Not too long ago, I participated on an alumni panel at my college’s geology department. I gave a brief bio to a student and cringed as she introduced me as working at “the Environmental Protection Agency’s R-C-R-A Revitalization program,” spelling out each letter in the acronym RCRA. I forgot that the outside world does not express acronyms as words and realized that I’ve been working in the government for too long. Then I gave a brief introduction to RCRA …

Congress enacted the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) in 1976, to protect the public from the improper storage, treatment and disposal of solid and hazardous waste. In 1984, Congress passed the Hazardous and Solid Waste Amendments (HSWA). This new federal legislation expanded EPA’s authority to require RCRA operators to conduct a site-wide investigation and cleanup to address past releases at their facilities. Cleanups conducted under RCRA authority are commonly referred to as “Corrective Action.”

Facilities that manage hazardous waste for a period greater than 90 days are required to obtain an operating permit and perform a site-wide investigation and cleanup. In most cases, the EPA authorizes states to issue hazardous waste permits which regulate storage, treatment and disposal of hazardous waste, as well as require site-wide corrective action.

As the RCRA program evolved, many facilities chose to become generators and remove their waste within 90 days; changed their plant processes to avoid creating hazardous wastes; or properly closed their hazardous waste operations so that they would not need an operating permit. But, if there is information documenting a release or contamination from past practices at these sites, corrective action can still be required. Depending on the individual circumstances, EPA or the state may choose a RCRA authority or an alternate authority (e.g., voluntary program) to clean up these facilities.

It is worthwhile to note that the RCRA Corrective Action program is implemented with minimal regulations, giving the program significant flexibility. In 1996, EPA sought public comment on proposed detailed regulations for corrective action. However, after considering public comments, EPA opted against finalizing most of the regulations, since many authorized states already were successfully implementing the program without extensive regulations in place.

At that point in my presentation, I was asked, “If this program cleans up operating sites, what exactly are you revitalizing?”

Now I knew I needed to take a step back.

Without going into as much detail as I did during the presentation, here’s a short explanation about the changing landscape of the RCRA Corrective Action program.

In the early stages of the program, EPA and state regulators assumed that most of these sites would continue to operate as industrial facilities.

However, over the past several years, regulators began to recognize that, due to a variety of economic factors, the use and ownership of industrial properties was changing. We were responding to an increasing number of calls, meetings and e-mails from individuals interested in redeveloping RCRA sites for other uses, but we weren’t sure just how much reuse was actually taking place.

In 2005, to better understand the situation, EPA’s Mid-Atlantic Region (Region 3) assessed the current land use at its Superfund, Federal Facility and RCRA Corrective Action sites.

The assessment results were surprising. Of the 280 high priority sites in Region 3’s RCRA Corrective Action program, about one-third of the sites were no longer operating industrial facilities like they were in the 1980s. About 20 percent of the sites are being reused or have a plan for reuse, leaving just 14 percent of the sites vacant.

On the larger sites, most of the reuse occurs sequentially as individual parcels are investigated and cleaned up, and a majority of the reuse taking place is not for industrial purposes, but rather for commercial and mixed use. Region 9 conducted its own assessment of RCRA sites in the Western states, and its results similarly revealed extensive commercial reuse of former industrial properties.

Prime examples of this include the Washington Navy Yard’s transformation from a property contaminated by 200 years of industrial activities into a mixed-use complex with open space (see this issue’s Eastern Report); a mixed-use development on the 138-acre Atlantic Steel site in downtown Atlanta, Ga.; a capped landfill converted into a retail shopping center in West Covina, Calif.; and the current construction of office and retail development at the Allied site in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, where, four years ago this month, EPA Administrator Christine Whitman launched the Land Revitalization Initiative.

While the reuse of RCRA facilities began prior to EPA’s announcement of the Land Revitalization Initiative, that event marked the beginning of a concerted effort to integrate reuse into the mission of EPA’s waste cleanup programs. For RCRA Corrective Action, this has led to innovations such as Region 6’s Ready for Reuse Certificates, comfort letters, completion determinations, and other tools which provide a degree of liability comfort for property transfers.

Region 3’s Facility Lead Program allows sites to initiate cleanup under a streamlined agreement, and One Cleanup programs in Pennsylvania, Connecticut and Wisconsin—as well as some less formal agreements between EPA and state voluntary cleanup programs—enable developers to address all their cleanup obligations at one time and with one administrative process.

At the 2006 Brownfields Conference Transaction Forum, several RCRA owners were marketing their sites due to regional outreach efforts to inform facilities of this networking opportunity. And last year’s National RCRA Corrective Action annual conference was entirely devoted to reuse, giving regions and states a chance to share their creative approaches and EPA a forum to promote RCRA reuse as an agency priority.

RCRA reuse success stories have some recurring themes: clearly communicated expectations by all parties; special attention to minimize liability concerns; integration of reuse with the cleanup; and coordinated activities among various cleanup programs. Regulators will generally make these sites a priority because we’ve learned that a site with a vision for reuse leads to a faster cleanup.

We’ve also learned that 30 years of monitoring contamination may not be enough, and changes in use are likely to occur over time. Over the next few years, there will be a greater focus on ensuring that institutional controls are implemented and monitored when residual contamination is left in place.

Marianne Horinko, senior advisor to the RCRA Corrective Action Project, a RCRA owners group, once said, “The development of effective and permanent institutional controls is inextricably linked to the success of RCRA revitalization. Corporate owners need effective controls to minimize the potential for the site to come back to them.”

It’s been joked that RCRA’s theme song is “Hotel California” where “ ... you can checkout anytime you like, but you can never leave.” Honestly, you may not be able to leave RCRA for a while, but that shouldn’t stop you from building a hotel, a skating rink, an office complex, a shopping center ...

Deborah Goldblum is the RCRA  Revitalization Coordinator in EPA’s Mid-Atlantic Region (Region 3).