The United States Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA”) Office of Inspector General (“OIG”) issued a November 19th notification memorandum titled:
Evaluation of the EPA’s e-Manifest System (“Memorandum”).
See Project No. OSRE-FY26-0021.
The Memorandum was transmitted from Paul H. Bergstrand, Assistant Inspector General, Office of Special Review and Evaluation to John W. Busterud, Assistant Administrator, Office of Land and Emergency Management.
OIG states that it will undertake an evaluation that will determine the effectiveness of EPA’s e-Manifest system. Such evaluation is stated to include the impact and efforts to address errors in the system.
The Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (“RCRA”) cradle-to-grave Hazardous Waste Tracking System attempts to ensure that hazardous waste is properly generated, transported, and treated or disposed. The cradle-to-grave system has always been a key component of RCRA.
A generator after determining what “hazardous waste” is, is required to prepare manifests to accompany the movement of material from the point of generation through transportation and then to the receiving facility/treatment, storage, or disposal facility.
Federal legislation enacted in 2012 authorized EPA to implement a national electronic manifest system. Further, it authorized the federal agency to assess the cost of developing and operating e-Manifest system from user fees.
The e-Manifest system is a national database that similarly tracks hazardous waste shipments. It was launched by EPA in 2018. The goal of the e-Manifest system is to improve access to higher quality and timely data while also saving time and resources for industry and state and territorial programs.
A copy of the OIG Memorandum can be found here.
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