Dear HCN:
Please accept our thanks
for the article on solid-waste management in rural areas (HCN,
3/7/94). It may well be the fairest treatment we have seen of these
rules designed partly to keep today’s landfills from becoming
tomorrow’s Superfund sites.
One point, however,
could have alarmed some small landfill operators. In discussing the
Natural Resources Defense Council lawsuit against EPA, Ed Quillen
said rural counties in arid areas lost an exemption EPA had granted
earlier and were left with only a six-month extension of an
original compliance date of Oct. 9, 1993.
It’s a
bit more complicated than that. On that date, we published a series
of time extensions for landfills of various sizes to come into
compliance. Landfills receiving more than 100 tons per day had to
meet the Oct. 9 deadline. Those receiving more than 20 tons per day
but less than 100 got the extension until April 1994 that Quillen
mentioned. Small landfills in arid regions were given a two-year
extension, until Oct. 9, 1995.
EPA will use that
time to decide on what groundwater monitoring requirements to place
on such small landfills. There will be public meetings on that
issue this summer.
William P.
Yellowtail
Denver,
Colorado
The writer is
regional administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency
Region 8.
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Landfills: It depends on the size.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
