EPA cuts red tape

Before site owners can put their plans for site cleanup into action, the technologies they propose must be permitted by, or receive a seal of approval from, the authorized regulatory agency. Permit writers, who represent the regulatory agency that safeguards public health and the environment, review the cleanup plans in light of the appropriate environmental regulations. Although environmental regulations don't disallow innovative treatments, they may impose restrictions that require site owners to jump through burdensome and expensive hoops. The end result is to discourage site owners from using innovative technologies in favor of safer, conventional treatments.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recognizes the effect its regulatory framework can have on the permitting and use of innovative technologies. Therefore, EPA is taking the lead in breaking down regulatory barriers that prevent more wide-spread use of promising environmental technologies. Through its Reinvention for Innovative Technologies program, or ReFIT, EPA is helping industry find and use the best, most cost effective technological solutions for safeguarding the environment and public health.

Under ReFIT, EPA selected and is overseeing 40 research projects that are exploring ways to adapt EPA's policy and regulations to foster new environmental technologies. ReFIT is funding a variety of demonstration projects and case studies across the country to streamline the permits system, provide for greater public participation, and promote the use of new technologies. Some projects focus on identifying how particular regulations impact the selection of remediation technologies and how regulations can be changed to open the selection process up to technologies with the potential to more effectively deal with a remediation problem. Other projects deal with multi-site permitting, which is an efficient means of approving a technology for use at several sites having similar characteristics. Other research projects involve:

• using stakeholders to identify policy barriers and propose policy innovations;
• training EPA and state permit, inspection, and enforcement staff on using pollution prevention technologies as compliance options;
• narrowly defining incineration and other thermal treatments in order to reduce the number of treatments needing to meet air emission control requirements;
• developing a detailed regulatory framework for a new concept of community-wide, remedial on-site wastewater treatment districts;
• integrating flexibility into the Clean Air Act permitting program (Title V);
• streamlining regulations by working with stakeholders to integrate separate air, water, and soil release requirements into a new multi-media regulatory process;
• examining the effect of flexible, multi-media permitting on achieving decreased regulated emissions beyond that required for compliance; and
• collaborating to develop a broad policy of multi-state permitting.

For more information about EPA's ReFIT program, see its homepage at http://www.wpi.org/epa/refit.