17.1 Abatement Waste Streams

Inventory the waste before you generate it

Quick Answer: Supervisor curriculum 40 CFR 745.225(d)(3)(xii) is cleanup and waste disposal. Hazardous waste in Part 745 means any waste as defined in 40 CFR 261.3 (745.223). Abatement creates several different streams — architectural debris, paint chips, dust, sludges, HEPA filters, contaminated plastic, wash water, stripped sludge, and excavated soil — with different likelihood of failing the toxicity characteristic. Paint chips, dust, sludge, and filters often fail; whole components sometimes do not. Never assume; characterize or apply a lawful exclusion (Section 17.3). Keep waste labeled, contained, and inside containment until it is packaged. Do not leave chips in a dumpster children can reach. Do not discharge lead wash water to storm sewers. Removed soil shall not be used as top soil at another residential property or child-occupied facility (745.227(e)(7)(i)(B)).

Paint-removal and replacement (Chapters 12–13) make the pile. Interior cleanup (Chapter 14) makes the buckets and the filters. Soil removal (Chapter 15) makes the truck. This chapter is what happens to that pile. TCLP numbers live in Section 17.2. Manifests, TSDFs, and the household exclusion live in Section 17.3. This section is the inventory — naming each stream so you do not mix a door, a filter, and a bucket of sludge into one unlabeled dumpster and call it construction debris.

745.223 does not invent a lead-only waste definition. It points you to 40 CFR 261.3: a hazardous waste is a solid waste that is not excluded and that is listed or exhibits a characteristic (ignitability, corrosivity, reactivity, or toxicity). Lead abatement debris is usually a characteristic question — D008 if the TCLP lead leachate is ≥ 5.0 mg/L (Section 17.2) — unless a lawful exclusion applies. The inventory comes first, because you cannot characterize, exclude, or dispose of a stream you never named.

The streams a supervisor actually generates

Worked example — window replacement. Sashes and jambs come out as architectural debris. The trough dust the HEPA pulled is dust. The spent HEPA cartridge is a filter. The wash bucket is wash water. The folded poly is contaminated plastic. Those are five streams, not one window-job dumpster. Mixing concentrated dust into the whole-window pile can make a load that would have passed TCLP fail, and mixing the windows into the dust pile can bury the stream you needed to manage as hazardous.

Worked example — wet scrape plus chemical paste. Chips in the drip strip are paint chips. The paste on the scraper is stripped sludge. The rinse water is wash water. The chip pile is the stream most likely to be D008 if you have to characterize it. Do not rake chips into the sandbox, and do not pour the rinse into the gutter.

Why chips and filters are not the same as a whole door

TCLP (Section 17.2) asks how much lead leaches into an acid solution from a representative sample, not how much lead the XRF read on the paint. A door with 4.2 mg/cm² LBP is still mostly wood. When a lab crushes a representative piece of that door, the wood dilutes the paint. The leachate may stay below 5.0 mg/L. The same job's paint chips, HEPA dust, and spent filters are almost all lead-bearing fines. They often leach at or above 5.0 mg/L and carry waste code D008.

That is the exam split:

• Do not treat every painted component as automatically hazardous.
• Do not treat chips, dust, sludge, and filters as ordinary construction debris because it is just paint.
• Do not use the XRF reading as a TCLP result. mg/cm² is not mg/L.
• Never assume. Either characterize the stream or apply a lawful exclusion that actually fits (Section 17.3). Whole-component luck is not a characterization.

HUD Guidelines, used as documented methodology under 745.227(a)(3), have long told crews that concentrated lead wastes (chips, dust, sludge, filters) are the streams that fail TCLP, while bulky architectural debris is less predictable. EPA's residential household waste interpretation can take you out of Subtitle C for residences — that is not permission to skip the inventory, and it is not the rule on a non-residential child-occupied facility or commercial building.

Contain it, label it, and keep children off it

Waste is still lead-contaminated dust and debris until it is packaged. EPA's lead-waste FAQ (RRP and abatement) and the supervisor field picture share the same commands:

• Collect waste at the end of each work day and at the end of the job.
• Store it under containment, in an enclosure, or behind a barrier that prevents release of dust and debris and prevents access.
• Keep it inside the regulated area until it is bagged, wrapped, or boxed.
• Label the containers so a helper does not throw chips in with lunch trash.
• When you move it, keep it contained — no open buckets bouncing down the stairs, no shaking poly over the sidewalk.

Do not leave chips in a dumpster that kids can access. An open roll-off in a play area, an unlidded can on the porch, or a paper bag of scrape-chips next to the sandbox is how yesterday's abatement becomes today's soil-lead and mouthing hazard. After exterior paint abatement, paint chips on the dripline or next to the foundation must be removed from the site and properly disposed (745.227(e)(8)(v)(C)). Properly includes the dumpster lid and the location, not only the landfill name.

Worked example — Friday dumpster. The crew finishes wet-scrape at 4 p.m. Chips go in an open contractor bag in the alley dumpster. Children use that alley. That is a containment and access failure before anyone talks about RCRA codes. Bag it, close it, keep it behind the barrier, move it out contained.

Wash water and soil are not not-waste

Water. Filter or HEPA the solids out of wash water so you have a sludge/filter stream you can manage and a liquid stream you can take to a lawful destination. Do not discharge lead wash water to storm sewers. Storm drains go to creeks and play-area soil, not to a treatment plant that agreed to take your rinse. Follow local wastewater rules for sanitary-sewer discharge — some publicly owned treatment works allow filtered rinse; some do not. Do not invent a federal permission to dump gray mop water on the lawn, in a floor drain to the street, or in a neighbor's clean-out.

Soil. Excavated play-area or rest-of-yard soil is a waste load. 745.227(e)(7)(i)(B): the soil that is removed shall not be used as top soil at another residential property or child-occupied facility. Chapter 15 already banned the neighbor's garden and the daycare sandbox. This chapter adds: characterize it and dispose of it under RCRA and the authorized state. Do not stockpile it uncovered on the play area overnight.

Supervisor decision test before the first bag is tied. (1) Have I named each stream — components, chips, dust, sludge, filters, plastic, water, soil — instead of one mixed dumpster? (2) Are chips, dust, sludge, and filters segregated from bulk architectural debris so a later TCLP or exclusion decision is still possible? (3) Is everything labeled and inside containment, with no kid-accessible chips? (4) Is wash water in a container, not a gutter? (5) Is excavated soil headed to a lawful disposal path, not a residential topsoil reuse?

Official sources: 40 CFR 745.225(d)(3)(xii) (cleanup and waste disposal); 40 CFR 745.223 (hazardous waste means 40 CFR 261.3); 40 CFR 745.227(e)(7)(i)(B), (e)(8)(v)(C), (a)(3); 40 CFR 261.3; 40 CFR 261.24 Table 1 (D008, 5.0 mg/L); EPA, How should lead-containing wastes from RRP renovations be handled and disposed? (collect daily; contain; no dumping or open burning).