Resource Conservation and Recovery Act
The Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), an amendment to the Solid Waste Disposal Act, was enacted in 1976 to address a problem of enormous magnitude—how to safely dispose of the huge volumes of municipal and industrial solid waste generated nationwide. It is a problem with roots that go back well before 1976.
There was a time when the amount of waste produced in the United States was small and its impact on the environment relatively minor. (A river could purify itself every 10 miles [16 km].) However, with the industrial revolution in the latter part of the nineteenth century, the country began to grow with unprecedented speed. New products were developed and consumers were offered an ever-expanding array of material goods.
This growth continued through the early twentieth century and took off after World War II when the nation's industrial base, strengthened by the war, turned its energies toward domestic production. The results of this growth were not all positive. With more goods came more waste, both hazardous and nonhazardous. In the late 1940s, the United States was generating roughly 500,000 metric tons of hazardous waste a year. In 1985, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimated that 275 million tons of hazardous waste were generated nationwide.
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