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RCRIS was last updated on RTK NET with a set of EPA data made on July 21, 2004. Note that the abbreviation "RCRIS" is not strictly accurate -- EPA has converted from its old data system holding RCRA data, the RCRA Information System (RCRIS) to a new one called RCRAInfo. The data on RTK NET are from the new system, RCRAInfo. However, RCRAInfo includes both data on hazardous waste permits and activities (which used to held in RCRIS) and data on biennial hazardous waste generation and transfer forms (which used to be held in BRS). RTK NET still keeps the two sets of information seperate, both because of presentation issues and for continiuty with historical data, so RTK NET still preserves the name "RCRIS" for all RCRA data except for the biennial waste forms.
The data in RCRAInfo consist of information about generators, trnasporters, treaters, storers, and disposers of hazardous waste, which are required to give certain reports about their activities to state-level regulators. These regulators pass the information on to Federal EPA. The law regulating the provision of this information is the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), as amended by the Hazardous and Solid Waste Amendments of 1984. Data includes permit status, compliance and violation information, and cleanup activities.
The RCRIS database, unlike many EPA databases, does not have "reporting years". It is a continuously updated set of data that includes records from the early years of RCRA through the present.
RCRIS data can also be obtained through an EPA Envirofacts Query Form.
There are a few important terms that are used in a specialized fashion within this documentation:
Users should note that RTK NET's search program searches using only the most current information for each handler. For instance, if a handler's name has changed over the years, only its last name (as reported to EPA) will be used if you search for a handler by name. Also, some handlers have information records for out-of-state activities, such as multi-state enforcements or transporter activities across states. Only the information in the handler's home state will be used in the search. Once you retrieve a handler in a search, all of its associated old information and out-of-state information records will be displayed -- it's only the search for handlers that does not use them, in order to avoid false positive hits.
Area reports are intended to help you find out about all handlers based within a geographic area - a city, county, zip code, or state. If you are looking for information on all handlers 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.
Handler reports are intended to help you find out about a single handler, though you can also try to find multiple handlers owned by a single company if they have similar names. You can use an "*" as a wildcard within names. You can also specify a single handler by its RCRA ID if you know it; if you do so, you should not fill in its handler name.
Industry reports are intended to help you find out about handlers within a single industry as defined by a NAICS code. You can also limit your search by state.
All of the reports allow you to restrict the search by type of handler, and to handlers with violations only. You can also 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 handler. If you chose text output directed to the Web, there will be a link from each line to a High detail report on that handler, 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.
This field selects what output style your report will have:
Further help on delimited reports is available.
The RCRA Handler ID (which used to be known as the EPA Facility ID) is a 12-character ID used in the RCRA program to identify individual handlers. The first two characters are generally the state abbreviation for the state that the handler is based in.
You should never need to know a handler's RCRA ID in order to run a search. The ability to search by it is included for people who know the RCRA ID and want to be sure to find a specific handler.
The handler name is the name of the entity that generates, transports, treats, stores, or disposes of hazardous waste. It is usually equivalent to a facility name.
Warning: handler 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 handlers owned by Du Pont.
Possible spellings of handler 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 an industry. EPA databases are in the process of converting from SIC codes, the old industry classification, to the newer NAICS code. This will lead to some problems with historical continuity, as there is no one-to-one conversion from SIC to NAICS.
This field lets you choose one of the U.S. states or state equivalents that exist in the RCRIS database.
This field lets you search for either only handlers that have ever had a violation, or only handlers with current violations (violations that have not yet come into compliance). It is useful when a search would otherwise retrieve large numbers of handlers, and you're looking specifically for those of them with violation histories.
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.
These fields let you restrict your search by type of handler. If you check "Search for all handlers" then your search will not be restricted, and the other check boxes will be ignored. Otherwise, the boxes that you check will be combined so that the handlers found will be those that match any of the categories that you've chosen. For example, if you check both "LQG" and "All TSDs", a handler will be retrieved in your search if it is an LQG, a TSD, or both. If you check "LQG" and "SQG", a handler will be retrieved if it is either an LQG or an SQG.
Selecting "All Generators" is equivalent to checking all of the boxes "LQG","SQG", and "CESQG", and if you do so those boxes will be ignored. The same applies to checking "All TSDs" and the Treatment, Storage, Land Disposal, Incineration, and BIF boxes.
For more information on the meaning of these handler types, see the list of terms above.
Additional help is available through the help file associated with RCRIS standard report output.