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BRS was last updated on RTK NET with a set of EPA data made on January 19, 2007, and includes records from 1989 through 2005. The latest EPA dataset used did not update years before 2005 -- those years are held in an RTK NET archive of previously obtained EPA data.
For 2003 data only, some waste generation forms from the state of Texas had duplicate ID numbers to other waste generation forms. These forms were not loaded into the database by EPA. As a result, tens or hundreds of thousands of tons of waste have potentially gone missing from the database for this year. EPA has no current plans to fix this problem.
The Biennial Reporting System (BRS) is one of EPA's primary tools for tracking the generation, shipment, and receipt of hazardous waste. It contains information from the Hazardous Waste Reports that must be filed every two years under the RCRA program. RCRA (the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act) is the Federal statute that regulates the generation, treatment, storage, disposal, or recycling of solid and hazardous waste. Facilities must report their activities involving hazardous waste to BRS if they fulfill one of two criteria:
The definition of Large Quantity Generator is complex, but a simplified version is any site that generates more than 2,200 lbs of RCRA waste in a single month, accumulates more than 2.2 lbs of RCRA acute hazardous waste in any single month, or accumulates more than 220 lbs of spill cleanup material contaminated with RCRA acute hazardous waste in any month.
Not all hazardous waste is reported within BRS. Some waste that might otherwsie be considered hazardous is exempted from regulation within RCRA as part of the original legislation. Some waste treatment units, in particular wastewater treatment units, are not regulated under RCRA but instead under other environmental statutes. However, BRS appears to be the best U.S. hazardous waste tracking database available.
Note that RCRA hazardous waste quantities are traditionally reported in tons (2000 pounds). Direct comparison of BRS and TRI waste quantities is difficult since TRI reports on quantities of chemical components while BRS reports on quantities of wastes (which may contain many different hazardous and non-hazardous components). For instance, if 500 pounds of lead dust was spilled onto 3 tons of soil, and this soil was shipped offsite to a landfill, then this would be reported as a transfer of 500 lbs of lead under TRI and as a shipment of 3 tons of lead-contaminated waste under BRS.
This access program makes a distinction between "Total" and "Federal" waste totals. "Total" waste includes all wastes reported within the BRS database. "Federal" waste includes only those wastes that have a Federal EPA waste code -- those that do not are wastes regulated by an individual state only.
Previous version of RTK NET's BRS access program also referred to "RCRA" waste. This term has a varying meaning according to the reporting year, but it basically means "the amount of waste included in EPA's Biennial RCRA Hazardous Waste Report document". Because the method used to calculate this quantity varied from one year to the next, and because RTK NET's calculations could not be made to exactly match those from EPA's National Report, RTK NET has stopped trying to present its own calculations of these waste quantities.
BRS data can also be obtained through an EPA Envirofacts Query Form.
The data from 1989 through 2005 have been put into a common format by RTK NET, although they were originally different. Some years of data include data items that do not exist in other years. The RTK NET documentation on individual data fields shows the range of years that each was reported within.
There are a few important terms that are used in a specialized fashion within this documentation:
In general, the BRS database holds a core of information about each facility, with additional information about each waste generated by the facility or received by the facility from off-site.
The RTK NET access programs for BRS used to include an ability to search by industry. This has been discontinued for now because the industry codes within BRS have been severely fragmented by year. Facility SIC codes exist for 1989-1991, generated waste SIC codes exist for 1989-1999, and facility NAICS codes exist for 2001-2005. It is therefore impossible to have a consistent industry search across all years. If sufficent user requests are received, we can consider putting back a fragmented industry search in some form.
Area reports are intended to help you find out about all facilities within a geographic area - a city, county, zip code, or state. If you are looking for information on all facilities in a city, you should not fill in the county unless there are multiple cities with the same name in your state. You must fill in a state to use this report. The report returns one set of information for each facility found within each reporting year.
Facility reports are intended to help you find out about a single facility, though you can also try to find multiple facilities owned by a single company if they have similar facility names. You can use an "*" as a wildcard within facility names. You can also specify a single facility by its EPA Facility ID if you know it; if you do so, you should not fill in its facility name. The report returns one set of information for each facility found within each reporting year.
These reports are intended to help you find individual generated wastes. They are useful when you are primarily interested in finding certain generated waste types, such as ignitable wastes. You can specify which generated wastes you want through a number of different waste codes, or through the facility_name, city, or state within which the generation took place. The report returns one set of information for each generated waste found within each reporting year, so it will not give complete information on facilities.
These reports are intended to help you find individual received wastes -- i.e., wastes that were received from off-site for purposes of treatment, disposal, recycling, or storage. They are useful when you are primarily interested in tracking waste shipments from one place to another. You can specify which received wastes you want through a number of different waste codes, through the facility name, city, or state within which the shipments originated, or through the facility name, city, or state where the wastes were received. The report returns one set of information for each received waste found within each reporting year, so it will not give complete information on facilities.
All of the standard reports permit you to search by reporting year or range of reporting years. In addition, you can control the output of your search by choosing the level of detail, type of output, and Email address if any. Each of these options is explained in more detail in the next section.
If you have any questions, comments, or found any bugs in these reports please either send RTK NET mail to rtkhelp@rtknet.org or call us at 202-234-8494.
Fill in the name of the county or city that you want - do not fill in the word "county" after counties. Some submissions have their county or city misspelled; others have two varient spellings for the same city or county. For instance, the city of St. Louis can be spelled either ST. LOUIS or SAINT LOUIS. If you think this may be a factor, you can either run your search twice or use "*" as a wildcard. In the case above you could enter "S*LOUIS" and find both spellings. Watch out for FORT/FT., SAINT/ST., and MOUNT/MT.
In order to maximize the chance that your search will find something, you shouldn't fill in both a city and a county in the same search, unless your state has two cities with the same name and you need to distinguish between them by county.
This field selects the level of detail you want in your report. A "level of detail" is a predetermined set of data fields. This option lets you display either a brief summary set of fields, one of three intermediate sets, or all the data fields in the database.
A Summary report will produce a small set of fields that should fit on one line per facility (for Facility or Area reports) or waste (for the other reports). If you chose text output directed to the Web, there will be a link from each line to a High detail report on that facility or waste, making the Summary output a "list of hits." More help is available.
A Complete report will produce every field in the database that is supplied by EPA, as long as Text output is chosen. (If delimited output is chosen, then not all data may be included, because there may be repeating fields that there aren't room for.) Complete reports give more detail than most people want, so generally High detail is better.
The Generated Waste report allows you to select a Special level of detail. If you select Text output, this is exactly the same as High detail. If you select Comma-delimited or tab-delimited output, this presents a specialized form of output that has one line for each managed quantity listed for a generated waste, whether the waste management takes place on- or off-site.
This field selects what output style your report will have:
Further help on delimited reports is available.
The EPA Facility ID is a 12-character ID used in the RCRA program to identify individual facilities across multiple reporting years. The first two characters are generally the state abbreviation for the state that the facility is in. The EPA ID is referred to as the RCRA ID within TRI and the Handler ID within RCRIS.
You should never need to know a facility's EPA ID in order to run a search. The ability to search by it is included for people who know the EPA ID and want to be sure to find a specific facility.
The facility name is the name of the facility or plant that generates or receives hazardous waste.
Warning: facility names are often misspelled. You should
enter as few letters as are necessary to specify it,
followed by a "*" to represent any number of letters.
Example: You want to find facilities owned by Du Pont.
Possible spellings of facility name:
In order to help users who don't use wildcards, the program will place a wildcard after whatever you type in to this field automatically. That's because it's almost never right to leave a trailing wildcard out; even if you know the exact name, you don't know whether ACME has been entered into the database as ACME INC. or ACME CO.
This field lets you select the Federal Generator Status of the facilities found in a Facility or Area search, permitting you to restrict your search to LQGs, SQGs, CESQGs, or non generators.
This field lets you choose one of the U.S. states or state equivalents that exist in the BRS database.
If you check the checkbox for this field, a list of the codes will be provided for you to choose from once you submit the form.
This field lets you specify the form of the waste: lab packs, aqueous organics liquids, etc. Not all waste records will have a waste form code filled in.
This field lets you search by the type of process, such as leak collection or plastics forming, that produced the waste. Not all waste records will have a waste source code filled in.
This field lets you search by the type of TDR system used to manage the waste. Not all waste records will have a management method code filled in.
The Reporting Year, in BRS, is the year for which the data were reported. Since BRS is biennial, data only exists for every other year.
The Zip code field lets you search by 5-digit or 9-digit Zip codes. A wildcard will automatically be placed after any 5-digit Zip code that you type in, so that your search will automatically find any 9-digit Zip code beginning with those 5 digits. Don't use dashes in Zip codes.
Additional help is available through the help file associated with BRS standard report output. (This link takes you to the output help file for facility or area reports, since they supply all of the BRS data fields and the generated and received waste reports do not.)