Land Disposal Restrictions Phase IV: Final Rule Promulgating Treatment Standards for Metal Wastes and Mineral Processing Wastes; Mineral Processing Secondary Materials and Bevill Exclusion Issues; Treatment Standards for Hazardous Soils, and Exclusion of Recycled Wood Preserving Wastewaters

This rule promulgates Land Disposal Restrictions treatment standards for metal-bearing wastes, including toxicity characteristic metal wastes, and hazardous wastes from mineral processing. The set of standards being applied to these wastes is the universal treatment standards. These standards are based upon the performance of the Best Demonstrated Available technologies for treating these, or similar, wastes. This rule also revises the universal treatment standards for twelve metal constituents, which means that listed and characteristic wastes containing one or more of these constituents may have to meet different standards than they currently do. In a related section regarding wastes and secondary materials from mineral processing, EPA is amending the rules to define which secondary materials from mineral processing are considered to be wastes and potentially subject to Land Disposal Restrictions. The intended effect is to encourage safe recycling of mineral processing secondary materials by reducing regulatory obstacles to recycling, while ensuring that hazardous wastes are properly treated and disposed. EPA also is finalizing decisions on a set of mineral processing issues wastes which courts have been remanded to EPA. These include retaining the Toxicity Characteristic Leaching Procedure as the test for identifying the toxicity characteristic for mineral processing wastes, and readdressing the regulatory status of a number of miscellaneous mineral processing wastes. This rule also amends the LDR treatment standards for soil contaminated with hazardous waste. The purpose of this revision is to create standards which are more technically and environmentally appropriate to contaminated soils than those which currently apply. Finally, this rule excludes from the definition of solid waste certain shredded circuit boards in recycling operations, as well as certain materials reused in wood preserving operations.