History of Virginia's waste regulations
Prior to 1971 there were neither legal nor regulatory requirements for solid waste management in Virginia. In 1967, the Bureau of Vector Control in the Department of Health received a U.S. Public Health Service grant to close or consolidate open dumps in Virginia. Without a legal mandate, the Bureau was able to close about 800 open dumps across the state. This phase of the effort culminated in 1971 when the Health Code was amended and regulations were adopted to establish the basis for the solid waste program. The 1971 amendment required the Health Department to issue permits to all solid waste disposal facilities. Virginia's permitting procedures also evolved with time. One-page permits describing the owner and the location of the facility issued in 1971 gradually changed to very detailed documents several inches thick. Similar evolution took place in the requirements for local government approvals of facilities, and public participation in the permitting process.
Virginia's formal municipal waste program started in April 1971 with an amendment to the Health Code and the adoption by the Board of Health of its eight-page regulation that required landfills to apply for and receive a permit, prohibited open dumping, required daily cover and established basic siting criteria. It also required that landfills be designed in a manner that was environmentally acceptable and would not create nuisances. As time went on, the permitting requirements were adjusted under this set of general performance standards to account for technological advances. The original regulation did not require corrective action for leaking facilities. These regulations were in force until 1988.
It was determined that more specific regulations governing operation of solid waste facilities were necessary at about the same time Congress passed the 1984 Hazardous and Solid Waste Amendments (HSWA) to the federal Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, which required the Environmental Protection Agency to revise its Guidelines for Open Dumps (Part 257 of Title 40 of the Code of Federal Regulations). The 1986 session of the Virginia General Assembly enacted legislation creating the Department of Waste Management (DWM) under the new Cabinet-level Secretary of Natural Resources.� The same action made the new Department the successor in interest to the Department of Health and Virginia Hazardous Waste Facility Siting Council in regard to any authority, duty and responsibility for solid, hazardous, or radioactive waste.
The Virginia Waste Management Board used a later draft of the EPA Open Dump guidelines as a model for its new comprehensive solid waste management regulations adopted on October 18, 1988 (effective December 22, 1988). These regulations established more definitive siting standards, required doubleliners, leachate collection systems, closure and post-closure care, ground water �monitoring, and corrective actions for facilities that affected ground water. The old, unlined facilities were required to close by 1992. In many respects, these regulations were more stringent than those finally promulgated by the EPA in 1991.
Virginia was the second state to obtain approval of its solid waste management program under EPA's RCRA Subtitle D program. As a prerequisite for EPA approval, Virginia had to amend its regulations in 1993 to conform to the federal guidelines. The standards for the municipal waste facilities required by the amended regulations were identical to those contained in the 1991 Guidelines published by EPA. One of the federal concepts that was introduced was the grand- fathering of older, unlined facilities so long as they expanded only vertically. This option was not available under the regulations Virginia had in place in 1988. This relaxation was codified by one of the changes made to the Virginia Waste Management Act by the General Assembly in 1993.