A bill introduced by Senator Ralph Alvarado, Republican, was first presented to members of the Kentucky Senate on January 8, to address environmental concerns to local leaders. Alvarado pre-filed the bill in December and the issue was presented in the Senate in January.
Through that bill, Kentucky Revised Statutes (KRS) 224.46 underwent a new section that requires the secretary of the Energy and Environment Cabinet to send a copy of notices for violations of a hazardous waste site or facility to the county judge-executive or the chief executive officer of an urban-county government within the area affected.
The notice must be sent within seven days of the written violation notice. A summary of that addition states that the Energy and Environment Cabinet send a notice of violations for a contained landfill to the county judge-executive of the county where the landfill is located.
KRS 224-46-505 outlines specific areas as listed below:
That technological progress and increases in the amounts of manufacturing are continuing to result in increasing quantities of hazardous waste being generated and prohibiting the generation of hazardous waste would result in a competitive economic disadvantage for the Commonwealth;
(2) That the Commonwealth is the site of much improper and inadequately regulated handling, treatment, transportation, storage, and disposal of hazardous waste which presents a threat to the public health, safety, and welfare and the environment;
(3) That by the enactment by the Congress of the United States of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act of 1976, as amended (PL 94-580), the generation, transportation, treatment, storage, recycling, and disposal of hazardous waste has been determined to be a matter of national importance, recognizing that hazardous waste presents, in addition to the problems generally associated with nonhazardous waste, special dangers to health and requires a greater degree of regulation than does nonhazardous waste;
(4) That the primary responsibility for proper hazardous waste management rests with the generators, transporters, treaters, storers, recyclers, and disposers of hazardous waste, subject to rules, regulations, guidelines, and standards promulgated by the Energy and Environment Cabinet and also subject to registration or permitting by the cabinet for the purpose of effectuating safe and proper management at all steps in the hazardous waste cycle;