June 4, 1979
Page 13252
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, the Solid Waste Disposal Act before us for reauthorization has attained even more importance in 1979 than when we first passed the act in 1965.
The actual goals of the act, as amended by the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act of 1976, remain the same. We still want to enforce regulations to control the disposal of various hazardous and solid wastes, to provide assistance to States to help plan and manage disposal facilities, and to encourage the recycling of available materials. What has changed, however, is the urgency with which we must act to begin enforcing those provisions under subtitle C, the hazardous waste section of the law.
This Nation has been hit with the reality of what happens when adequate disposal standards are not followed. For example:
The citizens at Love Canal,
The people who lived near Toone, Tenn., and
The 750 families in Grey, Maine, who drank polluted groundwater for 4 years as a result of improper waste management, all have had to pay the price for inadequate hazardous waste policies and laws.
Our new sensitivity has forced us to assure that the more than 35 million metric tons of hazardous waste produced in this country each year will be monitored from its point of generation to the point of its disposal.
The General Accounting Office has testified that only two States in the Nation, California and Texas, come close to having adequate programs to safeguard their citizens against the problems caused by the improper disposal of hazardous waste. There is a clear need for a Federal program which sets guidelines and assists States wherever possible. S. 1156, which amends the Solid Waste Disposal Act, will help these efforts, and I urge its passage.
We must be cautious, Mr. President, in amending this statute.
Broad exemptions to this act could undermine the only adequate government authority dealing with the disposal of hazardous waste.
An amendment as broad as the one accepted by the House subcommittee last month could be interpreted to exempt all liquid and sludge hazardous wastes. These account for 60 to 75 percent of all hazardous wastes. They represent an imminent danger to many groundwater supplies around this Nation.
To a lesser degree, I remain concerned with the amendment passed by the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works which exempts oil production muds and brines from stringent hazardous regulations. But I am confident the study called for in the amendment will provide definitive information determining whether or not these substances are hazardous.
This law does not deal with the past problems of inadequate hazardous waste disposal or the problems with abandoned dump sites. The Subcommittees on Environmental Pollution and Resource Protection are working hard to develop new legislation in this Congress to deal with the general release of toxic chemicals into the environment. That legislation will encompass these past practices as well as future problems.
The reauthorization of the Solid Waste Disposal Act is a necessary step toward the goal of controlling our wastes in this country. It is important, and I urge the Senate to support this legislation.