In the past, facilities that burned up to 2,000 gallons of hazardous waste per month were exempt. In addition to creating regulatory-driven incentives to remove metals from hazardous waste streams going to combustion facilities, the proposal specifically seeks to encourage facilities to identify opportunities to use waste minimization to help achieve compliance with MACT standards or to achieve either the small quantity or comparable fuels exclusions. Combustion at an on-site facility presents a somewhat unique situation in which facility owners and operators also have direct control over waste generation. Therefore, EPA is targeting efforts to help ensure these facilities take steps to reduce the generation of waste at its source and minimize the quantity ultimately burned. This proposed rule would apply to hazardous waste incinerators, cement kilns, and lightweight aggregate kilns that burn hazardous waste as fuel.
Cement kilns receive liquid hazardous waste to burn as fuel to run their cement processes.
Cement is produced by heating mixtures of limestone and other minerals or additives at high temperatures in a rotary kiln, followed by cooling, grinding, and finish mixing. Lightweight aggregate kilns produce lightweight aggregate and burn liquid hazardous waste as fuel to run their processes. It is produced either for structural or thermal insulation purposes. Because the Agency believes that there will be potentially a large influx of RCRA permit modification requests resulting from requirements proposed in this notice, the Agency is considering options that will streamline the RCRA permit modification process for these types of changes to ensure that necessary modifications are made expeditiously. The Federal Register notice and this fact sheet are available in electronic format on the Internet through the EPA Public Access Server.