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Alaniz, John From: Lon Kitagawa <LKitagawa@aascworld.com> Sent: Thursday, April 16, 2020 2:25 PM To: RAO@dtsc.ca.gov Cc: Alaniz, John Subject: FW:TREATMENT Dear Sir/Madam: We were recently inspected by the San Joaquin County Environmental Health Department (SJCEHD). They issued a violation for compacting our waste, which they considered to be treatment based on reduction of volume. Per the Title 22 California Code of Regulations, Section 66260.10, "Treatment" means any method, technique, or process which changes or is designed to change the physical, chemical, or biological character or composition of any hazardous waste or any material contained therein, or removes or reduces its harmful properties or characteristics for any purpose including, but not limited to, energy recovery, material recovery, or reduction in volume. We do not agree that compacting our waste is in any way treatment as defined by the regulation. We are only attempting to remove the air space to allow more waste to be placed into the drum and reducing the number of drums going to the disposal facility. If we place 100 pounds of waste into a drum, after compacting, we'll still have the same 100 pounds of waste. We are of the understanding that there are only 2 parts to the definition. The first part states that "Treatment" means any method, technique, or process which changes the physical, chemical, or biological character or composition of any hazardous waste, or any material contained therein. Compacting of our waste does not change the physical, chemical, or biological character or composition of the waste. The second part of the definition states that "Treatment" removes or reduces its harmful properties or characteristics for any purpose including, but not limited to, energy recovery, material recovery, or reduction in volume. It is stating that all three, energy recovery, material recovery, or reduction in volume, are some methods of treatment that are included that removes or reduces harmful properties or characteristics. "Reduction in volume is not a stand-alone and third part of the definition. It is a method of treatment, along with energy recovery and material recovery to remove or reduce the harmful properties or characteristics of any hazardous waste. We are not removing or reducing the waste's harmful properties or characteristics by compacting our waste. Therefore, reduction in volume, by itself, does not meet the definition of treatment. It must be done to remove or reduce harmful properties or characteristics. It is our position that compacting the waste is physically the same as manually pushing the waste into the drum to make more room. If reduction in volume, by itself is considered treatment, you would not be allowed to manually push down the waste to make room and could only place it into the drum. We are simply compressing the volume to minimize empty space and not treating it per the definition, thus minimizing the amount of drums being generated. Without compacting, we estimate that we would be sending 2-3 times as many 55 gallon drums to the waste disposal facility than we currently do. This seems contrary to the concept of minimizing the amount of hazardous waste sent to a disposal facility. By contrast, we would consider the following to be examples of treatment per the regulation definition: (1) intentionally evaporating solvent or water from a hazardous waste, which changes the physical and chemical composition of the waste, and removes or reduces its harmful properties by reducing the volume. (2) 1