The EPA official added that if legislation on implementing the international agreement continues to languish, the administration could seek separate revisions to the nation's hazardous waste laws to allow the United States to block waste shipments into the country.

"Basel implementing legislation is in the queue," according to Robert Heiss, the director of the enforcement office's International Compliance Assurance Division. "There are favorable signs that this administration is willing to move forward [and there] could be a good run in the next Congress" on Basel implementation legislation, he said. Heiss made his remarks Oct. 4 here at the annual meeting of the Environmental Council of the States (ECOS).

Heiss said the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks heightened the importance for new standards for approving and monitoring international waste shipments. "In general EPA lacks basic data about hazardous waste coming into the U.S. No manifest information is available in EPA on most individual shipments of hazardous waste into the U.S. for compliance or homeland security purposes, particularly from our primary hazardous waste trading partner, Canada," according to a written presentation Heiss provided ECOS.

The Basel convention establishes notice and consent requirements for international hazardous waste shipments as well as requirements for the "environmentally sound management" of hazardous waste. The convention entered into force in 1992.

The United States signed the Basel convention in 1990, but has not yet ratified it. EPA has launched numerous efforts to draft Basel implementing legislation, starting in the Clinton administration, and this winter a top EPA waste official said the agency had developed a draft bill it wanted to introduce after undergoing interagency review.

According to Heiss, the international agreement is necessary because the nation's hazardous waste laws do not allow the United States to monitor dangerous materials before they enter the country. The Resource Conservation & Recovery Act (RCRA) does not allow the United States to reject waste shipments at the border because the law's requirements only apply after waste enters the country. The only time the United States can demand prior informed consent for such waste shipments is when it is required under an international agreement, Heiss said.

The United States already has such an agreement with Canada, but Bush administration critics, such as senior House Democrat John Dingell (MI), argue that EPA has not implemented or enforced it. Dingell last month passed legislation through the House environment and hazardous materials subcommittee that would require EPA to implement and enforce the U.S.-Canada agreement.

If Basel legislation does not move forward, however, Heiss said EPA could seek a stand-alone amendment to RCRA that would allow the agency to reject waste shipments. Heiss said former waste chief Marianne Lamont Horinko expressed interest in pursuing such an amendment.

Heiss said the current waste import system has numerous problems, including the fact that overburdened U.S. Customs officials do not have the training and resources to scrutinize and inspect every hazardous waste shipment. While waste shippers are generally required to provide manifests describing the shipments, there is no mechanism to ensure the forms are accurate. "It's sort of an honor system," Heiss said. Because of these limitations, the United States "doesn't have a handle on what's coming into the country."

But EPA recently signed a memorandum of understanding with Customs and Border Protection officials under which every shipment that the government allows into the country must have a manifest. Heiss also said EPA and other U.S. officials have launched efforts with international bodies, such as the North American Free Trade Agreement's Commission for Environmental Cooperation, "to sell the idea that customs should get more involved" in monitoring the shipments.

Date: October 7, 2004 © Inside Washington Publishers