State. This will help ensure that treatment and disposal of 2,000 gallons of low-activity radioactive and hazardous waste is done in a manner that minimizes threats to human health and the environment.
In July of 2024, we published a final rule to expand the e-Manifest system to include export manifests and other manifest-related reporting. EPA, states, and territories will now receive this information directly from the e-Manifest system, which both reduces the paperwork burden and improves data access.
In response to the 2021 Executive Order on Improving the Nation’s Cybersecurity, our RCRAInfo team worked with the Central Data Exchange group in EPA’s Office of Mission Support in FY24 to implement multi-factor authentication, ensuring a seamless transition for over 100,000 industry users. We also launched Cost Pro software in RCRAInfo, meeting a key permitting program priority. Cost Pro provides the ability to calculate the costs incurred at RCRA Subtitle C facilities for activities such as cleanup efforts and for closure and post-closure work.
At the tail end of the fiscal year, we launched the updated “Biennial Report” module within RCRAInfo. The Biennial Report data are vital for understanding the state of hazardous waste generation and management, both nationally and at the state and local levels. These data provide key insights into the volume and types of wastes generated as well as waste management industry trends.
We completed six economic analyses, incorporating quantitative estimates of the benefits that come from reducing a range of health effects. The economic analysis for the updated Residential Soil Lead Guidance was one of the first such analyses to estimate the number of cases of cardiovascular disease avoided by reducing lead exposure, and presents the monetary benefits that come from this reduction of cases in the U.S.
We processed 150+ funding actions, committing over 90% of our extramural resources. We also made more than $112M of infrastructure investment funds available to EPA regions who awarded those funds to states, tribes, and communities.
We communicated all the above work through 10 national press releases, as well as many social media posts, enhanced educational graphics, and improved and expanded web content. We responded to more than 180 inquiries from reporters, and our webpages were viewed almost seven million times.
To say I am proud of the work our Office does is an understatement. We continue to support EPA’s regions, as well as states, Tribes, local communities, NGOs, associations, other federal agencies, and industry. Perhaps most importantly, we continue to protect the approximately 5.3 million people living within one mile of permitted hazardous waste facilities, and everyone else who is impacted by both municipal solid waste and hazardous waste management practices.
I thank each of you for your contributions to these immensely impactful accomplishments, and I look forward to achieving even more with you next year.
Sincerely,
Carolyn Hoskinson
Director