HEALTH AND SAFETY CODE
TITLE 5. SANITATION AND ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY
SUBTITLE B. SOLID WASTE, TOXIC CHEMICALS, SEWAGE, LITTER, AND WATER
CHAPTER 361. SOLID WASTE DISPOSAL ACT
SUBCHAPTER A. GENERAL PROVISIONS
Sec. 361.001. SHORT TITLE. This chapter may be cited as the Solid Waste Disposal Act.
Acts 1989, 71st Leg., ch. 678, Sec. 1, eff. Sept. 1, 1989.
Sec. 361.002. POLICY; FINDINGS. (a) It is this state’s policy and the purpose of this chapter to safeguard the health, welfare, and physical property of the people and to protect the environment by controlling the management of solid waste, including accounting for hazardous waste that is generated.
(b) The storage, processing, and disposal of hazardous waste at municipal solid waste facilities pose a risk to public health and the environment, and in order to protect the environment and to provide measures for adequate protection of public health, it is in the public interest to require hazardous waste to be stored, processed, and disposed of only at permitted hazardous industrial solid waste facilities.
Acts 1989, 71st Leg., ch. 678, Sec. 1, eff. Sept. 1, 1989. Amended by Acts 1990, 71st Leg., 6th C.S., ch. 10, art. 2, Sec. 1, eff. Sept. 6, 1990.
Sec. 361.003. DEFINITIONS. Unless the context requires a different definition, in this chapter:
(1) “Apparent recharge zone” means that recharge zone designated on maps prepared or compiled by, and located in the offices of, the commission.
(2) “Class I industrial solid waste” means an industrial solid waste or mixture of industrial solid waste, including hazardous industrial waste, that because of its concentration or physical or chemical characteristics:
(A) is toxic, corrosive, flammable, a strong sensitizer or irritant, or a generator of sudden pressure by decomposition, heat, or other means; and
(B) poses or may pose a substantial present or potential danger to human health or the environment if improperly processed, stored, transported, or otherwise managed.
(3) “Class I nonhazardous industrial solid waste” means any Class I industrial solid waste that has not been identified or listed as a hazardous waste by the administrator of the United States Environmental Protection Agency under the federal Solid Waste Disposal Act, as amended by the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act of 1976 (42 U.S.C. Section 6901 et seq.).
(4) “Commercial hazardous waste management facility” means any hazardous waste management facility that accepts hazardous waste or PCBs for a charge, except a captured facility or a facility that accepts waste only from other facilities owned or effectively controlled by the same person, where “captured facility” means a manufacturing or production facility that generates an industrial solid waste or hazardous waste that is routinely stored, processed, or disposed of on a shared basis in an integrated waste management unit owned, operated by, and located within a contiguous manufacturing complex.
(5) “Commission” means the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.
(6) “Composting” means the controlled biological decomposition of organic solid waste under aerobic conditions.
(7) “Disposal” means the discharging, depositing, injecting, dumping, spilling, leaking, or placing of solid waste or hazardous waste, whether containerized or uncontainerized, into or on land or water so that the solid waste or hazardous waste or any constituent thereof may be emitted into the air, discharged into surface water or groundwater, or introduced into the environment in any other manner.
(8) “Environmental response law” means the federal Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act of 1980, 42 U.S.C. Sections 9601 through 9675, as amended by the Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act of 1986.
(9) “Executive director” means the executive director of the commission.
(10) “Garbage” means solid waste that is putrescible animal and vegetable waste materials from the handling, preparation, cooking, or consumption of food, including waste materials from markets, storage facilities, and the handling and sale of produce and other food products.
(10-a) “Gasification” means a process through which recoverable feedstocks are heated and converted into a fuel-gas mixture in an oxygen-deficient atmosphere and the mixture is converted into a valuable raw, intermediate, or final product, including a plastic, monomer, chemical, wax, lubricant, or chemical feedstock or crude oil, diesel, gasoline, diesel and gasoline blendstock, home heating oil, ethanol, or another fuel. The term does not include incineration.
(10-b) “Gasification facility” means a facility that receives, separates, stores, and converts post-use polymers and recoverable feedstocks using gasification. The commission may not consider a gasification facility to be a hazardous waste management facility, a solid waste management facility, or an incinerator.