Things You Think You Know About Hazardous Waste – Pt. 3

This week we finish our things you think you know series contributed by Heritage Compliance Manager Mike Karpinski. The topic of this weeks post; as long as a business complies with EPA waste regulations they don’t have to worry about anything else.

Working at a national waste management company like Heritage, I often dream this was the case, but unfortunately there are many other federal agencies such as the Department of Transportation (DOT), Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA), Department of Homeland Security, Drug Enforcement Agency and others that all have regulations pertaining to hazardous wastes and that’s not the end of it.

Each state (except for Iowa and Alaska) also has state specific regulations that are, at a minimum, equivalent to the federal regulations and may be stricter than the federal regulations.  Oftentimes, a state will have equivalent regulations, but different administrative requirements that cannot be ignored. For a company like Heritage that does business across all 50 states that means complying with a minimum of 196 different regulations relating to the proper management of hazardous materials (and I haven’t even mentioned all the city or county requirements yet…. I need an aspirin).

This reminds me, many of the statements made in the previous posts are based on general descriptions of federal regulations. Other Federal, State, or Local regulations may apply to your situation which may counteract these statements. This is one of the best reasons for working with a company like Heritage Environmental Services, LLC, we have experience dealing with these regulations and are trained to work closely with our customers to assist them in complying with these requirements.