The transportation industry faces a range of issues related to management and cleanup of waste, including potential liability for contaminated property, beneficial reuse and disposal of waste from construction projects and other transportation related activities, and redevelopment of blighted industrial properties known as brownfields.

A good overview of the various waste management issues related to transportation is provided in the Transportation Research Board white paper, Waste Management in Transportation, Present and Future, produced by the TRB A1F07 Committee on Waste Management in Transportation. Key elements include management of hazardous materials found in rights of way; use of environmental management systems by state DOTs to effectively manage and minimize waste; beneficial reuse of industrial byproducts, including asphalt, concrete, plastics, and metals; and recovery of costs for cleaning up contaminated sites.

The primary federal laws governing waste issues are the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) and the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA).

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RCRA gave the Environmental Protection Agency the authority to control hazardous waste from the "cradle-to-grave." This includes the generation, transportation, treatment, storage, and disposal of hazardous waste. RCRA also set forth a framework for the management of non-hazardous wastes.

The 1986 amendments to RCRA enabled EPA to address environmental problems that could result from underground tanks storing petroleum and other hazardous substances. RCRA focuses only on active and future facilities and does not address abandoned or historical sites.

The Federal Hazardous and Solid Waste Amendments (HSWA) are the 1984 amendments to RCRA that required phasing out land disposal of hazardous waste. Some of the other mandates of this strict law include increased enforcement authority for EPA, more stringent hazardous waste management standards, and a comprehensive underground storage tank program.

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CERCLA, commonly known as Superfund, was enacted by Congress on December 11, 1980. This law created a tax on the chemical and petroleum industries and provided broad Federal authority to respond directly to releases or threatened releases of hazardous substances that may endanger public health or the environment. Over five years, $1.6 billion was collected and the tax went to a trust fund for cleaning up abandoned or uncontrolled hazardous waste sites. CERCLA established prohibitions and requirements concerning closed and abandoned hazardous waste sites; provided for liability of persons responsible for releases of hazardous waste at these sites; and established a trust fund to provide for cleanup when no responsible party could be identified.

The law authorizes two kinds of response actions:

• Short-term removals, where actions may be taken to address releases or threatened releases requiring prompt response.
• Long-term remedial response actions, that permanently and significantly reduce the dangers associated with releases or threats of releases of hazardous substances that are serious, but not immediately life threatening. These actions can be conducted only at sites listed on EPA's National Priorities List (NPL).

CERCLA also enabled the revision of the National Contingency Plan (NCP). The NCP provided the guidelines and procedures needed to respond to releases and threatened releases of hazardous substances, pollutants, or contaminants. The NCP also established the NPL.

CERCLA was amended by the Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act (SARA) on October 17, 1986.

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Brownfields are abandoned or underutilized industrial or commercial properties where redevelopment is hindered by possible environmental contamination and potential liability under the Superfund law for parties that purchase or operate these sites.

The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that there are between 500,000 and one million brownfields across America, typically in urban areas. Revitalization of these potentially valuable properties is a priority for communities across the country.

Transportation’s Role in Brownfields Revitalization

The Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century (TEA-21) and transportation play a key role in brownfields cleanup and redevelopment for several reasons:

• redeveloped brownfields need good transportation access.
• given the central location of many urban brownfields, they present good opportunities for locating transportation facilities.
• brownfields redevelopment often uses and improves existing transportation infrastructure and services, eliminating the need for new transportation projects.
• partnerships between federal, state and local transportation, economic development and environmental interests can leverage additional funding resources for transportation-related brownfields redevelopment.

TEA-21 includes several programs that can be used for brownfields-related transportation projects. These include:

• Surface Transportation Program (STP) flexible funding;
• Transit Program funds;
• Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality Improvement (CMAQ) funds;
• Transportation Enhancement Program funds;
• Transportation, Community and System Preservation (TCSP) Pilots; and
• Rail Rehabilitation and Improvement Financing Program.

The comprehensive, integrated planning goals of TEA-21 can be powerful tools to support brownfields projects, but the tools can only be accessed by working with state and local transportation planners to ensure that brownfields projects are included in the decisionmaking process.

In addition to the TEA-21 programs, the Department of Transportation announced a policy in 1998 that encourages state and local transportation officials to pay for the cleanup of environmental contamination that lies in the path or on the site of a transportation project. DOT is advising its field offices, states and local transportation officials about brownfields opportunities, providing technical and coordination assistance to state and local transportation planners, and sharing brownfields-related transportation success stories.

For more additional background on transportation and brownfields redevelopment, please see the EPA Fact Sheet, Transportation and Brownfields [PDF 36kb].

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Increasingly, beneficial reuse of materials is a key to waste management efforts in the transportation industry.

According to industry experts, the asphalt pavement industry is the nation’s leader in recycling. Each year, 73 million tons of reclaimed asphalt pavement is reused – almost twice as much as paper, glass, plastic and aluminum combined—saving taxpayers almost $300 million annually. The volume of recycled asphalt pavement is 13 times greater than recycling of newsprint, 27 times greater than recycling of glass bottles, 89 times greater than recycling of aluminum cans, and 267 times greater than recycling of plastic containers.

And recycled asphalt is used not only for new roads, but also for roadbeds, shoulders and embankments. A variety of other products are recycled to make asphalt pavement, including old tires, slag aggregate, roofing shingles, glass, and foundry sand. 

In fact, huge quantities of industrial byproducts and other materials are put to constructive re-use in construction and maintenance of America’s roadways each year.

Some of these materials include:

• Blast furnace slag.
• Coal bottom ash and boiler slag
• Coal fly ash.
• Mineral waste.
• Non-ferrous slags.
• Steel slag.
• Tires and tire rubber.
• Recycled glass.
• Reclaimed Portland Cement concrete.
• Compost

Recycling is increasingly important in the transportation sector -- the Federal Highway Administration has a leadership team focused on promoting use of recycled materials, and a number of state transportation agencies have recycling coordinator positions focused on new technologies, research, and getting the word out.

States with exemplary recycling programs include California, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Texas.  These programs focus not only on recycling materials for use in roadway construction, but also on recycling in everyday activities of the agencies – including recycling of office paper, motor lubricant, antifreeze, fluorescent lamps, aluminum cans, scrap metal, use of mulch in landscaping, and more.

The Recycled Materials Resource Center at the University of New Hampshire is the leading source of information on recycled materials in the highway environment in the United States.

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