The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently announced a settlement with United Parcel Service (UPS) to resolve violations of hazardous waste regulations at 1,160 facilities across 45 states and Puerto Rico.
EPA’s consent agreement and final order with UPS resolves violations of hazardous waste regulations, including failure to make land disposal determinations and conduct proper on-site management of hazardous waste, among other requirements. The company has 36 months to come into compliance across 1,160 locations and will pay a civil penalty of $5,323,008. UPS generates hazardous waste regulated under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) when a package containing certain hazardous materials is damaged, as well as during day-to-day operations, such as maintenance.
Many UPS facilities were generating and managing hazardous waste in all three generator categories without complying with all the RCRA requirements for each of the three generation categories. Using the e-Manifest system, EPA’s national system for electronically tracking hazardous waste shipments and other reporting databases, EPA was able to determine that these additional facilities also generated, accumulated and offered for transport, treatment, or disposal certain hazardous waste streams, including ignitable, corrosive and reactive substances, including acute hazardous wastes.
Dan Hounsell is senior editor of the facilities market. He has more than 25 years of experience writing about facilities maintenance, engineering and management.
