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Groundwater Monitoring at Hazardous Waste Management Facilities

The Virginia DEQ Hazardous Waste Groundwater team oversees the ground water monitoring by hazardous waste treatment, storage, and disposal facilities (TSDFs).   Groundwater monitoring is a key part of Virginia’s hazardous waste management strategy for protecting human health and the environment from accidental releases of hazardous constituents. 

TSDFs that manage hazardous waste in landfills, surface impoundments, land treatment units, and some waste piles (referred to as “regulated units” in the regulations) are required to implement a groundwater monitoring program to detect the release of hazardous constituents to the underlying groundwater.		 hwgroundwater1

The groundwater monitoring requirements represent the last line of defense by ensuring that any releases are

detected and remediated in a timely manner.

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The regulatory basis for the groundwater monitoring requirements comes from the Resource Recovery and Conservation Act, commonly referred to as RCRA . The regulations for permitted facilities are found at 40 CFR Part 264, Subpart F-Releases from Solid Waste Management Units and the interim status regulations for facilities in operation before these rules came into effect are found at 40 CFR Part 265, Subpart F-Groundwater Monitoring.

These regulations have been adopted by reference into the Virginia Hazardous Waste Management Regulations as 9 VAC 20-60-264 and 9 VAC 20-60-265 .

EPA has also developed technical guidance in support of the regulatory requirments.

Once an exceedance of the groundwater protection standard has been detected, the facility must implement corrective action to bring the constituent concentration levels back into compliance with the groundwater protection standard. EPA's

"Groundwater Protection and Cleanup Policies for RCRA Corrective Action" contains a comprehensive discussion of

applicable regulations, guidelines and policies.

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As of June 1, 2007, DEQ is the lead regulatory agency at 42 hazardous waste management facilities with groundwater monitoring requirements.  Information on facilities currently in the corrective action program can be found at

http://www.deq.virginia.gov/waste/coractionva.html and at

http://www.epa.gov/reg3wcmd/ca/va.htm.
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(All images on this page from www.epa.gov)

 

 

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