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Congress enacted the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) in 1976 to protect human health and the environment from the hazards of waste disposal.  RCRA gives EPA the authority to control hazardous waste from "cradle-to-grave," including generation, treatment, storage and disposal activities.  In 1984, Congress enacted the Hazardous and Solid Waste Amendments (HSWA), which expanded RCRA’s scope and included the creation of a corrective action program. Under this program, owners or operators of hazardous waste treatment, storage or disposal facilities are responsible for investigating and cleaning up releases at or from their facilities, regardless of when the releases occurred.  

EPA established the RCRA Brownfields Prevention Initiative to encourage the reuse of RCRA Brownfields so that the results of site redevelopment better serve the commercial, residential, or landscaping needs of the community.  The initiative links RCRA facilities with the brownfields program to facilitate the use of economic redevelopment as the vehicle for environmental remediation.

The ultimate goal of the initiative is to utilize opportunities for statutory and regulatory flexibility in RCRA to prevent future brownfields and Superfund sites by expediting cleanup, community dialogue, and integrating reuse and redevelopment issues into cleanup decisions.

In March 2000, EPA announced four pilot projects intended to provide case studies of techniques, tools, and strategies to integrate RCRA cleanups and brownfields redevelopment.  During the summer of 2001, five additional RCRA Brownfield Pilots were launched, bringing the total pilots up to nine. The link below provides a summary of the results and lessons learned from the pilot studies.

Web links with further information on RCRA sites are listed in the RCRA Sites Exhibit.