{"id":274492,"date":"2025-11-06T05:05:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-06T05:05:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/274492\/"},"modified":"2025-11-06T05:05:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-06T05:05:07","slug":"alaska-aims-to-regulate-its-own-hazardous-waste","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/274492\/","title":{"rendered":"Alaska aims to regulate its own hazardous waste"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Dead batteries are common household hazardous waste items that are accepted at Juneau\u2019s hazardous waste facility. (Photo by Rosemarie Alexander\/KTOO)<\/p>\n

Alaska might soon regulate its own hazardous waste if the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency authorizes the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation\u2019s new hazardous waste program.<\/p>\n

Alaska<\/a> is one of only two U.S. states without an authorized program, the other being Iowa. That means the EPA regulates the generation, storage and disposal of the state\u2019s hazardous waste.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Lori Aldrich, the manager of the state\u2019s new hazardous waste program, said the team consists of six DEC employees, including her, who have been training to take on the responsibility for the past three years. If the program gets federal approval, she said the team will take the lead on permitting, inspections and clean-ups instead of the EPA.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cHonestly, for Alaska, it doesn\u2019t mean that much change, except that you\u2019re going to have somebody at ADEC here to call,\u201d Aldrich said.<\/p>\n

The state Legislature adopted new hazardous waste regulations<\/a> in 2023 that went into effect this summer. For the most part, the state\u2019s rules now mirror the federal rules under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act.<\/p>\n

According to the most recent EPA data, 2,729 tons of hazardous waste were generated in Alaska in 2023<\/a>. The three largest producers were the Petro Star Valdez Refinery, Eielson Air Force Base \u2014 a Superfund site in Fairbanks \u2014 and a company that handles hazardous waste and spills. Together, they were responsible for 57% of the hazardous waste generated in Alaska that year.<\/p>\n

Aldrich said Alaska\u2019s generation rate is quite low compared to most other states, and one reason is that petroleum, on its own, is not categorized as hazardous waste.\u00a0<\/p>\n

She said businesses commonly toss things like cleaning solvents, paint and oil contaminated with other chemicals, which are hazardous wastes. Some things are hazardous due to their toxicity, while others are hazardous because of how they react.\u00a0<\/p>\n

For instance, \u201ccylinder gas is a hazardous waste if you\u2019re throwing it away, because it could blow up,\u201d Aldrich said.<\/p>\n

She said that if the program gets approved, her team will start with a lot of outreach to educate Alaskans about what counts as hazardous waste.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cGetting people to manage it properly and to make sure that it\u2019s not impacting health or environment here in Alaska is what\u2019s the most important part of our job,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Aldrich said that almost all of the hazardous waste in Alaska is shipped to disposal facilities in the Lower 48, and that her team would only be in charge of the waste when it\u2019s within state boundaries.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The public comment period<\/a> on the state\u2019s application to the EPA is open until December 8.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dead batteries are common household hazardous waste items that are accepted at Juneau\u2019s hazardous waste facility. (Photo by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":274493,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[146332,146333,146334,192,2286,16407,146335,146336,146337,146338,146339,79],"class_list":["post-274492","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-alaska-dec","tag-alaska-department-of-environmental-conservation","tag-eielson-air-force-base","tag-environment","tag-environmental-protection-agency","tag-epa","tag-hazardous-waste","tag-lori-aldrich","tag-petro-star-valdez-refinery","tag-rcra","tag-resource-conservation-and-recovery-act","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274492","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=274492"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274492\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/274493"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=274492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=274492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=274492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}