Limitations of the legislation on the management of PCBs and PCB-contaminated waste

The legal and technical standards framework in Russia, which mostly consists of previously developed normative technical documentation (regulations, norms, rules, industry and state standards) regulating different aspects of research, project and economic activities in regard to PCB-containing materials, is poorly systemized, has become outdated in many parts and requires reconsideration and systematization. At the moment, there is a need to develop a registry of existing legislative, regulatory legal acts and normative technical documentation on the safe management of PCBs, ensuring safety and protection of the environment while working with PCB-containing equipment and materials.

Policy-makers, designing new normative technical documentation on industrial and environmental safety, on-the-job safety while working with PCBs, shall take into account the experience of other countries, like the USA, Canada, the EU, countries of the Central and Eastern Europe, as well as international expertise of such organizations as ISO and IEC.

A regulatory legal framework in the field of industrial and environmental safety shall include legal acts regulating the following:

the procedure and conditions of use of technical equipment containing PCBs at hazardous industrial facilities (instructions on cleaning transformers from PCB-containing materials, the registration procedure for PCB-containing equipment and waste, instructions on avoiding spills etc.);
in-process monitoring of the safety requirements on the management of PCB (rules, instructions, recommendations on safety regulations on PCB management);
the interaction of the procedures of environmental expertise and industrial safety expertise (especially in the field of constructing stationary local facilities for PCB elimination);
social and economic guarantees of safety and other (rules and instructions ensuring a safe management of PCB at all stages).

At the moment, there are practically no mechanisms of normative legal regulation ensuring on-the-job safety while working with PCBs and which would account for the peculiarity of such job.

It is highly important to initiate the process of discovering and decontaminating not authorized/abandoned disposal sites and provide a necessary legal support for it.

The main limitations of the existing institutional structure and environmental legislation in the field of PCB management are as follows:

Difficulties of the enforcement of normative legal acts, arising especially when dealing with financially unstable organizations or when the law enforcing institutions lack sufficient funds;
The regulatory system is not flexible, quantitative norms do not account for the interaction of matrices, transboundary effects, the cumulative effect and the limitations of environmental regulations;
Decisions on the future development are not based on the forecasts of environmental dynamics;
There are contradictions within the vertical regulatory system, for example between federal, regional and local authorities, and within the horizontal one between legal acts of one level. This gives enterprises the possibility to violate the legislation and prevents state supervisory bodies from making a claim against violators.

The most critical challenges of regulating the management of PCBs in Russia have the following factors at their root:

PCB-containing wastes, its management and accumulation are among the most serious environmental problems connected with the monitoring of PCBs. Russia currently does not have appropriate equipment to manage and dispose of hazardous PCB-containing wastes;
There is a need to prepare a number of regulatory legal acts which will take account of peculiarities of using, storing and eliminating PCB-containing equipment;
A number of organizational and methodological documents on the safety and health standards has not been revisited for a long time, even though the tasks, functions and structure of national supervisory bodies and social organizations have changed and new procedures of developing and adopting some legal acts on on-the-job safety have been implemented.

The preliminary analysis of existing normative legal acts demonstrates that Russia has a certain legal framework in place needed to initiate the elimination of PCB. There are many documents regulating all aspects of managing hazardous materials and wastes. At the same time, a lot has yet to be done to develop a regulatory framework targeted specifically at PCBs and based on the existing regulatory documents so as to manage the phase-out of PCBs in an environmentally sound manner.The legal and technical standards framework in Russia, which mostly consists of previously developed normative technical documentation (regulations, norms, rules, industry and state standards) regulating different aspects of research, project and economic activities in regard to PCB-containing materials, is poorly systemized, has become outdated in many parts and requires reconsideration and systematization. At the moment, there is a need to develop a registry of existing legislative, regulatory legal acts and normative technical documentation on the safe management of PCBs, ensuring safety and protection of the environment while working with PCB-containing equipment and materials.

A regulatory legal framework in the field of industrial and environmental safety shall include legal acts regulating the following:

the procedure and conditions of use of technical equipment containing PCBs at hazardous industrial facilities (instructions on cleaning transformers from PCB-containing materials, the registration procedure for PCB-containing equipment and waste, instructions on avoiding spills etc.);
in-process monitoring of the safety requirements on the management of PCB (rules, instructions, recommendations on safety regulations on PCB management);
the interaction of the procedures of environmental expertise and industrial safety expertise (especially in the field of constructing stationary local facilities for PCB elimination);
social and economic guarantees of safety and other (rules and instructions ensuring a safe management of PCB at all stages).

At the moment, there are practically no mechanisms of normative legal regulation ensuring on-the-job safety while working with PCBs and which would account for the peculiarity of such job.

It is highly important to initiate the process of discovering and decontaminating not authorized/abandoned disposal sites and provide a necessary legal support for it.

The main limitations of the existing institutional structure and environmental legislation in the field of PCB management are as follows:

Difficulties of the enforcement of normative legal acts, arising especially when dealing with financially unstable organizations or when the law enforcing institutions lack sufficient funds;
The regulatory system is not flexible, quantitative norms do not account for the interaction of matrices, transboundary effects, the cumulative effect and the limitations of environmental regulations;
Decisions on the future development are not based on the forecasts of environmental dynamics;
There are contradictions within the vertical regulatory system, for example between federal, regional and local authorities, and within the horizontal one between legal acts of one level. This gives enterprises the possibility to violate the legislation and prevents state supervisory bodies from making a claim against violators.

The most critical challenges of regulating the management of PCBs in Russia have the following factors at their root:

PCB-containing wastes, its management and accumulation are among the most serious environmental problems connected with the monitoring of PCBs. Russia currently does not have appropriate equipment to manage and dispose of hazardous PCB-containing wastes;
There is a need to prepare a number of regulatory legal acts which will take account of peculiarities of using, storing and eliminating PCB-containing equipment;
A number of organizational and methodological documents on the safety and health standards has not been revisited for a long time, even though the tasks, functions and structure of national supervisory bodies and social organizations have changed and new procedures of developing and adopting some legal acts on on-the-job safety have been implemented.